SteveFord

I don't think Mr. Belew made much of an impression on me during the Zappa tour days BUT he was tremendous during the Discipline Tour. He reminded me of someone's favorite uncle at a family reunion, bouncing around all over the place. Robert Fripp just sat in a chair but at least he was facing the audience.

That's the man I always associate with a 3 pick up Les Paul Custom. Happy Birthday!

We haven't seen photos yet. You know what they say, pics or it didn't happen.

Handsome guitar! I hope to be chasing the Monarchs south on a motorcycle this year, it's just incredible what they manage to do.

If you have an older laptop it can and will screw up your audio so if you watch music concerts on your PC you'll get blips and blaps in with the mix. No problems with Windows 8 but 10, well, not so good. I speak from experience.

https://www.gibson.com/Support/Customer-Service

Too many gizmos. Maybe another older Firebird VII before I croak.

We like Guitar Porn, that's why. Phil Manzanera has a Firebird X and I was always intrigued by them but have never seen one in person.

Sounds like that one was modified quite a bit. I remember playing a fat neck 07 335 and it was like a war club. My older (ebony fret board) Lucille has a fairly stout neck but it's a bit fancier than what you say you like.

Not so fast with this Gretsch stuff. Isn't ICONIC a Gibson word? Where do they get off pulling such a stunt? Bono and Gretsch recently collaborated on this updated version of the iconic green Gretsch guitar known as the Irish Falcon. P.S. Nice to see the G-Force doohickeys aren't total pieces of garbage inside the housing.

That is absolutely beautiful, enjoy it and take good care of it. Of course, drilling holes in it to add a Bigsby and maybe a few extra pick ups with push/pull active circuitry knobs would pep the old thing up so if you must you must.

Put them in the case like Gibson recommends. For stands I just cut up an old pair of jeans and used that to protect the finish.

It looks like it belongs on a stand in my late grandmother's bathroom but to each their own.

No pics or anything but I spent a few hours playing my 07 wine red Studio today and it still just astounds me how much guitar I got for the money. It's not the fanciest one out there (obviously) but out of a store full of Les Pauls that's the one that said Buy Me!

I don't think I'd care for the feel of a carbon fiber fret board. Motorcycle exhaust canister, yes. Guitar, no.

I suppose it's because ebony is black and so is RIchlite. Black fret board = upper crust.

Next time I'm out and about I'll see if I can't track one down. Looks like it's big brother is the Gibson ES-330.

I'd be elated to find an Epiphone I really liked (especially given their price tags). That hasn't happened yet - they all go back on the wall.

My 25th spent most of it's life in that weird chainsaw case. Where's the lock? I'm certain if the internet existed back then people would have been screaming (typing?) bloody murder about everything. I do remember that Les Paul as being astonishingly heavy. You wouldn't think such a small guitar could possibly weigh so much but it certainly did. I also remember how good that old SG sounded, I had no idea about nibs or bevels back then. All of my Norlin-era guitars came through without any physical imperfections, I just assumed that's how Gibson did things. Maybe I just got lucky.

The Partridge Family, what a goof. I switched to a monster roof top antenna and the programming is just bizarre. One channel has The Adams Family, another will have programming from Japan featuring rap stars performing in Japanese, an animal/discovery channel in Spanish, all sorts of weird crap. I had an SG Standard from 73, a 75 ES335, a 79 or 1980 ES335, a 79 Les Paul Special reissue a 1980 Lucille Deluxe and a Les Paul 25th Anniversary. They were all really good, no quality control issues at all. In all honesty, the workmanship and quality of those guitars is as good, if not better, than what you're getting today. If you look at the Joe Bonamassa clip posted a bit ago he said he's 1970s Firebird is every bit as good as the one from the 60s, just half the price. I believe OldCowboy about the acoustics, I've read on this and other forums that they went downhill for a bit back then.

I walked past the television which was showing an old episode of The Partridge Family. Keith was playing an acoustic GIbson 12 string with a trapeze tail piece like they were putting on the 335s back then which looked kind of unusual.

I'm getting old so I grew up in the Norlin era. They made some crappy models (just like today) but overall the guitars were just fine. I recall reading about the ES line back then and what stuck in my head is "they pretty much just left us alone", all of the screwing around was with the solid body electrics. Acoustics, I have no idea but I've seen some strange stuff from back then.