This seems as if it be a pretty good read on the goings on at Gibson

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It's a pretty inyeresting read. One of the points brought up is the need for a wall chart to differentiate between the ludicrious number of Les Paul models, and the loss of the 45-65 age bracket to prs and others.
 

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Without wanting to divert this thread in to a price point justification...the PRS SE line features a lot of very nicely made guitars that do similar things to the Les Paul for a whole lot less money. But some folks just got to have the real deal. I think that the percentage that can or are willing to afford those price points for a "Real Gibson" has shrunk substantially since the "Great Recession" that many folks have yet to recover from.
 

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That was addressed in the articles. Mainly, poor quality control at Gibson and questionable pricing.
 

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Once our demographic (folks ~50 & older) fully ages out of buy more stuff! mode a lot of businesses catering to us are likely gonna have it rough.

-Dave-
 

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Without wanting to divert this thread in to a price point justification...the PRS SE line features a lot of very nicely made guitars that do similar things to the Les Paul for a whole lot less money. But some folks just got to have the real deal. I think that the percentage that can or are willing to afford those price points for a "Real Gibson" has shrunk substantially since the "Great Recession" that many folks have yet to recover from.

I've never played a PRS that I've liked including a $25,000 private reserve that just left me cold. PRS aside, though, there's something about a Les Paul that other dual-humbucker guitars don't deliver. I think part of the magic is what other companies try to "fix" in the Les Paul design. Les Pauls are thick and often heavy and don't have great ergonomics, and I honestly think that's just part of what makes them sound the way they do. Case in point - I have a '90s Japanese Jackson Professional Pro that is an *amazing* guitar. It is constructed like a Les Paul (mahogany base with maple top, etc.) but sounds nothing like a Les Paul. It is shaped like a Strat which makes it much more ergonomic, but it's still heavy and it freaking rocks - but it doesn't sound like a Les Paul.

If all someone is after is the general shape then any similarly shaped guitar will do. If all someone wants is a dual-humbucker guitar, then there are plenty to choose from, but to say that other guitars that are somehow similar can replace a Les Paul is to not understand the Les Paul. At least, not a good Les Paul. If you've only played crappy Les Pauls (and there's lots of those out there) then yeah - they can easily be replaced by damn-near anything, but a good Les Paul that delivers that magic timbre? You'll not easily replace that. There is definitely a diminishing returns thing going on as there is with any guitar, though.

Take it from a guy who's owned six Nightbirds, five Bluesbirds, and two many other guitars that were supposed to be "just as good". There's something about a good Les Paul that I've never found in another guitar, though the '70s lawsuit Ibanez guitars and the Ibanez Artist from the period therafter are about as close as I've personally experienced.

Now, to be fair, would the audience notice? I doubt it, but that's a whole different conversation. :)
 

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... but to say that other guitars that are somehow similar can replace a Les Paul is to not understand the Les Paul. . . .


Remember how GIBSON put out that one guitar, that was supposed to replace a Tele, a Strat, a Les Paul and few others? They had the slogan : " When you have one of these - you will not need any of those"

It was a fine guitar - but definitively NOT a replacement of any of those guitars the ad mentioned.

Gibson Victory.


Picture is not the one I remember - but since I immediately recognized tha tfine mixing console . . .


1981victory.jpg
 

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I think the "one guitar to rule them all" idea is one a lot of people chase. The only PRS that's ever interested me is the 509 because I think it's a clever solution towards that end. The 509 has five pickups that you can include in various combinations - five pickups for nine tones - 509.

509_2017_straight1.jpg


I'm guilty of doing the same thing with amps and after almost buying a Mesa Mark V I ended up with an Axe-FX because it's the closest thing to an all-in-one solution that sounds good enough to me. Sure, that's like saying my Axe-FX is as good as a Marshall Plexi which is sort of what my complaint about "just as good as a Les Paul" is, and I am 100% guilty of that when it comes to amps. :witless: I just don't enjoy carrying heavy amps around. Hauling my 2x12 around in my 280-Z in the 80s was no picnic, either, but I was in my 20s then.
 

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I've never cared much for Swiss army knife guitars…I'd rather an instrument do one thing really well and know I can rely on it to do that thing without needing to fiddle about. This is why I love Teles so much. An exception to this is the Les Paul Recording guitar I bought earlier this year. It's a Swiss army knife if your aim is to plug straight into a mixing board, and I may yet do that with it. But plugged into an amp its tonal variations are too subtle to avoid getting smoothed over by the amp & speaker(s). But its fundamental sound, very hi-fi, is such a different thing to anything else I own that I enjoy playing it for the novelty. Ironically, maybe, I also like other guitars with lotsa tone-modding switches…but only if they don't mess much with the fundamental thing the guitar does.

I personally much prefer SGs (and S-100s) to LPs. Not just due to their light weight and excellent fretboard accessibility (I actually don't play that much up the "dusty end") but also because of how they resonate and interact with an amp. They don't have a good LP's low-mid/upper-bass grunt, but at decent volume (and even at lower volumes with the right gain pedal) the mids can really take off and soar.

Amp-wise, after a year+ of playing through a Vox AC15 Twin (which I had refurbed in mid 2017) I've moved back to my Hi-Tone (Hiwatt repro) 50 watter, into a Fryette PowerStation for volume reduction and then into a Hi-Tone 2x12" cab. This rig is absurdly heavy and bulky…but it stays put in my rec room. The PowerStation lets me run the Hi-Tone's power section at what would otherwise be ear-splitting levels. Which of course is where the amp is most happy. :)

In the end all this stuff is just a matter of taste.

-Dave-
 
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