Teach me about Les Pauls

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Epicureous said:
You learn something new everyday... I'm not sure why that guitar could even be considered a Les Paul though...
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It's really very simple................It's a Les Paul because due to the circumstances at the time, that's what Gibson, as the manufacturers, chose to call it. Just because the purists have difficulty accepting the fact that there were/are a variety of LP designs, doesn't mean they aren't valid in their own right.

:cool:
 
And sometimes the redesign is rather disasterous. I knew someone with a double cut-away Les Paul Special from that early era and the neck/pickup area was extremely thin that year...the neck broke at the body and the guitar-though repaired-had to be handled with extreme care!!!:(

Note the neck joint in the picture-previous years were much more stable..
 

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Anfontan said:
And sometimes the redesign is rather disasterous. I knew someone with a double cut-away Les Paul Special from that early era and the neck/pickup area was extremely thin that year...the neck broke at the body and the guitar-though repaired-had to be handled with extreme care!!!:(

Note the neck joint in the picture-previous years were much more stable..
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Oh my, but that is one UGLY Paul! It deserved to get its neck broken.

K.
 
Anfontan said:
And sometimes the redesign is rather disasterous. I knew someone with a double cut-away Les Paul Special from that early era and the neck/pickup area was extremely thin that year...the neck broke at the body and the guitar-though repaired-had to be handled with extreme care!!!:(

Note the neck joint in the picture-previous years were much more stable..
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And a year or two later-notice that the neck pickup was moved down from the earlier location-much more solid neck joint..

Here is the link that explains how this Les Paul and it's design came about.

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...ages?q=1961+les+paul+special&gbv=2&hl=en&sa=G
 

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K Road said:
Oh my, but that is one UGLY Paul! It deserved to get its neck broken.

K.
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Just goes to show you - one man's ceiling is another man's floor.

I love these guitars - they are so cool.

(and it doesn't hurt that they sound great, too! My 1961 Special through my Blackface Vibrolux Reverb is just fabulous).
 
Don't go crackin on the les paul. Had one it was great til I fell down the stairs. I do love the mini humbuckers though. My .02, try a bunch before you buy soem are wonderful some are dogs. thx.
 
Okay so today I had a chat with one of the guys about Les Pauls and it looks like a studio is the closest to my budget - the standard is another thousand on top of the 1100 euro the studio goes for. My question is, what's the difference between the fifties and sixties neck in real terms? Would it be similar to the difference between a strat and a tele?
 
The 50's neck is quite a bit bulkier feeling than the 60's. Not that that's a bad thing. Just different. I think what Gibson usa refers to as a 50's profile neck is close to the shape and size of the neck on the custom shop r4's and r7's maybe the same. I may be wrong though. I've never actually a/b'd them. I just remember thinking they felt similar.

The other guitar player in my old band had a cloud9 R7 and the neck on that thing was real big, but was perfectly playable and the couple times I played it I didn't feel like it hindered my playing.
 
I'm not really familiar with the new (i.e. post 1995-ish) Pauls, but the 50's stuff through 1958 or so had what is referred to as the baseball bat neck - so imagine a baseball bat sliced in half long-ways. As you got into 59, and more so into 1960, the neck got wider and flatter in profile.
I have two guitars from 1961 - a LP Special and a 345. They both have virtually identical wide flat necks. The 62 345 that I have is slightly (like fractions of millimeters, but noticeable) narrower, and the 63 Crestwood Custom is more rounded and narrower still.

Hope this helps . . .
 
foo said:
I'm not really familiar with the new (i.e. post 1995-ish) Pauls, but the 50's stuff through 1958 or so had what is referred to as the baseball bat neck - so imagine a baseball bat sliced in half long-ways. As you got into 59, and more so into 1960, the neck got wider and flatter in profile.
I have two guitars from 1961 - a LP Special and a 345. They both have virtually identical wide flat necks. The 62 345 that I have is slightly (like fractions of millimeters, but noticeable) narrower, and the 63 Crestwood Custom is more rounded and narrower still.

Hope this helps . . .
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Thanks again Foo! The guy in the shop said the 60s neck is a little slimmer.
 
Foo gave a good description when he mentioned the 'baseball bat' neck-the neck on my 78' the Paul doesn't have nearly as much bulk to it as the older ones do.

A Tele neck with a 'C' profile might be slightly similar to a les Paul, the Strat is much narrower and thinner, in my own opinion anyway. The Les Paul Studio would be quite a bit like my 'the Paul' with no neck or body binding, the sound should be there though...

Here is a site with quite a few early Les Pauls and SG models as well as Fenders, Gretsches, and a variety of other Very cool guitars-take a look at the wide assortment!

http://www.davesguitar.com/collection.html
 
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