DoctorPaul's Guitar Emporium - Sold Guitars
(SOLD)
2012 Gibson USA Les Paul Studio Shred
"Preston"
#105420473
Another quite ... well ... "odd" Gibson Les Paul, made in the regular USA Gibson factory (so not a Custom Shop guitar).
Now, I adore my Les Paul Axcess ("Gaffer"), which you might recall has a Floyd trem. The traditional (non-trem) Les Paul layout and architecture means that it is a very comfortable place for me to be. But add a Floyd trem to the mix and it becomes spot on perfect. However, the issue with Gaffer is that I tend to treat it carefully and with a little respect, you know? It IS an expensive bit of kit after all, and being brought up in an old coal-mining village in the North East (of England), I was always taught that you look after nice stuff. Especially if that nice stuff is also expensive stuff ... and those two things often go hand-in-hand. Anyway, regardless of the misty-eyed history lesson, I tend not to expose Gaffer to any shit. I don't mean that in the literal sense, of course ... I mean, OBVIOUSLY, I don't expose it to any actual SHIT, but I mean that I don't expose it to situations that might result in damage or theft. And that makes me feel awkward, as I shouldn't OWN gear unless I'm using it to its full potential, right?
Anyway, it turns out that the solution to that problem was staring me in the face all along. That solution (let's face it) is the solution to a great many problems in life. The solution? Buy another guitar! Excellent ... I feel a PLAN coming together! So. What would look, play and feel as awesome as Gaffer (well ... maybe 95% as good) but not cost an arm and a leg? You're ahead of me. Whereas the Axcess is a wonderous creature, fettled by the hands of the craftsmen in the Gibson Custom Shop, using the finest of materials and immaculate workmanship, the "Les Paul Studio Shred" is made by Gibson USA, by regular guitar-builder-dudes using regular stuff. To be fair, the Shred (named "Preston") shares only a few attributes with Gaffer ... namely that they both have a Floyd Rose and that they are both Les Paul-shaped. Pretty much everything else is different. The shred body is thicker than the Axcess, but the hollow sound chambers inside the guitar are larger than those in the Axcess. The Shred has no belly-cut (not so much of an issue these days, given that I've just got rid of nearly 40lbs of belly ...), and doesn't have the GORGEOUS fluted neck joint that the Axcess has, instead making do with the usual big-assed chunky neck joint that you find on regular Lesters. It also does without body and neck binding, being a Studio and all. The finish, however, is still the multi-layer gloss nitro of the higher end Gibsons, not the matte unpolished finish of the lower end stuff (like "Joe").
In terms of the materials used, the Shred is the usual combo of mahogany body and neck (quarter-sawn, interestingly) with a thick maple cap and a carved top, but you can bet your ass that Gibson don't use their premium lumber beneath that black paint (see the write-up for "Matt", my Gibson Vee, for more details).
Now then. I'm afraid I have to talk seriously for a minute. This was made in 2012 [long pause].
Tell that to the Gibson aficionados and they will automatically twist their face like someone just farted, and will often let out "Ewww" noises, possibly subliminally, without even knowing that they did it. The reason, of course, is that 2012 saw Gibson get wholeheartedly BUSTED by the lumber-police, for (allegedly?) making some guitars from an endangered / restricted wood species without having the right paperwork to say that it was harvested in a way that kept all the tree-huggers happy. The result was that Gibson ended up scrapping a whole load of beautiful wood, so they apparently ended up scratching around in the corners of the old store-rooms trying to scrape together enough decent wood to make much more than a box of toothpicks. So, they started using cheaper woods, AND started to make guitars (including some very, very expensive ones) using fingerboards (fretboards, whatever) that were actually produced from two half-thickness pieces of rosewood, glued together. The upshot was that when the frets were pressed into the board, the tangs (the bit of the fret that digs in) dissected the top piece of rosewood, so that the fingerboard became a patchwork of (... counts) 24 pieces of wood. Now, that might not make a BIT of difference to the sound or the playability of a guitar, but COME ON. Its SHODDY, and it's certainly not what you expect when you drop a couple of grand on a new guitar. THIS guitar, thankfully, escaped that. Instead, this got a single chunk of "phenolic resin / cellulose compound material", referred to as "RichLite". Now, unless you're one of the folks that listens to the kind of bullshit that cosmetic companies come out with and actually BELIEVES it, you will probably realise that a compound of cellulose with phenolic resin actually just means ... well ... kinda like wood pulp mushed up with epoxy. Which, on the face of it, sounds like all kind of crap, and certainly not what you'd expect to find on your nice Gibson. But hang on a minute. If we set aside all the snobby shit, and look at the spec of the material, it is light weight, strong as the gates of Hell, pretty much entirely chemically resistant and (I hear) reacts to tooling in a very similar way to ebony. Only, unlike real ebony, it is ACTUALLY black, not streaked and inconsistent (look at "Bobby" and "Norah" for instance, both of which have streaked ebony boards).
The way I see it is that this is less like a fine walnut shotgun, and more like a composite mountain hunting rifle. Sod the pretty lumber ... far better to use materials that don't mind getting mucky, don't react to temperature fluctuations, and can take as much of the muck and crap from your sweaty fingers as you can possibly hurl at them. And, personally, I think that the RichLite board suits this guitar perfectly. Bare-bones, stripped back, no mess, no fuss, no bullshit. The result is that this WILL NOT get cleaned or polished ... ever ... and will wear a set of anti-rust Elixir PolyWebs so that I NEVER have to rub it, oil it, or pander to it in the slightest. It'll be driven hard, put away wet, and it will LOVE it. Awesome. And as if to conform with to the hard-as-nails vibe, the previous owner swapped out the stock 490R / 498T pickups (which I like just fine), and replaced them with a set of EMG's (a 60 at the neck and an 85 at the bridge). Again, the pickups suit the vibe of the guitar perfectly. As does the neck profile by the way ... despite the "Shred" title (which might make you expect an Ibanez-esque skinny neck), this fat-boy has a proper 50's Gibson baseball-bat neck, which is pretty much an inch thick at the 12th fret ... GREAT stuff.
As a footnote / postscript, I can't finish writing this without stating that the guy I bought this guitar from was, without exception, one of the most unpleasant arseholes that I've ever come across. My opinion only, of course. Sending big wads of money through transfer systems (MoneyGram, Western Union, whatever) is often risky, but add to that a recipient who I consider was not only stupid as a bag of dog-shit, but was also as miserable and volatile as a tramp with an empty bottle ... and you'll see that this was NOT an enjoyable process. I've bought guitars from lots and lots of folks, and have met dozens of very, very nice sellers along the way, from business-types with guitar collections that would make your eyes bleed, through to folks on the bones of their arse, selling their gear to make ends meet and to feed their families. And I've NEVER had as much trouble as I had with this guy. It's a good job that this is a nice guitar, or I'd have been tempted to tell him to stick it up his arse ...
