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The Guitar Pron Thread


Celery Man

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wait wtf you can't casually drop a '58 les paul, that's irresponsible. i step away for a day and this is what we're doing in here?

CHIEF had a... brazilian rw J45 with crazy inlays that had been the previous clubhouse leader by my metric but yeah 58 les paul is it.

i'm so glad i started the shaggy guitar tontine

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6 hours ago, G650 said:

 

It was too dark this morning to take the headstock or binding shots, but we are jamming later so I will get some then. I'll point out some of things about the burst headstocks then.

 

I have one crappy control cavity pick of mine. If you are interested in comparing though, burst serial has a ton of cavity shots. It's a really good resource. You'll notice the ground wire channel is not visible here, it goes down beside the neck volume pot instead if a little up the cavity wall like 59 and on. You can also see the different routing in the maple top that you were mentioning.

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Switch cavity. It's one diameter all the way down. In early 58, it had a stairstep routing halfway down. In 57 and earlier it was narrower and one size.

 

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Pickups and routing. These give a good shot of the M69s. Neck tenon also, plus fret markers. You can see vertical striping on cellulose clearly, and the shrinking. My bridge pickup cover had been off and on once for some reason. Repair, check bobbin color, just have no cover to look like Page, I dunno why.

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Original poker chip, and good shot of corner of M69

 

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More GIF by Shorty Awards

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Alright @AnotherUTFan

 

Headstock front and back. One of the tells on the old headstocks is look at how close the A string passes by the E post and the B passes by the high E post. Super close. After they did the True Historic 59 around 2014 ish? Gibson got a lot of these details much closer in all the guitars. The biggest difference these days is probably the sharpness of the edges.

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My binding is definitely getting very thin. The dots are a dark tortoise but you basically need a loupe to see it. One thing I can almost promise is the neck on your R8 is fatter. This one is almost a 59 profile, but just generally Gibson made the reissue necks too fat.

20230119-160010.jpg

 

This is the best I could do with the cavity shots. It's hard as shit to get good lighting. The ground is the wire that is going forward over the neck volume pot and tucks in right in front. Yours most likely goes into body right about the top of the pot into the cavity wall heading towards bridge. I tried to get a good shot of maple routing.

 

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And finally pickups and rings.

 

20230119-155927.jpg

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Mine does have a really fat neck and it's my favorite thing about it.

I looked at my headstock and your right, there's a little more clearance on the A & B strings. At some point they made a slight adjustment to those holes - probably a jig they made.

Is the serial number stamp gone from yours? I don't see it and you mentioned it's had a previous refinish. If not, do you know what it is?

I do love my R8, it's excellent guitar. Congrats on that beauty. Can't wait to see the process play out.

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59 minutes ago, AnotherUTFan said:

Mine does have a really fat neck and it's my favorite thing about it.

I looked at my headstock and your right, there's a little more clearance on the A & B strings. At some point they made a slight adjustment to those holes - probably a jig they made.

Is the serial number stamp gone from yours? I don't see it and you mentioned it's had a previous refinish. If not, do you know what it is?

I do love my R8, it's excellent guitar. Congrats on that beauty. Can't wait to see the process play out.

You should give an R7 a whirl sometimes for kicks. Literally a Louisville Slugger neck.

The serial number is over the finish, so when it was stripped, it got lost. I did an ridiculous amount of forensic work, and through a lot of luck, I think I have it narrowed down to a 50 number range. Gibson is going to stamp a number on it this May when we are done.

 

53 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

You’ll have to change out the tuners 

Indeed. These are vintage tuners, but double buttons so obviously replaced

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33 minutes ago, Deej said:

Why would they assign a new serial number to it? 

There's a pretty strong incentive to catalog all the legitimate ones. The super famous no serial ones like Page's #1 are so notorious that they don't really need one, but due to circumstances beyond my control, I'm not as famous as Jimmy Page.

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1 minute ago, Deej said:

So, how does that work? Do they try to fit it into the existing range of numbers, or do they have a special set of numbers for guitars like this?

It will go in the gaps in known numbers. You can definitely pick a special number if you wanted though.

 

I don't know how much you know about the story so I apologize if I'm repeating something, I think it was in that video you posted, but essentially Gibson had daily books that recorded every guitar madr a particular day. Well, the books from June 1958 though early 1961 mysteriously vanished ( like 50,000 reward for them by the way). So no one actually knows how many there are, and what the serials all were. Burstserial.com is a project that is logging all known numbers, plus famous ones like Pagey's.

 

So as I mentioned couple posts ago, a very fortuitous thing happened during my research. There's a gap in known serials, and the lucky thing is there is actually a gap where the guitar on each side has verified provenance and pot code dates available, and those codes are on either side of my pot codes. So there's no guarantee but it's extremely likely the serial is between those two.

 

The second guitar actually isn't on Burst serial, but it's a guitar that came out of South Africa that Bonamassa owns now, called the PJ burst.

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I guess the addenda to that post which I meant to include is that part of the point is its logged as an assigned number and not original so that works both ways. It establishes a record of the instrument for posterity.

Edited by G650
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2 hours ago, AnotherUTFan said:


I looked at my headstock and your right, there's a little more clearance on the A & B strings. At some point they made a slight adjustment to those holes - probably a jig they made

I almost forgot, yours, like my R7 are actually much closer to 50s spec. The headstocks got huge in the 70s then started shrinking again. Check out the headstock on my '77 closely

 

20221222-134743.jpg

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I've had everything but a Telecaster put away in cases since I had company last month. Got the R8 out today to compare to pics, so I plugged in and played it when a friend came over to drum on some stuff we are working on. Sounds and plays great, but damn if it didn't get heavy after just a few, and I have a rather light 8-ish pounder.

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7 hours ago, Anton Chigurh said:

I guess I am in the minority here, but, while I know Grovers are the superior machines, I just prefer the look of Klusons. They just look right to me.

I don't know that you are in the minority on that. Kluson is the look. The old one just suck ass functionally.

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6 hours ago, AnotherUTFan said:

but damn if it didn't get heavy after just a few, and I have a rather light 8-ish pounder.

Mine is weird in this regard.  It's over 10 lbs (10.8 maybe?).  But the way it sits in the strap, I can play it standing up for hours.  I'm not a totally old fart, but I'm no spring chicken either.  My 52 AV is lighter by a couple of pounds, but almost feels heavier in the strap.  It's a strange thing with the LP, but I'll take it.

Edited by dcbc
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37 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

Kluson’s look cool camp.

I will say…. my PRS has Klusons and it stays in tune at all times. It’s in tune right now. It’ll be in tune in 3 months.

 

The newer Klusons are fairly stable. The ones on my R7 have no issues at all. It's the vintage ones that are hot garbage.

 

It also occurred to me@Anton Chigurhwas looking at my 77 in that picture. Those tuners are actually factory Schallers. They are unequivocally the best tuners I've ever had from a operation standpoint.

26 minutes ago, dcbc said:

Mine is weird in this regard.  It's over 10 lbs (10.8 maybe?).  But the way it sits in the strap, I can play it standing up for hours.  I'm not a totally old fart, but I'm no spring chicken either.  My 52 AV is lighter by a couple of pounds, but almost feels heavier in the strap.  It's a strange thing with the LP, but I'll take it.

That is weird lol. My 77 is almost 11 lbs, and switching between that and the 8 lb R7, the R7 feels like it's levitating

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That is weird lol. My 77 is almost 11 lbs, and switching between that and the 8 lb R7, the R7 feels like it's levitating


I actually was referring to the ‘58, even though they aren’t exactly the OE button style (not that they’re that different).

Agree that Schallers are typically good. The Fender locking ones are excellent.
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Heads up. Fender just raised prices again this week. Gibson and Epiphone look like they'll be raising them in March. If you want a new Gibby or Epi, buy now. 

I'm going to pull the trigger on a new Epiphone Les Paul Special in TV yellow. I hear great things about it for a $400 guitar.

Edited by Deej
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So I @AnotherUTFan I had my '77 out today to mess with since I had only played it briefly when I got it back from the refret and new pickups, so I took a few more comparison shots for you.

You can see the vertical striping on the 58 on the left vs the random pattern on the right.

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Also here is the R7. Shitty pic but you can see its like the '77

 

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And the M69s. The ones on the '77 are the most current repros. They still show some difference in sharpness, and of course material.

 

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Obligatory shot of both guitars.

 

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3 minutes ago, Anton Chigurh said:

Since you pointed out the headstock and tuner mounting location difference, I can’t unsee it. Not in a bad way, just something I look at on every one now, haha.

 

Dude for real, once seen it can't be unseen lol.

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