tom brown Posted April 4, 2009 Share Posted April 4, 2009 hello , This guitar is very under-rated, i bought one two years ago and many complain about the frets and finish and other problems, but, if you only have about a 1000 to spend, (mine was actually 799.00), this is the best value i feel that gibson has to offer in this price range..It will go on sale so be patient. The good news first, this guitar has burstbucker pro 1 and 2 ,s on it, and in addition all the electronics are exactly the same as the les paul standard. the bridge is the standard, however it does have the vintage style tuners, which many compalin about. Ok, they are not the best, but they work fine and many tuning issues with these guitars are more related to heat, humidity, and neck movement i feel. So, do the math, the pickups are 160, the electronics maybe 100, the bridge 40, up to 300, now the case you get with this guitar is 120 and a great case, up to 420, the tuners about 40 up to 460 in hardware..point is, the parts maybe greater then the sum, but now you have to work with the guitar and set it up. this does not have the fatted frets but they are fine,, and you have to change the strap buttons.. You can not go wrong with this guitar, especially if you have that deep lust for gibson brown sound. You can not go wrong with this guitar for the price...yes i had it set up, frets filed,and a few ajustments, but the sound from this guitar is unreal. For instance, because of the routed out body ( like the black beauty) it rings unplugged so sweet i play it with no amp and am amazed. Now, i play alot of acoustics, and if you play this in the right room with no amp you will be impressed. To me it sounds better then many acoustics because no tinny sounds at all. Now plug it it holy smoke you can shake the house with this guitar with no muddy sound at all. When i got mine back after being set up, the man ajusted the pickups to be more "balanced" and they sounded so very smooth and classic. I noticed at higher volumes i did get feedback, so i shielded the pickup caviety and volume- tone caviety with foil tape, total cost 5.99 and a hour of labor. Then i slowly began to ajust the pickups until i got the absolute max power from these pups, many times going back and forth a quarter turn of the screw. When i hit the max power point plugged into a line 6 thirty watt amp, this guitar rocks..At three volume i can break a window no bull, lol. Line 6 in clean mode makes this guitar sing, such classic sounds come from it easily can do studio work, many of my friends say. LIne 6 i know also gets a bad rap sometimes, because many don't read the manual. For instance, you can bypass all pre set sounds when you start the amp, add turbo boost, set the sounds with the controls as you want, then Save all these settings.. Now plugged into a boss distortion box, and dunlop wah wah, i can get some really great sounds from this guitar.Really classic sounds, or new sounds depending how i tweak. Recently i have scaled back the pickups and now i have a new strong, but maybe a bit more classic gibson sound. Finally, I wanted to say again this is the most under-rated guitar on the market, and yes if i had the money I would get 1959 les paul reissue, love that guitar, but because i am unable to do that i bought this guitar, but i really didn't settle , it sounds great.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom brown Posted April 17, 2009 Author Share Posted April 17, 2009 this working? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AXE® Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 It's been seen before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr newhaven Posted April 17, 2009 Share Posted April 17, 2009 i am the proud owner of a VM as well...bought it a few years ago and to be honest i cant say enough about them! i agreed that the fret ends were a bit rough...but i had those filed down nice and set-up wonderfully! the BB Pro's are great (i didnt think it was the 1's and 2's but i could be mistaken) a lot of people bash the faded cherry and instead prefer the worn brown but i like the look of the cherry...the more it wears the more "violin-like" the wood looks to me... the combo of mahog top and bottom...like the black beauty interests me too because its just a bit different sounding than standard LP's! the finish is amazing, the neck is smooth as hell and plays ultra comfortable! i bought mine new for $899 two years ago and spent about $300 getting the fret ends down nice...adding grovers and setting it up perfect...i wouldnt trade this guitar ever...for anything! it almost has the same birthday as me too (a couple of days off!) all and all its great...i plan on putting a bigsby soon enough...my advice to anyone not sure about these...buy them...spend some money to get them set up nice and youll have an axe worth much mroe than it costs! my only gripe is how now Gibson is taking that once pretty unique finish...and making all their studios look the same as the VM...not cool! but whatever... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom brown Posted April 18, 2009 Author Share Posted April 18, 2009 I spoke to gibson on another issue and brought up the VM, the man said they will stop making these VM's and will release a studio combined version of this.... Like to see a natural finish of the VM .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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