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Les Paul Standard - Premium Plus


Tenacious T

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I have one too. A late 2005 with that light sunburst to the edges very similar to yours. Beautiful to look at, plays & sounds fantastic. Then there are the chea-sh-p-it, 10 cent acrylic trapezoid inlays that Gibson insisted on saving 9 bucks on... I nearly run to the want ads to sell it everytime I look at those crappy inlays. What a shame that Gibson is doing this.

 

Are you aware that Gibson's 1957 Vintage Original Specification (VOS) '57 Goldtop also has these same crappy acrylic inlays? How original vintage spec can THAT be???

 

Thank you, Gibson for upgrading your forum.

 

Cheers, Cryoman

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Cryoman, sorry to tell you this but the original 1950's LPs had the same acryloid inlays. Yep, plastic. Only the Custom got mother of pearl. Other guitars varied between plastic and MOP, depending on their price point, but those original bursts, the $250-500K ones all have plastic inlays.

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Hi Raptor,

 

Thanks for the feedback.

 

The 1960 Gibson catalog (as reproduced in Gil Hembree's "Gibson Guitars: Ted McCarty's Gold Era 1948-1966," page 180) shows the 1960 Les Paul Standard in Cherry Sunburst finish ($265) and lists as one of it's features: "- Rosewood fingerboard, pearl inlays"

 

Notably it does not say "pearloid"

 

The 1961 Gibson Catalog shows the new Les Paul with again "- Rosewood fingerboard, pearl inlays."

 

More notably, this same 1961 Gibson Catalog indicates that the brand new "The Humminbird" features a "Bound rosewood fingerboard with large parallel pearloid inlays."

 

The fact that they DO distinquish between pearl and pearloid in the same year's catalog is pretty revealing to me.

 

Lastly, I find it amusing that Gibson indicates that their VOS '57 Goldtop Re-issue has historically correct shaped trapezoid inlays but fails to say its historically correct "acrylic." They don't even use the word "pearloid" because there is no pearl content whatsoever in the plastic mix and they might get sued making a claim that is false.

 

Thanks for the feedback. Wish I had a '57 through '61 just to see it for myself. YMMV.

 

Cheers, Cryoman

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Ok Raptor,

 

I'm gonna start eating my big bowl of Crow despite the Gibson catalogs.... I found this from cfh@provide.net's "Vintage Guitar Info" site (http://www.provide.net/~cfh/) who is deeply knowledgable collector:

 

"Other things that easily tell a reissue from a real 1950s Les Paul are the fingerboard inlays. The celluloid Gibson used during the 1950s has a considerably different look than today's inlays. Celluloid is like wood, every "batch" or block is different. So there really is no way to get today's celluloid to look like the 1950s inlays. The best someone could do is to steal the inlays from a 1950s Gibson CF-100 and transplant them into a reissue."

 

So...Standing down as "corrected," and with some big spoonfuls of that Crow, I'll go figure out the difference between celluloid and acrylic now...

 

Cheers, Cryoman

 

PS. I love my Les Paul Standard P+ a whole lot more suddenly, and thanks to you.

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