[NEWS] The first-ever Gibson Les Paul – owned by the man himself – is going up for auction

[u/sindisil]

According to Guitar World, it "will be sold as part of Christie's Exceptional Sales lot in New York, which takes place October 13".

[u/JudgeArthurVandelay]

You are talking about one of the most important guitars ever built. I doubt it’s been sitting in some grandmas basement. And any potential problems that have developed can be fixed by a skilled luthier.

An epiphone from GC is going to have a ceiling on how good of a guitar it can really be, limited by the quality of the wood and the finish.

They really aren’t going to be even in the same ballpark in terms of overall quality.

[u/mongolmark23 → u/JudgeArthurVandelay]

You are talking about one of the most important guitars ever built

But that's exactly why I dont think it's an all around perfect guitar (in terms of playability). Because it's the most important guitar in this world, I highly doubt it's had anything replaced - frets, fretboard, tuners and tuning gears are probably all still original. I don't undermine Les Paul's expertise but how will that kind of bridge intonate perfectly if it doesn't have independent saddles? It's also the prototype if I'm not mistaken, so the main line of deployed Les Paul's after this was probably the perfected version.

There's a bunch of parts of the guitar that got innovated to improve certain things that the "classics" like this guitar didn't have - gloss finish to prevent paint checking (I watched a vid on youtube where it said Leo Fender wanted to find a way to stop his guitars from aging so they replaced nitro with gloss or something like that) and it's not surprising to think that aged and worn guitars weren't as in as they are nowadays, Gibson moving from Tulip to Grover tuners to improve tuning, compensated saddles for Telecasters to improve intonation, humbuckers to avoid hum, active pickups, etc

Fine, saying an stock Epiphone will play better than this one is an overstatement and and exaggeration. But i still highly doubt this guitar is 100% playable.

[u/JudgeArthurVandelay → u/mongolmark23]

The bridge intonation is a valid point. However other than that, there’s really nothing about that guitar that needed significant improvement. The tuners are fine, or at least not any worse than grovers. The “gloss” poly finish you are talking about actually suffocates the resonance of the wood and makes it sound worse. There’s nothing wrong with checked finish, other than the appearance.

It’s possible that it needs a fret job to really play it, or new pots or whatever else. But, my point is that this guitar is an example of an era where Gibson was doing it right. The best epiphone LP in the world is just never going to sound as good as a 50s LP.

[u/mongolmark23 → u/JudgeArthurVandelay]

There’s nothing wrong with checked finish, other than the appearance.

100% agree. I would even go as far as saying I'd rather see wood/paint age NATURALLY than the shiny finish/plastic of gloss. I have never owned vintage gear but I think heavy relicing is exaggerated anyway and I have no idea how a nitro finish guitar will end up like SRV's Number One or John Mayer's Black One without intentional scraping of wood and paint lol

[u/JudgeArthurVandelay → u/mongolmark23]

And of course, John Mayer’s black one was a fake relic job anyway!