The Fine Fifty Nine

Most guitar lovers covet the Gibson Les Paul 59, even if they don't use one.

Is it a better instrument than a 2012 Les Paul?

Yes.

Let´s do a little potted guitar history here.

Les Paul was a genius, in everything from guitars to multitrack to delay and chorus. The Gibson Company have always claimed that the Les Paul guitar was mainly their idea, but this isn´t true. In the 40s they laughed at the mad inventor with the broomstick and only came after him when Leo Fender got in there first with the solid body guitar. Gibson even screwed up the bridge on the first Les Paul, giving the guitar an arched top like a violin, although Les Paul preferred a flat top. 

In the 50s the guitar was built using the best tonewoods, Bumble Bee capacitors, silkscreen logos, deep tenon joint right into the neck pickup cavity, flamed tops, and much more. Gibson´s policy was to cut trees down only so far, so that the wood wasn't too dense and the guitar would have better sustain, better natural tone, better dynamics, and better natural harmonics. Most of these had huge baseball bat necks that contributed to the tone – although in 1960 Les Pauls had thinner necks - laquer that cracked easily, paint that faded into a myriad of beautiful colours, pickups with many different amounts of winding (hot and not so hot) all of which made each guitar unique.

Yet, incredibly, by the 1980s no rock guitarist wanted a Les Paul! Everyone wanted a Charvel, Jackson or Kramer. Eddie Van Halen got incredible sounds from his bastardised Charvel with it's Floyd Rose whammy bar. The Les Polsfuss was totally out of fashion (though it could could kick the bejeesus out of all of the above with its beautiful blend of mahogany body, maple top and warm - yet brutal - Alnico pickups). Even when in the late 80s Slash of Guns ´n´ Roses seemed to be playing a Gibson and resurrecting the Les Paul, he was actually playing a bastardised guitar with a Gibson neck. The body was built by a great guitar luthier called Max who could build a better Les Paul than Gibson, using the best possible tone woods.

So how did this happen?

In the 70s the Gibson company evolved into Corporate Gibson and they began to use everything but the tree roots for their famed guitars. This made the guitars so heavy that guitarists started to suffer from the dreaded “Les Paul neck”. This encompasses a host of problems such as severe neck and shoulder pain and slouching over the guitar to alleviate the strain.

In short, skill and passion had been replaced by the greedy pursuit of profits and the quality suffered. The CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) router system and the plek system were introduced, replacing real instruments made by skilled instrument makers.

In my view, corporate is a disgusting word because wherever it appears there´s no beauty. So, predictably, Corporate Gibson sucks and quality is decreasing so fast that soon the mythical name of Gibson will stand for no more than crap. Mass factory built guitars are a complete rip off - what you now get from the Gibson Custom Shop (which is another story!) is closer to what you got from the Gibson factory floor in 1959. Bog standard, dense, hollowed out mahogany. Orville Gibson, a man who believed in quality to the extent of using fiddle back (flamed maple) on his guitars because he found it so beautiful on violin backs, would turn in his grave.

Now that Gibson have been taken to court for illegaly obtaining rosewood for their fingerboards, we now have baked maple instead. Gibson´s CEO, the profit-hungry Henry E. Juszkiewicz deserves to be taken and shaken. He has no love of guitars and no respect for the people who play them and is on record as saying that the higher the price, the more people – or fools - will believe they´re getting better quality. 

To this day, Slash uses, not Gibson Les Pauls, but the results of what's known as ghost building. Gibson permits an independent builder to put their logo on Slash's guitars. Slash endorses Gibson and everybody makes a fortune.

In conclusion, while I'm still a Les Paul lover and own a nice, cherry sunburst with a great, powerful rock tone, when it comes to playing, I sling on a Fender strat. Even though it has wider fret spacing, much weaker pickups and a higher action, I love it because it's really comfy around my neck and I can reach the higher register without being obstructed by a huge mortice and tenon joint. A contemporary Les Paul is still a great guitar with a great tone - but it´s not worth half its retail price.