Gibson '59 Les Paul Standard Reissue

This is a Les Paul 1999 R9 40th anniversary which when you send in the warranty you are supposed to get goodies such as an original strap and a repro brown case with the pink lining. I just sent it in so I am still waiting. The top is beautiful 3-D flamed but has verticle grain as well at certain angles it is faded cherry sunburst. At other angles it looks lind of like iodine on a cut kind of yellow with orangy highlights.
The back and neck are dark cherry and look great. The Gibson logo is aged( tinted yellow ) but the crown inlays arent..but I have a 64 J 160 E and the logo and the inlays are still more white in color than yellow. The binding in the cutaway is thin but has a little wider area...its the same on the 57 gold tops and the 58 reissues after this 1999 incarnation. The Tuners are Gibson " Kluson " style which is strange since actual Klusons are available..and the B and high E go out of tune easily. The hardware is nickle plated..and the tone is brighter than the 57 reissue,possibly from the aluminum tailpiece. But the tone is killer and you can play with the dials with the picks both on and hear the depth. The whole guitar vibrates so you can feel what you play. The toggle switch wouldnt stay in the rhythm or treble positions and I had to play with it and scrape the cavitiy a bit to give it more height so the switch had a bit more excursion..and the plastic cap..well there are companies which make one much closer looking to the original..also the high hats are amber and the 59's have gold dials..and this is historically correct, oh and the washer around the toggle switch is not vintage either.

This guitar is loud..it is easily able to overdrive the amp...but it is responsive and sounds good at low volume as well in a fender twin reverb it sounds sweet and clean in a vox AC 15 it rips.... it is a definate all around guitar

I changed the vintage 10s to D'Addario 9s which makes this guitar a pleasure to play..the 10 are stiff and with the clubby neck it wasnt as enjoyable, for me at least to play. The 9s did the trick and with no loss of tone. All the parts were set up well..the action just needed a little raising on the bass side otherwise all was perfect.The frets are perfect. The Rosewood is light in color..I think it has a softer feel than my 57 which has dark dark rosewood . The saddles and nut are perfect. the B and High E tuners will need to be replace as they dont hold the tuning well. I might change them all to the reissue vintage Klusons

All is fine and it is definately a player.. Iam concerned that the neck strap butto is a little too much to the outside placing the strap at a strange angle tilting the neck up a bit.

Havnt used customer support except to ask questions by email..they answer in 24 hrs often with only partial answers and always recommending you find an authorized gibson dealer

I have been playing since Im 11 ..Im 52 now..figure it out. I thought it would be nice to have an R9..why ..who knows..Gibson seems to thing it might be worth something one day..lets see 52 + 40..well I'll never find out
I like Les Pauls..I had a Black 3 pick up Custom in 69, a Tobbaco Burst in 74, an 80 gold top with P 100s and now this and an R7 gold top as well
what I hate about it is that the original Les Pauls were well not so perfect..they were all a little different..now they are using a composite of a few and except for the falme or figuring of the top all the historic reissues are well clones.
I checked out a 61 Les Paul SG with a maestro vibrola tailpiece..it was horrendous..it wouldnt stay in tune for longer than 30 seconds

Good day, fellow musicians.
Here's my shopping bag's content:

- 1-piece Mahogany body, looks rift sawn than quarter sawn
- 1-piece Mahogany neck with Holly peghead veneer
- carved AAA flame Maple top, very conservatively rated
- Rosewood fingerboard, I'm quite sure it's Indian, even though its flowing lines and dark/light patterns would make Ronaldo homesick
- single ring Kluson tuners
- classic '57 PAF humbucking pickups
- ABR 1 bridge
- nickel tailpiece

Standard Gibson USA hardcase made by TKL.

I've never believed the hype. Since these reissues came out in the early '90s, they've become ubiquitous status symbols among baby boomers who gig in their bedroom.
I've just been happy sticking to other, more obscure perhaps, better made handmade American electric guitars, and kept a few cheaper, reliable and replaceable workhorses for club gigging.
This piece came along as a real bargain, some things sometimes have your name written on it.

In short, it sounds fantastic. The acoustic tone is loud and well balanced, with a very lively response which one can "feel", before hearing it. You strum a chord, and the whole guitar vibrates and resonates, up to the headstock.
It's this type of physical reciprocation which makes us better musicians, isn't it?
Plugged in, all its components concur in creating that familiar tone which we've all heard in a barrel of classic rock and blues recordings.
Both pickups are carefully voiced, and the volume and tone controls are very responsive.
Our ideal tonal palette, from a smoky jazz "front pickup + tone knob on 4" Wes-like warmth, to an all out Gibbons grind, is all there.

When I purchased the guitar, I took it completely apart. See, it came as an impossible bargain, so I had to condition myself for possible bad surprises.
While performing the dissection some dark thoughts crossed my mind.
It's like going out with a devastatingly beautiful, elusive woman, whom you bring home and, after a romantic dinner, open up. Just to see what's inside.

Anyway.

All cavities are carefully screened; unlike original '59 Les Pauls, there is a metal shielding plate in the controls cavity, and the pickups routings are shielded with a copper film.
The neck tenon extends correctly into the front pickup's cavity, mahogany entering mahogany, phallic and cleanly executed.

The body is wrapped in very thin, very hard nitrocellulose lacquer, and has developed a few attractive weather lines.

A straight, clean neck, with a manly profile and thickness, pardon me.

All workmanship is top rate, no glue buildup, clean solder joints, immaculately dressed frets etc.
Even the nut is properly cut, a rarity at Gibson nowadays.

The top is finished in faded cherryburst, with the red hue very evenly applied. The 3-D effect on this perfectly matched, tiger stripe flame slab, quartersawn maple is stunning.
However blinding this opulence, I note that the maple top is too closely quartersawn form my taste. The vertical grain is almost as tightly spaced as the flame pattern, an undesirable fishing net effect. This is the (small) price you pay for amazingly consistent flame patterns. A flatsawn maple board would less likely show such dramatic ribbons.
Furthermore, the 2 headstock mahogany "wings", which are glued to the 1-piece neck, are noticeable, and therefore they imperfectly absorbed the cherry pigment.
Ohmygod, I'm being so anal.

A well built guitar, very solid and reliable. Voltaire's Candide told us of the Best of Possible Worlds, and perhaps there I would gig with it.
Unfortunately, I still show off my uncanny musicianship (?) in seedy pubs, populated by cheaply dressed nightflies, human hamburgers, divorced stock brokers and college jocks whose vocabulary starts with "cool" and ends with "dude".
So no. I won't gig with it, never mind a backup.
I will feed my few listeners the harsher notes of a cheaper wood.

Besides measures, parameters, and all this fool's gold which makes us demi-bourgeois suckers waste our money on strung furniture, a great guitar is an instrument which brings out the best in a musician.
This is precisely what this Gibson Les Paul does.
I don't know if it's the prettiest, the lightest, the most historically correct etc.

To me it's beautiful and beautifully it sings.

And, as Keats once said, A thing of Beauty is a joy forever.