I knew I should have invested in a couple of these back in the 70's..

2000 lyfh-
Ever heard of burny? Japanese Lp's? They are quality on par or better than most modern Gibson's and you can find some for under a grand. But Shhhhhh don't tell anyone I want more and the prices will spike if people find out how awesome and cheap these are compared to modern LP

I remember reading an article about the current madness for vintage LP's. The author stressed out that during the 80's he'd see rows of late 1950's Pauls for sth like 7-8000$ and nobody was interested.
You just couldn't sell these guitars. Amazing huh?

Be sure to avoid the chinese made "fibsons" being passed off as the real thing!

They even go as far as to have the Gibson logo on the headstock. To be blunt, these things are absolute dogshite and should be avioded at all costs!
Let me explain why!

A friend of mine picked one of these up for around £300, and my father who is a guitar tech was asked to give it a full set up. From a distance, it looked like a beauty.

Where to start...

The guitar literally comes in vacuum packed plastic (no case).

The neck was twisted and it wasn't set correctly at the body.
The frets were terribly applied and the whole thing was unrepairable.
You would need to remove the neck, have it re-set, remove the frets, plain the board, re-fret, re-finish etc. Even then, the chances of the neck staying put is remote. You couldn't just plain the board to compensate for the twist, it was too far gone. This thing was BAD!!!

And I promise am not exaggerating.

Not only that, the headstock was too long, the frets went right over the binding instead of having the binding bobbins, The headstock was also a separate piece of wood to the neck, the main body was made from several pieces of wood with several very obvious joins. This is way below the standard of which Gibson make their Les Pauls. The pegs were poor imitations which worked badly and looked fake.

These are 100% counterfeit Gibsons and are fit only for the bin.
If you think this was maybe just a bad one in the bunch, I can assure you it wasn't. I've heard similar horror stories from other techs who have had the similar misfortune of being asked to set one of these dogs up.

In other words, avoid like the plague!

For anyone considering buying a Les Paul...

If you can't afford a genine new Gibson, maybe consider a second hand Les Paul Studio from the 1990s onwards. These are generally great and can be found for a decent price if you shop around.

If this is still out of your price range, maybe try and find an old Tokai Love Rock from the early 80s. These can be found for probably the same price as a Fibson. Although they have the slim taper type neck which I find a bit thin, these are generally pretty great and they look the part too.
Put some better pickups in there, and you will have a really nice copy.

BUT WHATEVER YOU DO BEWARE OF THESE FAKE CHINESE "GIBSONS"!!!!

I shall have to check out those burny guitars. I see they're made by Fernandes who generally make great instruments for the price.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2012-03-29 01:23 by vudicus.

Tokai and Fernandes (burny) both make great strats and teles as well. Don't forget about Greco as well.
I agree about the Chinese fakes! Watch out!

Go Dawgs!

I wonder what the market for these is now, has it softened since that vid was made?

There are 6 Lloyd Loar mandolins available on the net right now, 3 at Elderly Instruments, for between $185-$215,000. Several years ago you would have had a hard time finding even one, & they were selling for $250,000.

Just bought a Chinese mandolin for $500 & it's perfect for my needs.

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vox12string
I wonder what the market for these is now, has it softened since that vid was made?

There are 6 Lloyd Loar mandolins available on the net right now, 3 at Elderly Instruments, for between $185-$215,000. Several years ago you would have had a hard time finding even one, & they were selling for $250,000.

Just bought a Chinese mandolin for $500 & it's perfect for my needs.

I haven't been following the LP market closely, but I thought it completely stalled since the crisis started in '09. People whom paid the big money before are now not selling as they will loose half the money.

I once was offered a perfectly fine '59 LP for, if I remember correctly, 15.000 guilders, say 7000 euro. This was in the very early 90's. I thought at that time that this amount of money was too much for a guitar with changed frets and tuning gears, and the neck PAF needed rewiring. I bought a Travis Bean TB1000A instead....terrible guitar!

Mathijs

Slash is a gutsy guy :

during the early years of G&R he played on Les Paul replicas only. One made by Kris Derrig and a back-up axe made by "Max". Around 1991 Gibson sent him guitars but he deemed them too badly made for him.

And now he endorses Gibson!?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-03-29 14:49 by dcba.

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Mathijs

Quote
vox12string
I wonder what the market for these is now, has it softened since that vid was made?

There are 6 Lloyd Loar mandolins available on the net right now, 3 at Elderly Instruments, for between $185-$215,000. Several years ago you would have had a hard time finding even one, & they were selling for $250,000.

Just bought a Chinese mandolin for $500 & it's perfect for my needs.

I haven't been following the LP market closely, but I thought it completely stalled since the crisis started in '09. People whom paid the big money before are now not selling as they will loose half the money.

I once was offered a perfectly fine '59 LP for, if I remember correctly, 15.000 guilders, say 7000 euro. This was in the very early 90's. I thought at that time that this amount of money was too much for a guitar with changed frets and tuning gears, and the neck PAF needed rewiring. I bought a Travis Bean TB1000A instead....terrible guitar!

Mathijs

From what i´ve heard a collector recently paid $400 000 for a near mint 59, so i think the market have been going totally nuts over these original 59 les pauls.

"From what i´ve heard a collector recently paid $400 000 for a near mint 59"

Don't forget the supe-rich are dying to get rid of their fiat money (which might lose 10-20-50% of its value). So they invest in physical items : wine, gold, real estate, works of art... and guitars?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-03-29 16:47 by dcba.

It is reckoned that the vintage guitar market in general peaked in 2007 and has declined somewhat since then, maybe showing occasional signs of stabilisation but without any definite signs of a recovery being apparent.

The market for ’58-’60 Sunburst Gibson Les Pauls (i.e. the top end of the market) is not immune to these influences, although it is possible that the most desirable Bursts (excellent original condition, intensive flame etc.) were not – or not as much – affected by the decline; more run-of-the-mill examples however are likely to be worth quite a bit less now than they were four or five years ago.

The market for vintage gear has softened. The economy and number of good fakes has chased theprices to drop. I wonder How many les Pauls have been made in the 50s? Several thousand? Maybe a 100k tops? If 3-5% a year are destroyed during to fire theft floods neglect etc. There couldn't be too many left.
So I bet the majority out there now are fakes. That fact I think will cause prices to always stay high even of the.economy temporarily causes prices to dip.

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nankerphlege
The market for vintage gear has softened. The economy and number of good fakes has chased theprices to drop. I wonder How many les Pauls have been made in the 50s? Several thousand? Maybe a 100k tops? If 3-5% a year are destroyed during to fire theft floods neglect etc. There couldn't be too many left.
So I bet the majority out there now are fakes. That fact I think will cause prices to always stay high even of the.economy temporarily causes prices to dip.

From what i remeber Gibson built around 1700 Les Pauls in 59 and many of them are sadly gone.

That would be the approximate production level for the three years 1958-1960, probably with a few '58 Goldtops thrown in there too.

[www.juliensauctions.com]

Check this one out. I bet it could tell some stories:

[www.ebay.com]

Funny auction : the guy ain't george Gruhn for sure : most of the stuff he sells ranks in the 500-1000$ range...

[www.ebay.com]