working live and in studio with many bands, I was surprised to see how many people bought flashy looking Les Pauls (because you MUST play a Les Paul to be 'cool' :lol: ) and they sounded really harsh and undefined. With horrible ice pick highs and undefined 'ball of mud' in the lows and no mids at all. No matter what you would do to them they wouldn't cut through the mix. Once I was engineering a session of a Led Zep wannabe rip-off band and the wannabe Page's Les Paul was a horrid sounding turd that looked amazingly beautiful. The guitar was being recorder thru a cranked up Standell combo that sounded truly amazing (with every other guitar). The producer ended up handing a tele (very Pagey too) to the guy, and what a difference. The Tele had so much more body than that Les Paul... Everything came to life. That LP was so harsh and horrid that was unusable.
I have ended up collecting some great sounding gear over the years. Instead of thinking like a collector, I tried and compared different pieces of gear. Instead of focusing on what's written on them I went for the quality of their sound. As soon as something is not the best at its job or doesn't have a especial voice that I like, it gets sold straight away.
Many years ago, I bought a Les paul custom lite, a limited edition that run from 87 to 88. At the time I didn't have a clue, but it felt good to be part of the 'cool' club. I always felt that it sounded really full and creamy (not so much with the factory coil tap feature but still a very useful feature to have. Although I always missed the tone pot where the toggle switch was) People I was playing with in different bands, would tell me how good the tone of that guitar was. Years later I played with other LP players and the same thing would happen. Most of them were plainly horrid noise machines. They'd look great but sounded nasty in comparison.
One day after reading this interview, tI understood a few things.
http://www.dinosaurrockguitar.com/new/node/240
(I hope it helps)
So my guess is that the 87-88 Custom Lites were using a thinner slab of wood in the body because they were probably running out of it. So instead of gluing two or three slabs together sandwich style, they built thinner solid bodied guitars and I think the overall tone benefited from that.
From what's been said in the article, my opinion is that the guys at Gibson are just a bunch of crooks selling Barbie dolls to people who don't have a clue, like myself many years ago. I was lucky, but after spending so much money on a guitar if you discover it's a 'dog' you must feel ripped off.
A few years ago a bought a late eighties Burny Super Grade. It still sounds a lot better than most LP I hear out there. I don't know how accurate it is as a 59/60 replica, but its a great guitar that doesn't envy an original LP. The pickup output is a bit higher with a pronounced peak at 3KHz compared to my Custom Lite so it sounds more aggressive for certain styles of music (and its a lot more forgiving to play live :wink: ). However, if I want creamier tones I go to the Custom Lite.
