eSGEe
Ferengi Ambassador of Trade
oh you met my ex-wife then?
Should I Buy a New Guitar???
- Thread starter Sp8ctre
- Start date
eSGEe
Ferengi Ambassador of Trade
I do to -- tried to trade it to you for your Moms Gibson ....... you know to help you out and get you a better guitar ......but you declined
Hahahaaha! Worked for Robert…..maybe…..so far….I give it a month…maybe…maybe more….maybe less…
LOL!!!!
Well, I really feel like I approached this new Les Paul differently and I believe my past negative experiences were directly related to buying the cheaper, entry level models.
I beg the forgiveness of the Great and Powerful Gibson!!!!
When I bought my 50's Gold Top Standard, I knew exactly what I wanted - an aluminum bridge and tailpiece, green keys, a wide neck, a traditional gold nitro finish and full binding.
This guitar had all of those things...the neck is a whopping 1.695" at the nut and .981" thick at the first fret and 1.00" thick at the 12th...almost as wide as the 1.750" Warmoth on YelloStrat.
This guitar also had the added bonus of a BB1 in the neck and a BB3 in the bridge, plus a hand wired 50's style wire harness with Sprague Orange Drops.
I have done nothing to it but adjust the string to string volumes via the pole pieces and a slight intonation adjustment to my preference of slightly flat.
It even arrived with my desired 'SOP' settings of .030" at the first fret and .070" at the 12th that I set ALL my guitars too.
The only "mod" I have done is to add the Mojoaxe #8 screw for the body Dunlop Straplocks.
No more cheap guitars and no more fixer-uppers.
OP
Sp8ctre
Ambassador of Steel
try an Epiphone LEster
Had at least 3 of those and have one now. It's a close second to the Schecter PT Tele Style. I also have an Epiphone SG and a Squire Strat.
eSGEe
Ferengi Ambassador of Trade
I don’t give a rats as$ what the brand name is…I only care that the guitar/amp in question ticks all the necessary boxes to make me happy.
Some that I’ve come across have been Gibson made…others have not.
Duds (in my experience) have been observed from plenty of places.
Life is finite.
Clockworkmike
Ambassador of STACKS in WV SHACKS
Are you married ???
I don’t give a rats as$ what the brand name is…I only care that the guitar/amp in question ticks all the necessary boxes to make me happy.
Some that I’ve come across have been Gibson made…others have not.
Duds (in my experience) have been observed from plenty of places.
Life is finite.
@Thatbastarddon - My point here was kind of a satire-esque apology in blaming Gibson for the shortcomings of (5) of their entry level guitars.
Lesson learned??? You get what you are willing to pay for.
Probably because my guitar heroes played Gibsons, I wanted a genuine Gibson Les Paul that also ticked all the boxes. I didn't find a good one until I started looking in the higher end Gibson Les Paul guitars.
I've donated all my other guitars to the music academy. Now, I only have three:
My spray can yellow 1982 Fender Stratocaster, the 2021 Gibson Les Paul 50's Standard and my custom Von Herndon DoubleNeck.
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If those were Telecasters, I'd pay money just to drive the crawler...where's @Ramo ???
But did any of you notice how few broken headstocks there were???
In all seriousness, why not brand them "not for resale" and donate them to music academies???
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Clockworkmike
Ambassador of STACKS in WV SHACKS
Exactly! While they were god awful butt ugly, tons of schools and music programs desperately could have used these. But Gibson said: "an isolated batch of Firebird X models built in 2009-2011 which were unsalvageable and damaged with unsafe components. This isolated group of Firebird X models were unable to be donated for any purpose and were destroyed accordingly.”
I guess they were made out of asbestos, syringes found in dumpsters, radioactive lumber from the Chernobyl region and the bumpers of Ford Pintos to be classified as THIS dangerous and not be even able to donate
Iron1
AmbassaDOOM of Red VVinter
FTFY
You could try a Les Paul Axcess. They are slightly thinner, have a much more ergonomic heel, and a tummy cut. You can even get a Floyd Rose option!
RVA
Ambassador
Make sure you don't buy a good one then
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My 2021 Gibson Les Paul 50's Standard stays in perfect tune no matter what I do to it. It is still strung with the factory .010 x .046" strings. The build quality and attention to detail is astounding on this guitar.
It was built on Thursday, June 10, 2021. (@DonO decoded it just by looking!!!!!)
Now, when repairing/setting up Gibson style headstock guitars, there are a few things that give them a bad reputation.
It took me a while to figure out how to cut the nut on a Les Paul to get the tuning stable. It involves cutting slots no less than about .004" larger than string gauge, a generous fall-away and a slight funnel shape on the tuner side of the nut.
Here's one of my setups on a typical Les Paul:
Once I worked these details out, I had no more tuning issues.
Having said that, it's a lot of tedious detail work to get the nut cut correctly and it takes me 3-4 times longer to setup a Gibson style nut vs. a Fender nut, due to all the oblique angles.
The stock, white Graph Tech nut on my new Les Paul (according to published specs Ginson is now using Graph Tech now at the factory) had all these angles properly cut.
This is a zero defect guitar...and it is priced accordingly.
I did not see this kind of work/detail in the "T" Series, Faded and Tributes that I purchased in 2016/2017.
I paid $749.00 each for two brand new 2016 Gibson SG T Series (at different times), $899.00 for a brand new 2016 Gibson Les Paul 50's Tribute and $1,099.00 for a brand new 2016 Gibson Les Paul Studio T Series.
The Studio was the best guitar of that group in terms of build quality and finish, and one would expect the build quality to improve on a more expensive product, but I did not like the narrow fretboard and slim-taper neck profile....just a personal preference here.
While guitars built down to a price point may - sometimes - surprise you in positive fashion, I find the better quality guitars (in the Gibson line) starting to appear at about the $1,500.00 range and that would reflect the current cost of a 2021 Les Paul Studio.
Everything I bought (brand new) from Gibson in the $749.00 - $899.00 price range (in 2016) was really substandard in terms of nut prep, fret work, overall finish quality, neck angle and attention to detail.
When things are made cheaply, to fit a preconceived price point, there are things that are compromised to arrive at that price point.
I've "rebuilt" or "corrected" many issues with a lot of guitars for clients - including some USA models - but I won't invest this kind of time and effort in "fixer-uppers" for myself any longer.
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syscokid
Ambassador of War & Peace
No kidding. They should have added a portrait of Henry J to the pile!