Rabs Posted June 25, 2016 Posted June 25, 2016 lol... I just thought this was amusing and if anyone was thinking of getting a custom these are a good price.... These 2015 CS models (with short tenons ) are going for just under three grand... The 2016s (with long neck tenons ) are more like five..... Who actually are the people out there who care about this?? :) If I had the money id get one for sure...
cody78 Posted June 25, 2016 Posted June 25, 2016 Ha! Personally, I would never even consider playing a guitar without a long neck tenon. They are just inferior :lol:
capmaster Posted June 25, 2016 Posted June 25, 2016 The neck tenons of the guitar pictured below are so long that they have to glue the body in two parts to them, and the price looks quite acceptable when rated per tenon length:
sparquelito Posted June 25, 2016 Posted June 25, 2016 I have never even heard of a tenon before this very month, and I've been playing Les Pauls (on and off) for over 35 years, so I guess I could say that I am in the camp of those who don't care about it.
merciful-evans Posted June 25, 2016 Posted June 25, 2016 Strange. A lot has been made out of the long tenon construction. Certain Gibson LPs have been rated better (by some) because of their long tenon joints & certain LP copies have been touted as 'better' similarly. I haven't watched Rabs vid yet, but it looks like Gibson are now providing an option on this. Its a small detail (IMO) and cannot be worth £2,000. This sort of thing always makes me think of the phrase 'perceived value'; as defined here The worth that a product or service has in the mind of the consumer. The consumer's perceived value of a good or service affects the price that he or she is willing to pay for it.For the most part, consumers are unaware of the true cost of production for the products they buy. Instead, they simply have an internal feeling for how much certain products are worth to them. Thus, in order to obtain a higher price for their products, producers may pursue marketing strategies to create a higher perceived value for their products. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/perceived-value.asp I'm glad capmaster has pointed out that a through neck is the longest of all possible 'tenons'. I was going to make the same point. Why not just get one of those? :)
feldkeen4 Posted June 26, 2016 Posted June 26, 2016 I thought I read somewhere that Pete Townsend quit using SG Jrs when they changed construction. And he couldn't flex them anymore. I'm assuming that was the tenon. Or maybe I just dreamed it, the 70's were hard on me.
The RandyMan Posted June 26, 2016 Posted June 26, 2016 Tenon schemon . . . if long tenons were better than short tenons, then why do they make short tenon guitars?? There simply cannot be that much difference in raw material and construction methods to make short tenons that much more economical to produce. You ain't gonna save so much money makin' short tenons over long that it would justify making long tenons so exclusive. I've worked with wood and have to go with Rabs on this. Does it make a difference? Maybe so, but if so, then make 'em all that way. Period. We're not talking about an Earl Scheib paint job here, we're talking about a little longer piece of wood and a little deeper cavity milling. I'm thinking that this can't add that much more to the manufacturing process. Just a thought.
The RandyMan Posted June 26, 2016 Posted June 26, 2016 And like the CapMan pointed out, thru-body necks should be the ultimate, so why don't they just make Les Pauls thru-neck (or do they, and just charge exorbitant prices for them)??
LarryUK Posted June 26, 2016 Posted June 26, 2016 Long, short...The power of salesmanship. If you can hear the difference you must be amazing. All the difference would be is a slightly stronger joint. But when has a Les Paul even broken at that joint? Never?
Vinlander Posted June 26, 2016 Posted June 26, 2016 Perceived value and post purchased justification influence a lot psychoacoustic which doesn't require any special playing ability or even a set of ears; just a fool and is money
merciful-evans Posted June 26, 2016 Posted June 26, 2016 Long, short...The power of salesmanship. If you can hear the difference you must be amazing. All the difference would be is a slightly stronger joint. But when has a Les Paul even broken at that joint? Never? I have always regarded the neck join on LPs as over-engineered. That's not a criticism but an observation. People love the Victorian period bridges. They were built before they knew how to calculate any of the stresses involved. Hence a wonderfully over-engineered creation. Did Gibson & Lester examine stress loading on the LP prototype? ;) I cant see that long tenon making any practical difference. This is the problem though. All this is speculative. Maybe Gibson should do some comparative destructive testing on the guitars. I'm sure that would go viral on youtube. :P
capmaster Posted June 26, 2016 Posted June 26, 2016 I have always regarded the neck join on LPs as over-engineered. ... Maybe Gibson should do some comparative destructive testing on the guitars. I'm sure that would go viral on youtube. :P Do you think they should introduce crash tests for guitars? I think collapsable zones for pegheads could be an interesting point, too :blink:
Rabs Posted June 26, 2016 Author Posted June 26, 2016 Yeah I don't think it really makes much difference.. A lot of the extra wood is taken out for the pickup anyway..
Tim Plains Posted June 27, 2016 Posted June 27, 2016 These 2015 CS models (with short tenons ) are going for just under three grand... The 2016s (with long neck tenons ) are more like five..... This isn't exactly accurate. Some people love '58 - 60 Les Paul bursts and want Gibson to make exact copies, or very close to it, right down to the smallest details including the details you can't see or hear. Doesn't matter if it makes any difference. If the originals didn't have a feature, why does the guitar that supposedly replicates the original? The one which is 3K more is a True Historic. Gibson allegedly discontinued the regular historic line for 2015 when these True Historics were introduced, so your two choices were the more expensive True Historic w/long tenon or these short tenon versions for much less money...but Gibson continued to make regular long tenon historics throughout 2015 for the same price as these short tenon models. All the way through to December 2015 with 2014 serial numbers. Now, as someone who loves Gibson's golden era, why would you spend a ton of money on a guitar that is not built the same as an old burst? Or why would you spend the same amount of money on a guitar with what is considered inferior construction when one with what is considered superior construction costs the same? These short tenon models were a huge flop and only lasted one year. Dealers couldn't give them away.
Rabs Posted June 27, 2016 Author Posted June 27, 2016 Well I was only mucking around really... older models always go cheaper... But what I think it highlights (and we are all well aware of on here) is the utter total marketing nonsense... And leaves my original question (even if its a bit sarcastic), who cares.. two guitars with a £2000 price difference just because of this one detail.... Its just crazy.... At the end of the day, if people out there are paying 5k for this detail and can afford too, good luck to them... To most people you get the same guitar built by the same people, same electronics same hand selected woods, same finishes and everything, paying so much more for something so small which you cant even see or feel is bonkers.
rct Posted June 27, 2016 Posted June 27, 2016 I sound the same no matter the length of tenon. You can only make a guitar so "good", it's up to the clown playing it after that. Long tenons and utterly perfect historical accuracy are not anything a guitar player needs. rct
Tim Plains Posted June 27, 2016 Posted June 27, 2016 two guitars with a £2000 price difference just because of this one detail.... Its just crazy.... The price difference is not because of that one detail. The tenon has nothing to do with the inflated price, actually. Watch a couple YouTube videos on the extra time that goes into a True Historic (that's what you pay for and the exclusiveness) and read the article on Music Zoo's website comparing the difference between a historic and True Historic.
Rabs Posted June 27, 2016 Author Posted June 27, 2016 The price difference is not because of that one detail. The tenon has nothing to do with the inflated price, actually. Watch a couple YouTube videos on the extra time that goes into a True Historic (that's what you pay for and the exclusiveness) and read the article on Music Zoo's website comparing the difference between a historic and True Historic. Yeah.. right up until they release the next most true historic perfectly accurate made by pixies Les Paul..... Every time they release this stuff its more accurate.. more original.... and costs even more... Im sorry, I love Gibson but this is just marketing nonsense....
Tim Plains Posted June 27, 2016 Posted June 27, 2016 I tend to agree with you but they are a business. It costs them money to research this stuff and need to recoupe (profit) that money. And yes, I see the irony in Gibson researching what their own company did 60 years ago. LOL Like them or not, some luthiers charge upwards of $10,000 for '59 replicas. Why is it inconceivable for Gibson to charge $8,000 for the latest version of the holy grail? Mind you, that's sticker price.
Tim Plains Posted June 27, 2016 Posted June 27, 2016 For the record, I'm not trying to defend these things, just playing devil's advocate. All the way from "crappy" Epiphone Les Pauls to luxury True Historic R9s, I don't understand why people feel the need to bash what they will never buy.
capmaster Posted June 27, 2016 Posted June 27, 2016 For the record, I'm not trying to defend these things, just playing devil's advocate. All the way from "crappy" Epiphone Les Pauls to luxury True Historic R9s, I don't understand why people feel the need to bash what they will never buy. In my opinion it's strange putting out marketing blurbs on period-correct molecular design of plastics when even timber species and/or sources are different from around 1959. The "tonewood" point is debatable of course, but I think impact of the wood blanks used may have more importance than "tone plastics", regardless if pickup rings or pot knobs. However, the polyamide aka Nylon used for the nut affects open string notes. By the way, the Nylon nut on the Epiphone 1960 Tribute Les Paul of mine is great. I wouldn't say the stock Corian nuts left on the three of my Gibson USA LPs are better. One more of them on a Custom Shop LP I had to have replaced meanwhile - I chose bone then. (Two more Gibsons, an SG and a 2011 L6S, needed a replecement for their Corian nuts, too, and the one of my Explorer also will be down soon. They all were killed by abrasion at the E1st position, progressively cutting the groove deeper with every string change.) Another Custom Shop LP came with an inferior, knocked-off locking nut for her Floyd Rose which I replaced with a correct one, and while doing so I found out she has a laminated fretboard. In particular when considering the two aforementioned guitars are Custom Shop models, I think that poor nuts and using laminated fretboards without notice was a bit unfair. <_<
kidblast Posted June 29, 2016 Posted June 29, 2016 the long and short of it... I don't care!!! how's that?
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