And this is 100% true - in particular the current Eastmans are absolutely incredible guitars (I'll paraphrase my local high end guitar shop who told me about a customer who bought an Eastman Goldtop as a knock around gig guitar, came back a couple of days later and bought the matching 'burst, then came in the next day, gave them his 59RI and said: "sell this, I don't need it anymore.....").
Eastman makes absolutely amazing guitars!
I know 2 store owners and 3 collectors. All have said to me that Gibson qc comes and goes to varying degrees. I was told "inspect carefully, there are good ones out there". As far as 'it's not a Les Paul' is concerned, after what I experienced in a bunch of $6700 custom shop guitars being blown out of the water by guitars costing $3-$4K less, I see that as not a bad thing.
They say there's no accounting for taste.... lol Nice, Budda.
To be fair one was an R9 and one was my dream LP haha. The 594’s were no slouches!
Ok pretty (first one).
They may vary a bit but you are missing the point by a whole degree of magnitude . I can easily find a more precisely built instrument for thousands less but it won't sound the same, nothing quite does not even high end single cuts from other builders costing more. Not unless they are copying the production methods. QC isn't going to make them that much better because they still use many old school practices and many stages are simply not in the production method. For example the binding is ALWAYS not perfectly flush because they don't sand the body after it is fitted to make it . The whole step is just missing from production. The binding scraped nibs are done with a single sided razor and that is it . The tint bleeds in to the binding because the lacquer almost guarantees it will. The back and sides of the head are never flatted before buffing because they don't have a step in the production to do it. There is small variation in QC but even the best LP is a Gibson and that is what it is, you buy it because of the heritage and the sound. Epiphones are cleaner builds but they don't sound even close because of poor materials and significant differences is construction methods. Gibson have always used top quality materials and produced a "musical" sounding guitar even the budget models sound good because they are cutting cost with simplicity of design not crappy components and poor wood selection. A cheap guitars should be a very simple one (Les Paul Junior) to cut costs not a look alike POS with a veneer of subterfuge to cover the garbage it is made of (think Sire).
Seeing rosewood on a Tele was kinda like 'I had a dream last night that my Strat and Tele had a baby'... I can't say I've seen that before. Looking further to a pair of humbuckers, I realized the Dr. told me it was a girl, but girls don't have ba.... lol
Point taken. I understand what you're saying. I don't mind those 'old practices' that to me make the guitar a LP visually, even less than perfect. What I do mind is making the ABR-1 saddles narrow instead of wide like they were originally. They do not sound like the original to my ear. They emit unnatural, harsh overtones those wide ones didn't. QC things like missing screws, non functional tuners and setups that could not have been Plek'd on a $7K guitar are inexcusable, decidedly QC level issues imo. And those saddles make the guitars not sound like what they were created from. The Heritage guitars are made at the old Gibson factory by former Gibson top level employees and to my ear are sonically better besides much better physically. Of course, that's one man's opinion. But I speak from hands on experience prior and now.
