1959 Gibson Price List

[ReCycled]

Came across this somewhere and it reminded me that 59 was a particularly good year for today's vintage guitars. A 59 Stratocaster or Les Paul commands big bucks today. One Sunburst Standard Les Paul sold for $750,000 recently.

I isolated just a few of their guitars that have done really well over the years. I was surprised to see the Les Paul Custom (3 pickups) at $395 back in that year - and that's without the Bigsby and plush case. That was a lot of money in 1959.

The complete price list is at the end.

   

[|iR|Focalor]

I'm not sure exactly what's made the 59 Les Paul the holy grail of guitars, perhaps that was the first year it was mass produced. I know a lot of the old original Paul players started their careers on 59 Les Paul's, like Billy Gibbons and his famous Pearly Gates Les Paul. Supposedly, as the wood ages and dries, the tone improves. I read something like that somewhere, and it doesn't make much sense to me seeing as how most serious collectors have humidors they keep their acoustic guitars in. I would think drying wouldn't be much of a factor with solid body electric guitars since they are essentially just a solid slab of wood that doesn't vibrate a whole hell of a lot. I know different types of wood have different tones, but come on, who the hell can really tell the difference when you crank the pre-gain anyway. Once you have a double locking floating tremelo (floyd rose or anything similar), you really lose a lot of the body woods natural tone. That's why Les Paul's usually sound so good. The strings are connected right to the body, the bridge is a totally separate piece that is rigidly mounted to the body to transfer vibrations better, mahogany chambered body for a deep full low end, usually a radiused maple top to add crisp highs. Not much to improve on for anyone other than maybe a choice of pickups and neck radius.

I used be all goo-goo eyes over Les Pauls when I was younger, but since I've gotten older and hopefully a little wiser, I've gotten over it for the most part. I don't like their weight distribution, I'm much more comfortable with a strat style body that connects the strap at the point of the horn. It takes more of the weight of the neck and headstock off my playing hand which lets you play longer without your fretting hand getting tired. And I've also gotten really accustomed to play my Ibanez JS Joe Satriani model. I hate the fat chunky shape of a Les Paul neck. My BC Rich Mockingbird has about the same size neck and it's a pain in the ass to play. The JS has a nice fluidly rounded shape all the way around it that sits pretty comfortably against your body whether your playing it standing or on your knee, no sharp corners to poke into you or get hung on anything. It's got a crappy lo-pro double locking trem system though. I've been planning on afro-engineering it somehow to eliminate any movement of the bridge. I NEVER use the trem arm and NEVER use the nut locks anymore either. Sure, locking it down (after you spend 45 minutes getting in tune AND locked properly) keeps it from going out of tune with big bends of notes, but it deadens the fuck out of the open notes on the 2nd and 3rd strings. BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Fuck that shit.

[ReCycled]

I tend to agree with you on the "resonant" factor of solid body guitars. I've listened to a lot of old Pauls and Strats and with the high priced ones there is a difference in tone compared to new and other years of the same make. But it's not a big difference. Certainly not enough to warrant prices in the $100K range. The importance of the wood and age are certainly important in acoustic guitars (Martins for example) and greatly so in violins. But a solid block of wood? You want big tonal difference? Put in different pickups.
However I do kind of like the old Les Paul Juniors and Melody Makers that Leslie West used to play. But that tone was more his fingers than the guitar.
 

[|iR|Focalor]

Gibsons in general are just ridiculously priced in my opinion. You're not really paying for the product itself as much as the logo on it. Used to, you could get a really well made electric from some no name company for a very reasonable price. I'm not sure if they're still around, but there used to small company from Georgia or North Carolina or some other state right around this general area called Zion Guitars. They made excellent strat style guitars from really nice woods. Back when I was high school, there was a little hole in the wall music shop in the town I used to live in that had a few lightly used Zion's, one of them in particular was made from what I think was rockwood (I can't remember, sounds right). It sounded like a dream. Had really nice Joe Barden pickups, Gotoh tuners, beautiful fretboard inlay, reversed headstock, flamed or quilted translucent green finish. The guy was asking $350 for it. This was back in 96 or 97, so it wasn't too terribly long ago, inflation hasn't gone up that much. But I think I remember reading in some guitar buyers guide that several years ago that Zion was still making guitars and now they are a lot more expensive.

Unfortunately, there are lots of "decent" lower priced guitars out there like Dean's and some Ibanez's, but not really any WELL MADE ones, ones with top notch hardware and construction.

[[BTF] Reflex]

Heard 59 liked to have it's head snapped off,  had a really skinny neck.

[|iR|Focalor]

Dunno where you heard that. The necks on Les Pauls have always been rather chunky compared to a lot of todays models. The 1959 model had a neck only slightly smaller than the 1958, but it was still large. They all featured set necks (glued on). The headstock is the same piece of wood as the neck, so the only way it could come off is if you deliberately sawed it off, the neck joint would more than likely break before the headstock would break off from the neck from any impact. The old 50's Les Paul Special models were known to have pretty weak neck joints, maybe thats what you're thinking about. That was because of the smaller scale and the position of the neck pickup hole in the body didn't allow for much surface area of the top part of the neck to be glued to the body.

[[BTF] Reflex]

I was quoting my memory from hanging out with a guitar enthusiast about 20 years ago