Gentlemen, I have a few reviews for you from my own personal experience....if anyone is interested. Ran around town yesterday fingerbanging a lot of stuff.
First off, Gibson's QC is still every bit as suspicious and inconsistent as ever. I saw this
gorgeous tobaccoburst LP Standard yesterday, brand new, hanging way up on the wall, so I made the GC flunkee get it down. So me and my buddy played it for a while, and this thing would not stay in tune for shit. This wasn't brand new strings either, this thing was fucked somehow. Brand new guitar. The bass side of tailpiece and bridge were cocked way way up higher than the treble side just so the guitar will have regular action. It was goofy. So I peer down the neck and it's either twisted or cocked in the pocket. Insane. I cannot believe this guitar left the factory, and it's even more shocking that they tried to set this thing up. And the $3k pricetag for this unplayable piece of shit is the most shocking.
There were multiple LP Studios, which incidentally are $1500 now

, that had what felt like unfinished necks. The neck material stuck out further than the fretboard, so there was this weird sharp ledge and rough fret ends. I felt this on several "lower end" Gibsons. Crazy. It may be pretty snooty of me to prefer neck binding, but goddamn those necks don't cut my fingers off either.
All of these weird QC problems seem to happen mostly to Les Pauls. SGs, Firebirds, Vs, Explorers...they always seem nicer and more consistent. Minerman, you lucked out bigtime buying those new Gibson's sight-unseen.
Fenders...I played quite a few Fender guitars yesterday, and I still hate them. But there was a method to my madness...I found a killer deal on an old-ish used AC30 w/ Greenbacks, so I ran some nice USA Teles and Strats through it to test it out. I aint gonna lie, the Tele through an AC30 sounded amazing. Beautiful. I don't like it enough to buy a Tele, but it made go straight for a P-90 loaded SG. Bam, even better. Wow, that sounded real awesome. My GAS fire smoked a little bit, but I put it out. One day maybe I'll pursue an AC30 head, but not any time soon.
I didn't play anything pointy or hollow.
The next stop was the real winner. Went to another GC and tried out what we'd been waiting all day for - a Friedman Brown Eye, and a bunch of Supros. The Friedman sounded amazing. Goddamn that amp was bad ass. Minerman, if you ever win the lottery, that's the amp you need. But it's just a hot rodded Marshall clone. A great one, and very expensive, but that's all it really is. The Supros were my favorite of the day. Me and my buddy grabbed some nice Les Pauls, plugged into the biggest Supro, turned it way up, and holy shit it was Jimmy Page sound all over the place. Even a dumb hack like me could pull off convincing Led Zep tones through that amp. It was awesome. We played with that thing for a long time. I want a Supro. This was my favorite....
1624T Dual-Tone | Supro
Then we had pizza and beers and I went home.