I've been playing for over 40 years. My band DUNGAREE DOGS NYC was hot in NYC from 2003-2010. I am super anal when it comes to tuning, especially since we are a three piece band with me as Guitarist and lead vocalist. If my tuning is out it throws our whole sound off.
I use American Fender Telecasters as my main axes for playing out. Fender has a much better design with the strings remaining straight from bridge to machine heads, plus no bend deck angle of the headstock. So Teles and Strats (if properly set up) tend to stay in tune far better. Fender also uses a very thin nut as opposed to Gibson's chunkier nuts.
I have always had problems with my Les Paul's tuning and the 2011 American SG 60s Tribute I just purchased goes out of tune continually (The intonation is spot on and the neck adjusted properly. The weird thing is that the strings seem to go out of tune Sharp.. I loosened each machine head and pulled each string out of the nut and used a high quality pencil to put graphite in each rut. Seems to have helped a bit. But I might just install a new "Bone" nut and file the grooves properly to work with my gauge strings. The nut from the factory seems to be cut for very light strings .08 or .09s.
Gibsons sound beautiful, but are always troublesome with regard to tuning.
Good luck. Stay safe and be well.
