sunking101

Ugh. That's terrible. You loosen the strings and then turn those knurled knobs with your fingers, not a pair of pliers. Amateurs. The trouble with using a sharpie is that the colour often dries with a slight purple tint rather than deep black. You could try a spot of black nail polish or actual black paint. A (decent) luthier or furniture repair man could do an invisible repair but it will cost you...

No. They could have fixed this problem over 60 years ago but have chosen not to. The new guitars ship with a piece of felt underneath the offending bolt but because there is no room the bolt still pushes the felt into the top of the guitar and dents the finish. It isn't any kind of solution. What Gibson need to do is use a slightly longer metal bracket (like Epiphone do) which creates clearance between the bottom of the pickguard bolt and the top of the guitar. That is the only way to fix this decades old problem. Fortunately LPs look better with the pickguard on so this blemish remains hidden....

My 2020 LP Standard 50s Gold Top has the same 'flaw'.

Yeah that 'flaw' in the binding is the maple top peeking and it shows om every LP. Certain colours make it more visible, for instance my honey-backed Gold Top shows it more than my cherry backed LPs. As for PRS, lovely but soulless. They just leave me cold.

Some would say that when white yellows and the gold parts wear it's mojo. Look how much people pay for Custom Shop relics! Here's a Custom Shop Randy Rhoads guitar where people buy it brand new with yellowed paint and extremely worn gold hardwear!

I have four Les Pauls; a Custom, two Standards and a Special. One of my Standards plays the best out of all of them. Even though they all have approximately the same (very low) action, it feels silky smooth with no buzzing and the fretwork is plain better. My Special and Custom are a slight step down in playability but they aren't far off at all. Anyway, it's NGD and I took delivery of the fourth of my four LPs this morning. A gold top 50s Standard. It is brand new and the shop gave it a pro set-up. I can tell the nut and saddles have been done, they're perfect. However, the action was a typical out of the box medium to high Gibson factory spec when I had asked for low.... So I've spent the past hour or so dialling in my preferred action and although the guitar plays fine it doesm't trouble my other three in this regard. They play better no two ways about it. All LPs are different and I can"t get this one quite as low as I would like without the A string choking a bit in the very upper registers, and a bit of string rattle on the bottom E. The truss rod is set correctly and the neck is straight so it's probably fretwork . It's the lightest of all my LPs at 8lbs10 and it sounds great but I'm just not in love with how it plays. With having more than one LP you're always going to get differences between them (not just in tone) but would you guys add a new one to your collection that didn't play as well as your others? Just curious

I don't just prefer the baseball bat necks, I don't get along with the slimmer ones at all. What bugs me though is how different four different 50s necks will be. They're hand carved and some are nearer to a 60s than a 50s. I bought a 50s Les Paul Standard and had to sell it because the neck was too small. I just didn't bond with it at all. My 2010 LP Custom is supposed to have an inbetweener neck and yet it has a full-on baseball bat which I love, as does my LP Special.

The 2019 Les Paul Traditional had no weight relief, vintage tuners, Burstbucker 1 & 2 pickups ,orange drop capacitors and a 50s neck. Sound familar? They're the exact spec of a 2019/20 Original Series 50's Les Paul Standard. The only difference is that the 50s Standard has thinner neck binding. The Traditiomal also cost more when released, £2200 here in the UK. The 50s Standard is £1999. Go figure.

FYI there is no real difference between a 2019 LP Traditional and a 2019/2020 LP Standard. In fact the 2019 Traditional had a higher price tag upon release. But yes, regarding the two guitars in the OP's opening post, the 2016 Standard is the better guitar.

No issues? Worst cut nut I've seen in a long time.

I've seen pics of dodgy truss rods and dodgy neck tenons but most of us never remove the truss rod cover or whip the neck pickup out to have a look. Perhaps we should be attacking our mew purchases with a screwdriver to make sure all is well!

All of my Gibsons have had that smell but none more than my recent LP Special. It absolutely reeks of nitro. I bought it mail order and it had never been out of the box. It hadn't had the benefit of being out on a shop's rack getting aired out, the Gibson factory seal was unbroken. I've had it a few weeks now, maybe a month and it doesn't seem to have lost any smell yet. I leave it in the case with the lid open. Some of my Gibsons still smell years down the line but I have a 2010 LP Custom which has finally lost its nitro smell.

Well it looks terrible and needs sorting.

Have you been messing with it? That nut looks like it was cut by someone using a chainsaw.

Just got a brand new Gibson and it has a brown CWW case. I noticed immediately that the latches were different and inside was a label from CWW saying Made In Costa Rica. When did Gibson change from using TKL Canadian cases? The quality seems OK, not noticeably different but the case is hella heavy compared to my other TKL cases.

Unless I could sort that with the truss rod I'd be taking it back. I like a low action and dom't want to be prevented from getting one because the bridge ia bottomed out.

How come Epiphone can get it right and Gibson can't?? I took this photo of an Epiphone Les Paul in a music store this afternoon. The nut and bolt are miles away from the.top of the guitar! Epiphone use a longer/taller bracket and a shorter nut. pichost

Gibson need to use a slightly longer bracket which would elevate the scratchplate higher, a shorter bolt and a thinner nut. That way there would be no chance of the bolt denting the maple top. The present system is lousy.

Shame those Casino tailpieces are as bendy as a wire coathanger. The lack of rigidity puts me right off.

You may get lighter wood the more you spend but whether the cheapest or most expensive turns out the more resonant is a lottery. The pickups will be better in the more expensive versions but otherwise you're paying for period correct features, relicing and a bit more care & attention. The more you spend the more you will find diminishing returns.

Well I drove back to the shop and with reluctance they opened two LP boxes for me to inspect the cases. The first was terrible, it actually had a rip in the tolex and the second was overall no better than mine so I came away with my original case.... 😕

Thanks Chris. I drove 1.5 hrs yesterday to exchange this case and thought I had a good one. I'm wondering now if the dealer will even give me another exchange seeing as I left with this yesterday seemingly happy? It's such an awkward thing too, I hate taking stuff back and complaining. The guitar is great by the way!

I bought a new Standard a week or two ago and noticed that the hardcsse had several imperfections. There were ugly seams here & there, bits of something glued underneath the tolex, stitching threads hanging out and the dealbreaker - a small tear in the tolex. I took the case back yesterday and after an awkward discussion I managed to get a replacement. I checked it over and decided it was OK before I left. Anyway today I have noticed that on the right of the latch on the RHS of the handle, where the tolex is glued in that curved area, the tolex isn't pressed down correctly and isn't glued down properly. There is a gap and I suspect that the tolex itself isn't long enough to push down and follow the curve. Also, the front latch doesn't line up properly. It works, for now, but there is additional strain put on it due to the two parts not meeting up straight. These kind of things bug me! You cannot buy a proper brown hardcase from Gibson, just the cheap-looking 'Gibson Gear' cases and even if you could get one it would be several hundred. I shouldn't have to live with faults on the case of such an expensive instrument. Oh and before people say that it will get scuffed up soon in normal use....it won't because I leave my Gibson cases at home. They never leave the house.

I took the advice of the majority and didn't do the deal. I still have my LP Standard and Custom, I just added the red one to the arsenal.