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Some of you may recall I've been looking to pickup a Gibson Les Paul to fill the void left by the '68 P-90 loaded Goldtop I foolishly sold many years ago.
After extensive searching and research (aka surfing Ebay and hanging out at the Les Paul forum), I concluded that I wanted a '56 Historic Reissue because basically I wanted goldtop with P-90's and a tune-o-matic bridge. I also thought about getting a mid-70's model.
A couple weeks ago I spoke with a very helpful guy named Nathan at Music Machine in Kennewick, WA. That's about a 3.5 hour drive but judging by what was on their web site it looked like it'd be worth the trip. So yesterday me and a buddy drove out there. Those of you that have driven in western Washington know that there ain't a whole lot to see. Good thing we had some decent tunes and talked about cars, guitars, and Microsoft for the ride.
Once you get to Music Machine it seems like a nice quiet and unassuming shop with a bunch of Gibsons, Epiphones, Fenders, Martins, etc. That is, at first. Then you look closer and notice that the wall of Gibsons are not just the faded and studio models that you see at GC (nothing wrong with those guitars but this was something else altogether). When I mentioned my conversation with Nathan the salesman said "oh, let's go downstairs". YOWZA!!! They had more Historics, Custom Shops, and other high-end Gibson guitars than I've seen anywhere. They had at least 6 rooms full of the things lined wall to wall.
So the dude starts pulling out '56 historics - 6 or 7 in all. These things are clearly not made on a CNC machine - the necks all felt quite different. I settled on a couple that felt really good and had a nice loud acoustic sound.
He hooks me up with an amp down there and While I'm plucking away he brings out a Cloud 9 reissue (which is the same basic guitar as the regular historics but with a chambered body). This thing was super light. Unfortunately, the first one he grabbed had a non-working bridge pickup. He then brought me a '54 "Stinger" bursted flametop with Burstbuckers - basically it was like Beck's Oxblood but with a burst top. Wow! That guitar was AMAZING:
http://www.guitarsale.com/frontend/P...?ProductID=419
I had to put that one down since I was looking for a P-90 goldtop and it was to damn tempting. Then he brought out an all gold '54:
http://www.guitarsale.com/frontend/P...?ProductID=492
The '54 sounded amazing. It was noticeably more "lively" and had greater sustain than any of the '56's I'd tried. So he brought out another '54. This had that same quality. He then brought out another chambered Cloud 9 '54 and the electronics were working great. Again, this '54 had "that" sound. So finally the light goes off in my head - at this point it's becoming clear that the wraparound tailpiece is what I want tone-wise.
Because the amp downstairs was acting up we moved upstairs to the main showroom to continue the experimentation.
At this point I had narrowed the field to 3 regular '54's and a chambered '54. After a failed attempt to coerce a decent tone out of a Marshal JCM 2000 something or other in the main showroom, the dude grabbed a Fender Twin Custom 15 (basically a reissue Twin Reverb with a single 15" JBL) that my buddy was interested in and set it up in a small room.
So I got to go back and forth between the four guitars. Here's the thing that really amazed me. I was really startled at how different each guitar sounded. I'm not usually one to buy into the subtleties of magic tone woods and neck thicknesses and blah, blah but I was proven wrong for sure on this occasion. These guitars were all setup pretty much the same and I'm pretty sure the pickups, pots, and misc. hardware are probably pretty consistent so the mojo was in the wood. It was striking how different they sounded. I eliminated two of them pretty quick - one was really too bright and the other was just lacking the harmonic richness the others had. In the end it was between one of the regular ones and the chambered one. The chambered one sounded wonderful but it did not have as wide a frequency response as the final regular model. The chambered one lacked some lows and highs.
So naturally I bought the sole surviving '54 goldtop:
Oh, my buddy bought the Twin [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
I can't emphasize enough how great this buying experience was. I checked all the stores in my area and there is only one used '56 for sale and he wants more for it than a new one costs (he's always high priced). I was thinking my prospects were to take my chances mail order or Ebay. Then I found Music Machine. They had at least a dozen P-90 equipped goldtop Les Pauls. That's worth repeating: a dozen goldtop Les Pauls with P-90s in one store! Then I found out I could get there and back in a leisurely day trip! Kick ass!
One other final note about this guitar, I was really surprised that I ended up with a guitar with this big baseball bat of a neck and I'm happy about it. My Les Paul Custom is a thin neck and pretty much all of my other guitars have had thin necks except for a Jackson KV2T and my classical guitars. But after playing the '54's in the store for a while I really started to like it. So this guitar has covered two things for me - a P-90 goldtop like my '68 and a big ass neck like my KV2T.
After extensive searching and research (aka surfing Ebay and hanging out at the Les Paul forum), I concluded that I wanted a '56 Historic Reissue because basically I wanted goldtop with P-90's and a tune-o-matic bridge. I also thought about getting a mid-70's model.
A couple weeks ago I spoke with a very helpful guy named Nathan at Music Machine in Kennewick, WA. That's about a 3.5 hour drive but judging by what was on their web site it looked like it'd be worth the trip. So yesterday me and a buddy drove out there. Those of you that have driven in western Washington know that there ain't a whole lot to see. Good thing we had some decent tunes and talked about cars, guitars, and Microsoft for the ride.
Once you get to Music Machine it seems like a nice quiet and unassuming shop with a bunch of Gibsons, Epiphones, Fenders, Martins, etc. That is, at first. Then you look closer and notice that the wall of Gibsons are not just the faded and studio models that you see at GC (nothing wrong with those guitars but this was something else altogether). When I mentioned my conversation with Nathan the salesman said "oh, let's go downstairs". YOWZA!!! They had more Historics, Custom Shops, and other high-end Gibson guitars than I've seen anywhere. They had at least 6 rooms full of the things lined wall to wall.
So the dude starts pulling out '56 historics - 6 or 7 in all. These things are clearly not made on a CNC machine - the necks all felt quite different. I settled on a couple that felt really good and had a nice loud acoustic sound.
He hooks me up with an amp down there and While I'm plucking away he brings out a Cloud 9 reissue (which is the same basic guitar as the regular historics but with a chambered body). This thing was super light. Unfortunately, the first one he grabbed had a non-working bridge pickup. He then brought me a '54 "Stinger" bursted flametop with Burstbuckers - basically it was like Beck's Oxblood but with a burst top. Wow! That guitar was AMAZING:
http://www.guitarsale.com/frontend/P...?ProductID=419
I had to put that one down since I was looking for a P-90 goldtop and it was to damn tempting. Then he brought out an all gold '54:
http://www.guitarsale.com/frontend/P...?ProductID=492
The '54 sounded amazing. It was noticeably more "lively" and had greater sustain than any of the '56's I'd tried. So he brought out another '54. This had that same quality. He then brought out another chambered Cloud 9 '54 and the electronics were working great. Again, this '54 had "that" sound. So finally the light goes off in my head - at this point it's becoming clear that the wraparound tailpiece is what I want tone-wise.
Because the amp downstairs was acting up we moved upstairs to the main showroom to continue the experimentation.
At this point I had narrowed the field to 3 regular '54's and a chambered '54. After a failed attempt to coerce a decent tone out of a Marshal JCM 2000 something or other in the main showroom, the dude grabbed a Fender Twin Custom 15 (basically a reissue Twin Reverb with a single 15" JBL) that my buddy was interested in and set it up in a small room.
So I got to go back and forth between the four guitars. Here's the thing that really amazed me. I was really startled at how different each guitar sounded. I'm not usually one to buy into the subtleties of magic tone woods and neck thicknesses and blah, blah but I was proven wrong for sure on this occasion. These guitars were all setup pretty much the same and I'm pretty sure the pickups, pots, and misc. hardware are probably pretty consistent so the mojo was in the wood. It was striking how different they sounded. I eliminated two of them pretty quick - one was really too bright and the other was just lacking the harmonic richness the others had. In the end it was between one of the regular ones and the chambered one. The chambered one sounded wonderful but it did not have as wide a frequency response as the final regular model. The chambered one lacked some lows and highs.
So naturally I bought the sole surviving '54 goldtop:
Oh, my buddy bought the Twin [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
I can't emphasize enough how great this buying experience was. I checked all the stores in my area and there is only one used '56 for sale and he wants more for it than a new one costs (he's always high priced). I was thinking my prospects were to take my chances mail order or Ebay. Then I found Music Machine. They had at least a dozen P-90 equipped goldtop Les Pauls. That's worth repeating: a dozen goldtop Les Pauls with P-90s in one store! Then I found out I could get there and back in a leisurely day trip! Kick ass!
One other final note about this guitar, I was really surprised that I ended up with a guitar with this big baseball bat of a neck and I'm happy about it. My Les Paul Custom is a thin neck and pretty much all of my other guitars have had thin necks except for a Jackson KV2T and my classical guitars. But after playing the '54's in the store for a while I really started to like it. So this guitar has covered two things for me - a P-90 goldtop like my '68 and a big ass neck like my KV2T.
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