Gibson Custom Shop "G0" VOS Les Paul Standard
Last Update 12/09/2017
Good Les Pauls from today's production line at Gibson Guitars have been
a disappointment. The quality of the guitars have been wanting
with fret dress issues that can cut your hands, poor setup, mediocre
workmanship, and tonewoods that don't. Frankly there are a lot of
dogs coming off the Gibson production line. I've auditioned many
in stores, and even stopped at a Gibson Guitar outlet in Nashville TN
where there were racks and racks of Les Paul guitars but the ones I
played with were not good guitars. I've just about given up on
finding a good one that was new. The used ones were fetching
serious money that was exponentially proportional to how old the guitar
is.
My brother has been a Les Paul man since he found his '69 LP Custom in
a store in 1979. That is a very good guitar, and he still has
it. Now it is considered "vintage". After I landed my first
really good guitar, he encouraged me to find a Les Paul or at least an
SG with old wood. I agreed with him, however anything with "old
wood" - namely the 50s through 60s - was now out of reach, unless my
luck placed me in the right place at the right time. Sometimes a
bargain appears on an internet classified but they sell very quickly -
traders and players are scouring them. They're even scouring flea
markets and garage sales hoping to find a family selling a guitar which
didn't have any value to them. They're still out there - even the
vintage guitars from the 1950s - but they are getting fewer and farther
between. Sometimes you can find bargains in heavily modified
Gibson guitars, such as the single cutaway LP Jr that had nothing
original and was missing the serial number - either a neck that was
refinished or a stolen guitar. I wasn't interested in those.
Sometimes I wish women were like my music equipment finds - I find the
really good ones when I least expect it. Such was Black Friday
when I was browsing a Guitar Center store and found this used Les Paul
hanging on the wall. By then I had adopted my technique of
auditioning guitars by listening to them unplugged, so I took the
guitar in the acoustic guitar room where I could "listen to the wood"
away from the noise of juvenile guitar players blasting the amps on the
floor. The more I played the guitar, the more I liked it. I
could hear good tone just from the wood, and I could feel both the body
and the neck resonate as I played it. Those are key attributes I
look for. It didn't have any of the quality problems of recent
production guitars.
Finish is secondary in my book. Sure the figured tops are awesome
but not top priority. This guitar was a sunburst "plaintop"
without much figuring, but I liked the shading of the sunburst.
Reviewing the tag on the headstock... I found the guitar was new. Then I looked at the
serial number on the back of the headstock - what the heck is a
"G0"? At first glance I thought it was a used guitar because of
the pitting on the metal on the pickup covers and the stop
tailpiece. The "faded" shading of the sunburst threw me off
too. Turned out it was a new guitar that had been "aged".
My brother wasn't far away so I called to tell him I found a good Les
Paul, and to come to the store with his LP Custom to compare it
to. I hadn't yet plugged it in an amplifier. My brother got
to the store and caused quite a stir when he showed his old LP Custom
at the door, they don't see many vintage guitars there.
Time to get down to business, so both guitars went through the audition
process. For every sound his guitar was pulling off, my potential
one was keeping up with ease. My brother said it is the first
really good Les Paul he has played in a long time. Quite a few
customers in the store noticed too. Many of them were peeking
around the corner wanting to know where that sound was coming from,
with several watching my brother play it. At that point I decided
the guitar was too good to let go, and if I didn't buy it that day then
someone else was going to.
It was a bit of a stretch on my finances such that I opened a store
credit account to close the deal. It is the most money I have
paid for a guitar, but at least it didn't have a fancy figured top
which would had been double the price! I don't remember why but I
had to come back the next day to claim the guitar. The store told
me that several customers were going after that guitar after they heard
us play it - boy was I right on that one! They explained to me
that the guitar is a "G0" which is a special edition made for the
Guitar Center chain, basically an "R0" (a reissue 1960 "vintage
correct") with features specified by the chain. That explained
the serial number. The G0 guitars are made in the custom shop at
Gibson, not on the production line - that explained the exceptional
quality. Being a "VOS" guitar, that explained the "aged" look and
the vintage correct finish. Guitar Center even requested the
"long tenon" at the neck joint, which was prevalent in the 1950s
guitars and contributes to the tone because the neck and body are
coupled better. The guitar was built in 2006; that year Gibson
had
requested a sunburst finish similar to a vintage Les Paul in their
possession which is pictured on page 120
of the book "Beauty in the Burst", a marvelous book for any guitar
enthusiast. Because it was a custom shop guitar, it came standard
with a hard shell case (cases are extra for the production
guitars). Because it was Black Friday, the guitar qualified for a
discount which is good considering what I paid for it. The store
sweetened the deal by throwing in a decent guitar stand, one with a
securing device for the neck so that precious guitar doesn't get
damaged by falling out of the stand. I also saw it as a theft
deterrent should I gig the guitar in clubs.
Right place at the right time - again.
Finish-wise, the sunburst is considered a "honeyburst", one of many
names to describe the various shadings of the sunburst finishes of the
older Gibson guitars. The guitar itself was pretty much perfect
with one exception. One of the tuners would not hold the string
in tune. They were Kluson tuners so I went to a local store to
grab a guitar strap, straplocks, and replacement Grover tuners.
The store clerk asked to check out my guitar and he loved it.
When I removed the original tuners I found that were not "klusons" at
all - they were stamped "made in china" on the INSIDE where it was not
visible unless you removed them. Yet they were stamped "kluson"
on the outside... counterfeits in my book, and a violation of import
laws. Straplocks were definitely not counterfeits and were
absolute required accessory for a guitar like this.
Other than that, I left the guitar totally stock. The pickups
sounded great, no need to change them out. Closer comparison to
my brother's LP custom showed a slight difference in tone and his
having more sustain. His custom works better for hard rock and
metal, mine works better for blues and southern rock. He and his
son like to play the guitar when they visit. I happened to find
at least three more G0 guitars at other Guitar Center stores, and all
of them played and sounded as good as mine. Nice to know the
quality of these guitars are consistent, something sorely lacking in
production guitars!
Not far from me is a well known vintage guitar store. I knew they
always had a vintage 1958 or '59 or '60 sunburst Les Paul there at any
time - they had a national distribution and could find a seller for
their vintage guitars, and they were always buying guitars. I had
sold my Gibson RD Artist bass guitar there; the owner got on the phone
while examining the bass guitar, a sign that he knew a customer who was
looking for one. He pretty much paid what I had bought the guitar
for fifteen years prior, and the bass didn't stay listed on their
website for very long. I took my G0 there and explained to them
that I was interested in comparing my guitar to one of their vintage
Les Pauls. Before handing me the guitar they asked if I knew the
guitar was worth $300,000, I assured them I knew full well what I was
handling. Playing both vintage and reissue guitars, I couldn't
tell much difference. Plugged into an amp I am sure that the
vintage PAF pickups would have the edge. One of the store clerks
asked to check out my reissue. As he was playing it, he remarked
"wow they're getting close". The store had sold G0 guitars in the
past but not one THAT good.
The guitar has a LOT of friends... every guitar player I showed it to
loved the guitar, and I know some discriminating guitar players.
One of my friends who is a diehard Strat player became a convert when
he played my LP; he eventually got a LP of his own. Another asked
to bring it to a show with his R&B band, and to my surprise he
played it on a funk song and made it sound good. I put a
picture of it on Facebook and one very discriminating player asked to
bring it to a show so he could check it out. I brought it before
their show started; he played it for less than two minutes, and the
next thing I know he put it on his guitar stand behind his amp... OK
he's going to play it during the show!! After the band finished
the first song where he was playing my guitar, he stepped up to the mic
and said that I was not getting that guitar back - busted a gut on that
one. This player is a Les Paul diehard and it was one of the best
ones he had played... and like the others he was amazed that it was
STOCK. Another musician there who I respected had heard about my
guitar... I didn't tell him it was mine!!!
About a year after I joined the southern rock band, I brought in the LP
to complement the Tele that I was using. Our lead guitar player
asked to check out my LP. After we got done practicing a couple
of songs he was really loving the guitar - I wasn't sure he was going
to let me take it home. That inspired him to seek out a good LP,
and he found an excellent one with really good tone and a nicely
figured top but unfortunately he lost that guitar to a flooded
basement. I did gig my LP for a couple years, and being well
aware how guitars like that can "grow legs" I made it a point to place
it where it was harder to grab. I was always careful to secure it
in the truck as I was unloading or packing up. I'm even cautious
carrying it between my house and the truck. Gibson guitar cases
are very distinctive, and I didn't want anybody to even SEE the case
and get any ideas.
The G0 guitars enjoy a lively discussion in internet guitar forums, as
every G0 owner was a very happy one. When they had to thin out
their collection of guitars, they kept their G0. I posted a
picture of my G0; several members loved the finish, and one member of
notable recognition re-posted my picture in the WTB section seeking to
buy a Les Paul with a similar sunburst finish.
For a keyboard player whose 2nd instrument is guitar, I sure have
developed an ear for tone... now I need to focus less on guitar and
more on keyboards!
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