'75 Gibson Deluxe Advice

[pippy]

On 10/6/2019 at 3:42 PM, Mustang Martigan said:

......are there specific eras or certain years that I should keep my eyes peeled for?......I've only played one of these, a '62 SG; it was the coolest sounding and had the sweetest neck I've ever felt. It was really skinny for a Gibson, and I'm a fan of skinny necks......

 

Judging by what you have described in this post - liking the '90's - early '00 LP's and, particularly, the above quote about your preference for a slim neck profile I'd strongly suggest you keep an eye out for an early '1960 Classic'. They were first released in 1989 and up until around 1993/94 had, IMX, the skinniest necks used on a Les Paul. As well as the skinny neck shape the build quality was second to none and the appointments were half-way between the Standard of the day and the early '59 / '60 reissues. They really are very fine instruments.

I have an early one ('91) and a slightly later one ('95) and whilst the latter has the regular slim '60s profile neck the earlier one has a neck which is wand-like. It might also have slightly less 'shoulder' to add to the feeling of it being 'wand-like'. Here are the thicknesses (first and 12th fret) by way of illustration;

'91 = 0.747" (19.0mm) - 0.849" (21.6mm).

'95 = 0.823" (20.9mm) - 0.895" (22.7mm).

Pip.

[rct]

The early minis were harsh, way too much mids.  The Deluxe was cheaper by a couple hundred than the standard.  Gibson had a truckload of minis that they had absconded with from the Epiphone folks, so they made nothing but Deluxes for quite some time.  Deluxeii.  Whatever.

So lots of white trash guitar players where I came from bought a Deluxe and hacked out some bigger holes and put in Dimarzeros for that uber schweet Bostonesque grit, which is another thing that was awful in hindsight.

If you weren't there you probably won't understand.  When I was a kid, 50's Strats and Teles weren't yet vintage and hard as it may be to believe, lots of them just sucked even as they sold for more than 750 dollars!  Same for Gibsons.  My Fiber Bird was awful then, Priceless today.  It was a good time to be a guitar player.

rct

[kidblast]

13 minutes ago, Hector said:

 

Ok, I understand where you are coming from. It's similar to someone modifying  an Epiphone today, most people wouldn't think twice about it.

True,  people today are more aware of resale and what mods do to change the value when it's time to sell.  But the fact is, many of us that are on this forum, are now in their 60s and 70s.  for a lot of us, we came from an entirely different point in time.   The notion that a 40/50 year old strat, or les paul would be worth a kings ransom was never on the radar.  So we bought what we bought, and if we wanted to change stuff.. we did...  it wasn't until much later on when the whole "vintage" market exploded and we realized how badly we screwed things up.  Which pushed the value of the "Stock" vintage prices up even more because so many guitars purchased in the 60s and 70s were modified.  And some of those mods were poorly done, drastically degrading the value.

 

 

[kidblast]

6 minutes ago, rct said:

The early minis were harsh, way too much mids.  The Deluxe was cheaper by a couple hundred than the standard.  Gibson had a truckload of minis that they had absconded with from the Epiphone folks, so they made nothing but Deluxes for quite some time.  Deluxeii.  Whatever.

So lots of white trash guitar players where I came from bought a Deluxe and hacked out some bigger holes and put in Dimarzeros for that uber schweet Bostonesque grit, which is another thing that was awful in hindsight.

If you weren't there you probably won't understand.  When I was a kid, 50's Strats and Teles weren't yet vintage and hard as it may be to believe, lots of them just sucked even as they sold for more than 750 dollars!  Same for Gibsons.  My Fiber Bird was awful then, Priceless today.  It was a good time to be a guitar player.

rct

Zackly bud,  those who were there,  we all had "been there done that" t-shirts..    My 73 strat was a dog.  that micro tilt neck, Oy Vhey, what a disaster.  my Deluxe was my first LP (Goldtop)  I insisted on using the lightest strings I could, as a result, that guitar was a  b---ch to keep in tune.   it was NOT the arrow, it was the Indian..

Had we known then, what we know now.....

Edited October 8, 2019 by kidblast

[Mustang Martigan]

3 hours ago, kidblast said:

that's true b/c I also have a 2002 Standard with a 60s neck  What I wasn't totally into were the 1st gen Burst Buckers, so I swapped those out and I am not sorry I did that, the rest of that axe is money.

 

What did u end up replacing them with? Besides looking for tbe right LP for me, I've been checking out PAF clones, incase I run into a similar situation like yours.. or if I decide to pull a 180° n grab a Fender. Always thought a PAF would sound cool in a Strat or Tele.

My two favorites at the moment are the Mojotone 59 Clone Low Output and DiMarzio's 36th Anniversary PAF.

I'd really like to try the one made by Les Paul n his right hand man. Apparently they had been working on creating the ultimate PAF for the past 30 years. Les died before his partner finally got it right and released it to the public. Too bad the pair is $600+!

[kidblast]

2 hours ago, Mustang Martigan said:

 

What did u end up replacing them with? Besides looking for tbe right LP for me, I've been checking out PAF clones, incase I run into a similar situation like yours.. or if I decide to pull a 180° n grab a Fender. Always thought a PAF would sound cool in a Strat or Tele.

My two favorites at the moment are the Mojotone 59 Clone Low Output and DiMarzio's 36th Anniversary PAF.

I'd really like to try the one made by Les Paul n his right hand man. Apparently they had been working on creating the ultimate PAF for the past 30 years. Les died before his partner finally got it right and released it to the public. Too bad the pair is $600+!

I put a Seymour Duncan PAF  (SH1) in the neck   and a Jeff Beck (SH4) in the bridge.  I also had to change out the volume pots as the stock Gibson pots didn't give me the control over the pickup volume that I had with the BBs.  The cut in volume was far too drastic, and they'd pretty much be OUT around 5 or 4.   Not sure why this was the case, but the change to Bourne 500k pots fixed that.  Just thought it was worth mentioning as I had not planned on switching those till I realized after the fact what was going on.

 

600 bucks for a pair of pickups, if they are the END ALL  is basically 2x what a pair of Classic 57s would go for.  If they are THAT good, many would do it.

Edited October 8, 2019 by kidblast

[Leonard McCoy]

Terrible guitars.