I finally found a LP I love

Like every other Led Zeppelin loving guitar kid from old I've always wanted a Les Paul. I've owned one in my 20+ years of playing and while it was a lovely guitar, the weight was prohibitive to me. My back's always been wonky about weight and sadly, that Les Paul had to go.

A few nights ago I started looking in the Emporium and looking at all of the LPs there. The one thing that always worried me about buying sight unseen was weight. A friend and I decided to go to GC yesterday to take care of some other buisness and while there I really wanted to play some LPs. I'm not a big fan of flametops, so that killed my interest in about 90% of what they had in stock. Way up high though they had an interesting looking ebony double cutaway that looked like nobody had touched it in a long time.

They got it down for me and the first thing I noticed was the extremely pleasant weight. I've owned heavier teles. I plugged it into a AC15CC and away I went. It cleaned up well, it did heavy sounds, the strings were dead, but it still sounded heavenly. This guitar felt like a winner to me. Nicely balanced in my lap, not neck or body heavy: just perfect. I asked the 1 sales guy who I like to work with what he could do for me and he was able to offer it to me for $1500 with the case and in Oregon, no sales tax. I figured with a 30 day return policy I couldn't loose if it was a momentary thing...

The one perplexing thing was what specific model it was. It wasn't clearly marked, but I could tell it was something special and it was clear it wasn't a faded series LP, so I just did it and figured I'd suss it out later. It turns out this is a limited edition run Gibson did in conjunction with GC and MF towards the middle of 2007. It seems most, if not all, of the stock is long gone, but this guy had been left behind.

Unlike the normal Double Cut LP's, this guitar has 2 volume pots and 1 tone knobs and the Burstbucker Pro pups. It's also got the long neck tenon, 22 frets (so scale/pickup position) is exactly like a LP unlike several of the other Cutaway LP's out there that are 24 frets which evidently changes the chemistry that really makes a LP sound like a LP. The light weight is attributable to weight relief which is a godsend for me. It doesn't take away from the LP tone at all and makes the guitar amazingly comfortable.

I'm not 100% on the pickups yet and everything I'm reading about them makes me thing I need to just play with them for a while and see how things go. It sounds like they're sensitive to pickup height adjustment and could also perhaps benefit from the RS wiring kit upgrades I'm reading so much about. Any thoughts on this subject appreciated.

The only finish complaint I'll make about the guitar is that the G-string is making a slightly metalic rattling sound at the moment. I'm thinking the nutwork on the guitar looks pretty weak, so she'll be going in for a setup soon anyway and it'll all get sorted out.

I guess I'm super excited to find a LP that really works for me. I also noticed that there's a lot of other people out there who seem to be struggling with finding one that's a good one as well. There's hope I guess





More pics: http://www.pbase.com/infiniteposse/lp_double_cut