How close is an R9 to a real '59?

fretfinder

guitars4you said:

Some may well remember over 12 months ago I acquired a Terry Morgan LP - I still have some  bruises on me, following that serious beating !!!!!

It was eventually sold to another fellow FB member, who later sold it as well, only a few months later

It certainly had some mojo regarding its visual aesthetics, regarding the colour of the burst, the figured maple top etc, the aged process - Did I think it was the be all and end all regarding feel, tonal character ? - No and on that basis I would not have placed it any higher on any pedestal than a good R9

Not sure what the fellow FB member thought of it and how his opinions compare to mine

Mark, I would take a wild guess that the fellow fb member felt the same as you - beautiful maple top, nice ageing etc but not streets ahead of a good R9, if at all.

bodhi

I always think these discussions should have sound clips.

But they never do.

OilCityPickups

gringopig said:

TheGuitarWeasel said:

p90fool said:

Jonathanthomas83 said

 My understanding is that the Custom Buckers are pretty close to original PAF's, or at least, that's the marketing spiel. Are the OX4s even closer? 

You could doubtless find an original PAF that sounds exactly like a Custom Bucker and another which sounds exactly like an OX4, hence my slightly facetious original answer to your question. 

Just like pretty much every 59 LP was unique, so just about every pair of pickups was different too. There is no definitive PAF because Gibson never standardised it ... at least not in the 50s. There are no 'bad' PAF' replicas, just pickups based on different originals.

They had a design. Based on my 25 years of manufacturing, I strongly suspect that they had a design, an assembly procedure and a procurement policy to source the materials required to make the product. They then had an assembly team who were shown how and in what order to assemble the device. There may be variables in the accuracy of the assembly or problems in procurement requiring some component substitution but the end result will be a product with a distribution curve of variation for certain characteristics such as:
Number of complete winds of wire and therefore DC resistance of the winding,
dimensions of bobbin round which wire is wound,
strength of magnetic field produced by magnet.

You would have to model some statistical average PAF pickup to create a definitive replica and this would be impossible as most of these pickups are now locked away in a bank vault by snobby collectors.

Okay: Based on analysing/rewinding multiple examples of original PAFs.
Turn count and turns per layer ... vary hugely.
Magnets ... based on gauss readings ... a mix of alnico 4, alnico 3 and alnico 2. Leading one to believe they fitted whatever their magnet suppliers had on hand/on offer at the best price. 
Wire ... always 42awg PVA coated 'plain enamel' however wire drawing had no computer control in those days, so gauges varied considerably more in diameter than modern wire. 
Bobbins were always consistent, as were pole screws, pole shoes and baseplates. 

Winding machines were extremely unreliable, leading operators to wind by eye 'until the bobbins were full' rather than to a specific turn count.

If we averaged all the variables we'd probably end up with a very bland pickup indeed ... we have to understand that these were not even built to Seth Lover's original designs ... which didn't include adjustable pole pieces! 

guitars4you

fretfinder said:

guitars4you said:

Some may well remember over 12 months ago I acquired a Terry Morgan LP - I still have some  bruises on me, following that serious beating !!!!!

It was eventually sold to another fellow FB member, who later sold it as well, only a few months later

It certainly had some mojo regarding its visual aesthetics, regarding the colour of the burst, the figured maple top etc, the aged process - Did I think it was the be all and end all regarding feel, tonal character ? - No and on that basis I would not have placed it any higher on any pedestal than a good R9

Not sure what the fellow FB member thought of it and how his opinions compare to mine

Mark, I would take a wild guess that the fellow fb member felt the same as you - beautiful maple top, nice ageing etc but not streets ahead of a good R9, if at all.

maybe it is a pre-conceived expectation, on my/our part, that this will be the 'plays like butter' moment (and I hate that phrase) - It did not play badly at all, but what it had I could find in other good R9's anyway

peteri

As always we veer off topic!

i have quite a few vintage guitars now, some I would never want to sell. Some I likely will. 

For the same same reason Richard said, they’re really good (even great) guitars, but for whatever reason they don’t come out of the case as much as others. 

For example I have a 69 SG Standard (which I played White Room on at the recent jam), birth year guitar, Angus era. All I wanted. And whenever I play it I love it. 

But it doesn’t get played as much as it should. 

However that doesn’t negate the fact that these vintage guitars are different than the modern ones. The wood is different is background and age and the magnets/pickups have aged in a random way which seems to work. 

Last year Jon at Feline compared my 62 Les Paul DC to one of his modern ones. 

Both of us agreed that his was 95% the same as mine, and a bloody good guitar I would love to own. 

But the older wood did make the original slightly different. 

Through a high gain amp, maybe I would notice, maybe not. Listeners absolutely not. So it’s down to the individual. 

JCA2550

Just curious, no one seems to have mentioned weight. I've had several LPs, a SG, ES339, PRS DGT & CE24 and the combination that has always worked best for me is tone/musicality, playability, weight and resonance. I've had smashing Les Pauls that lost out and I moved on because they were too heavy and didn't ring out compared to others (not the 339 or SG). I still have the DGT and a LP junior which get played (not as often as I'd like as I'm mostly playing bass and acoustic at the moment) and the SG, which is a keeper, is on permanent loan to a great mate that gigs it daily. All my others are Fenders or similar. If I came across a lovely relatively light, resonant  Les Paul that ticked these boxes that I could afford, I'd be in there like a shot.

ourmaninthenorth

In my hands, a good Historic is near enough to not make any real difference. 

I've done the very comparisons that the subject matter raises, A really good R9 I owned for years versus 3 very famous iconic 1959 'Bursts, on 3 separate occasions, there was not £300,000 worth of difference between them. 

I honestly believe that only those that have £300,000 in them have the ears to tell the difference. 

jumping@shadows

Loathe as I am to expose my playing to public scrutiny, and as crude as an iPhone vid is, here’s a ‘53/‘59 conversion from a couple years back:
https://instagram.com/p/BNFLedygrI1/ 

Grangousier

guitars4you said:

this will be the 'plays like butter' moment (and I hate that phrase)

I've found that whenever I see it written, a little voice in the back of my head says "plays like butter - rancid and greasy!" Eventually it'll be even more irritating than the phrase itself, but for the time being it keeps me entertained and takes the edge of the cliché.

Otherwise, I have nothing to add other than that I find the conversation fascinating each time it comes up. 

gringopig

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jumping@shadows

This is all on the bridge pickup, through my trusty ‘58 Gibson GA45, and for my ear/taste is has a really classic fat/nasal/squawking midrange thing I know from Clapton/Billy G, that I’ve never heard on an RI 

gringopig

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Jez6345789

I think I take a more broad view of the whole burst thing v R9 and it goes like this. 

I have no doubt that there were some amazing guitars in that 1500 that are acknowledged give or take from the era. 
I played one true burst probably when I was way too inexperienced to know what it actually was even though the owner had given me a 3hr intensive crash course on vintage guitars.and back then there was not the mojo about the guitars there is today and every single aspect of them was not examined and dissected to the nth degree by the Internet as it is today.

He gave me a 70's deluxe, a 70's custom a Heritage 80 and a Heritage 80 with PAF's and then his Burst to compare. Bear in mind these were being given to a guy whose normal guitar was an Ibanez Les Paul copy  so I was way out of my league. 

Despite the immaturity on my part it was pretty easy to hear major differences as each one was rolled out to this point I was still managing to understand what was going on and when it came to the 2nd Heritage 80 with PAF's I was sold and I believed it was the end of the line and I needed to get a set of original PAF's and a Heritage 80. Which were only a few years old at this point. 

I was sitting there going oh wow this is like the best Les Paul I have ever played oh I see why people buy old stuff and it was very good at doing the burst thing in terms of what to me was just the Beano or early ZZ top stuff. 

So I said stupidly this must be the best you can get and the guy laughed as did his friend and he then pulled out another guitar which was the Burst and this thing was a lightning rod. The PAF's must have been very powerful as I was backing off the volume soon as I started trying to play it as not only did it not forgive my crappy technique it was just very lively a little microphonic and about 20-30% more alive than the Heritage 80 with PAF's

I could not get anywhere near the sort of nuanced playing that the owner could from it,  he showed it off perfectly and kindly said you need to play one for a while to get the best from them. 

So that day in North Carolina was a very rapid education into what a good burst was about I believe its in one of the famous books about Bursts. 

These days I believe there are exceptional guitars from time to time that exceed the sum of their parts and for a number of reasons the 50's era Gibsons managed to achieve a higher number than average. I think it was wood, a workforce that was well skilled as they had grown up making Jazz box's and acoustics and although a factory Gibson in those days was not a modern deskilled workplace you had to have the skills to move up the lines. It was also the combination of lucky accidents and manufacturing variables through supply chain etc. 

I find R9's little better than standards they are just made to look the part more with ageing and finish. 

If you think about it most of the wood and parts are off the standard line yes with some selection or so they say in the video's. The plastics are now correct but it's still a production line guitar. 

I have gone back to a Japanese Greco on a total punt made over by jumping@shadows and to me, it seems a lot closer to what I want from a good Les Paul it has a little bit of that personality I saw in North Carolina years ago.

If I ever get a lottery win I might waste money on a Burst
If I have a good year sometime soon I will look at a conversion from Yuki 
If not I will be happy to play the Greco 1200 over an R9

The one thing that is sure none of this will mean anything to my Grand Children if they play. Its largely men of a certain age who's icons Page, Clapton etc made these guitars iconic. 

slacker

peteri said:

I'm lucky enough to own a 1953 Les Paul, converted to 58/9 specs - meaning the P90s were replaced with hum buckers, and a separate bridge/tailpiece were fitted.

It's not had the top changed, nor has the neck (luckily) needed to be reset as is often the case on the early ones.

The bridge pickup is a genuine PAF, and the neck a very early PAT (so same everything just a different sticker really).

I've played maybe 2-3 Rx guitars and a Bernie Marsden Collectors Choice.


To my eyes the CC kind of looked right from a distance (I don't think Gibson get the wear on the top right), but the neck was off - edges too hard.

So in that case - it looked like 'The Beast', but despite what lovable old Bernie says - I can't believe it plays like it.

The Rx series are good guitars, but I think all they really do is invoke the look/a bit of the feel of the older ones. Could they do better? Probably, but they don't so there you go.

How close? In my experience - not very close at all, but that doesn't stop them being good instruments in their own right.

I played your 53 conversion (thanks) and it's the best humbucker guitar I've played. I've played a shed load of R8s R9s and Collectors Choice. I dont think that your guitar is great because it's old I think that it being old is one of the factors that makes it great. 

I've spent a lot of time with an actual 61 Strat and I prefer my NOS reissue. I played a 54 LP Custom RI a lot and the owner traded it for a real 56. Both of those guitars are in my top 10 of guitars played, the real one was better.  

I'll repeat what Doug at Code told me, if you find a great guitar buy it and ignore whats on the headstock. 

Oh and the reason that burst are so expensive is because they are rare because they were discontinued for not selling. 

Boromedic

Not quite on topic (1960 as opposed to a 59), but a man who has access to more mojo gear than most demonstrates this well, and explains it even better. The demo has its flaws of course and if I'm honest yes the 60 sounded the best for me, very very slightly more open/airy (I'm struggling for the right word to describe it) but the others sounded just as good in their own way. An eq tweak and they'd probably sound the same, hence his theory the amp is just as important perhaps. Number one fact as he states though is its all in the player. Food for thought perhaps:



P.s. I thought the modern Standard he played sounded awesome!

ATB_Guitars

meltedbuzzbox said:

ATB_Guitars said:

Jonathanthomas83 said:

Similarly, how close is an R8 to a '58? I know they're meant to be amazing replica's of the best and most sought after guitars in Gibson's history, but for those who've had the luxury of playing an original, how close do they get?

Not even close. Nowhere near in terms of feel, vibe, smell, look and general feeling of excitement it will bring. 

It is not just the sound or playability that makes these guitars special, it is a combination of so many factors that all work together to produce an instrument that more often than not, a truly wonderful thing to have.

If you get a good original 59, 58 or 60 that has not been messed around with too much, you will have one hell of a guitar that I guarantee no R8/R9 will be able to touch. 

I guarantee that a percentage of 58/59/60 Les Paul's play like dogs and I guarantee a percentage aren't all that special.

Blanket statements like yours are part of the problem when it comes to the vintage market. 

You may be right, there could be a few out there that play like dogs but I have yet to come across any.

Blaendulais

jumping@shadows said:

merlin said:

None of the vintage guitars were vintage when they were made. They were all brand spanking new and my guess is that a reissue is more like a new guitar built back then, as it would have been. 

I can't see how all the sweat, piss, smoke and diddly-dong can be added retrospectively. Get a new guitar built to quality specs, from great wood, with great attention to detail, pickups, hardware and soft stuff, made with care and play it's ass off until you're close to dead (or at least older than you are now) then sell it to some young guy who thinks it has "mojo"....

Or am I being cynical?

Yes, if Gibson actually did any of the things you describe then you’d have a fighting chance, but even their most expensive and exclusive attempts look like they’ve been recreated from an artists rendering of a vintage Les Paul.

Here’s a couple of my recent projects, a ‘53/‘59, ‘52/‘56 and 2012 R9 makeover...guess which ones produce some of the greatest electric guitar tones I’ve ever heard in person, and which one sounds flat/harsh/cheap? 

Are you sure cos they look like chibsons to me? 

peteri

I have to say - it’s interesting that it feels like every time there’s a vintage thread on here it descends down a similar path. 

Yet at the recent jam, I think everyone who tried my guitars was very, very positive about them - and I don’t feel they were being polite 

My conversion being done by Jumping@Shadows. 

This thread isn’t about prices, some of those are daft and I think it’s interesting that Fender prices whilst high are not as bad as Gibson - maybe because current Fender quality is better?

Like it or not there is a difference that most players perceive. Whether it’s a difference that the player cares about is up to the individual - but that’s a different thing. 

The difference is there all the same 

merlin

Oh I forgot to add my tuppence, or due to inflation, my euro. 

Microphonic pickups sound great, even if they do squeal like piggies. Some of them have pretty mouths....

gringopig

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