Real Les Paul or best fake ever?

[Matt65000]

Greetings,

I hope someone can help me figure out whether this 2010 Les Paul Traditional I bought on eBay 4 years ago is real or not. It's an absolutely authentic-looking guitar with just one glaring exception: there is a weird sanding & finish pattern on the back of the headstock and one of the digits in the serial number is a tad lower than the rest. Also the 1 in the year 2010 is a little longer or perhaps punched twice. (Please see first picture--mine is on the left, a new LP is on the right.)

 

 

Here's the problem--I've watched a dozen you-tube videos on the subject and this guitar passes every single quality/authenticity check with flying colors! Including the following:

 

one piece body and neck (no border lines in the wood)

correct bridge posts (no screwdriver slots)

tailpiece in correct position just slightly forward of the knob below it.

internal wiring looks dead-on correct including Gibson logos on pots (though you can't see them in the pic)

correct stickers on pickups (BB3 and 57 classic, and "patent applied for")

Neck binding correctly reaches up to meet the frets

Gibson logo looks perfect

correct truss rod nut with sawed-off washer thing

fretboard inlays look perfect

Headstock wood curves are sharp and symmetric

You can even see where the wings were glued onto the sides of the headstock

 

(I've attached a bunch of pics to try to show a lot of these things)

 

It doesn't make sense that someone would go through the trouble to make such a great fake but leave that one glaring defect????

 

So this is either a real Les Paul that someone modified by sanding the headstock and screwing with the serial numbers, or it's one of the best fakes ever produced.

 

I hope someone here can help me figure out which.

 

Thanks!!

[imunwell]

I am no expert by any means. But I'm with you, almost everything looks good except the serial number. Several numbers look double stamped and that 3 2nd from the end looks like it was a 7 and stamped over with a 3. If you look close, it looks like you mentioned, someone sanded it down to possibly change the SN to imply it was a different year or something different all together but messed up trying to stamp it. The only other thing was the pickup wires didn't have the wire shielding over them. I might be wrong but my guess is that traditionals would come with that shielding.

just my $.02 since no one else has chimed in.

[old guy]

The only other thing was the pickup wires didn't have the wire shielding over them. I might be wrong but my guess is that traditionals would come with that shielding.

just my $.02 since no one else has chimed in.

 

Actually, a lot of Gibson models with coil splitting do not use the shielded wire, I have a 2013 Sig T in my collection and it has the identical wiring as this one.

[imunwell]

Actually, a lot of Gibson models with coil splitting do not use the shielded wire, I have a 2013 Sig T in my collection and it has the identical wiring as this one.

 

 

Cool,

I'll add that info to my education. As noted, that I might be wrong and indeed it looks like I was. I have not owned a coil split unit nor a traditional so I was just noting it might be something to look at.

Thanks!