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Gibson necks


bigonion

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Hello everyone,

 

I'm a lefty and cursed with living with little access to Gibson lefty guitars - believe it or not I think there are 4 or 5 total in all of New York City. Will probably have to order a new Les Paul by mail.

 

Here's my question - I'm trying to decipher the difference between what some call the 50s vs. 60s vs 70s necks.

 

Gibson website provides more of a disclaimer that no two necks are identical. Thats fine - but can anyone help me out with general differences?

 

Thanks!

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Although you can't exactly play them' date=' why don't you just go to a music store, pick up a few Gibsons with various necks, flip them lefty and just see how you like the thickness of each? It'll give you a general idea, anyways...[/quote']

 

 

Unless its one of those new standards with asymetrical necks... fliping on of those would be uncunfortable =P~

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336's and other semihollows are made in the Memphis "custom" factory and they do not have the same neck profiles as the GibsonUSA or Gibson Nashville Custom (Historic) Les Pauls.

 

Before the new '08 redesign of the Standards, you could get a fat 50's or slim-taper '60 neck. The Traditional still has the 50's neck. The Classics had the 60's slim taper neck. So much for the GibsonUSA offerings.

 

The Historics are made in a different factory and they have different definitions of neck sizes; basically they're the biggest fattest necks compared to anything else. The 1954, 57, 58 historics have what they call the early 50's neck - real fat, real round. The '59 neck profile was a little bit slimmer, and now it's a little bit more V shaped with less meat on the shoulders. The 1960 Historics have a slim taper neck, but still not as slim as anything that's come out of the GibsonUSA main production factory.

 

The ES guitars from the Memphis plant have three profiles: fat 50's, slim taper, and since 2007 they've offered something called "thirty over sixty" or 30/60 which is supposed to be .030" thicker than the 1960 profile - only they have a different definition of the 1960 profile. No joke, I played a custom-ordered 1961 reissue ED335 from Nashville custom shop and the neck profile has no similarity whatsoever to my ES339 from the Memphis Custom shop - even though they're both called out as 30/60 neck profiles.

 

Sorry to confuse things, but you can't compare neck profiles from the different product lines.

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