Gibson LP Custom, help me identify the colour.

madcult

Hi guys I'm searching for this guitar for years. They are so rare to find and now when they did the reissue ( which I own) even harder to find. Suddenly they are two of them for sale. But I'm not completely sure about the colours in descriptions. I was looking for tobacco sunburst like this 

This is the one that is for sale advertised as tobacco burst. To me it looks like more like sunburst or maybe I'm completely wrong.....

Then there is this one which is advertise as honeyburst but to me its more like tobacco burst. I'm completely lost....

I hope someone can explain to me what colours they really are because photos can be sometimes missleading....

Neil

I think the colours have changed subtly over different years but tobacco burst  is brown fading into yellow/amber.

You'll just have to go on individual models.

Just to muddy the waters a bit there is also vintage sunburst (virtually tobacco but darker)  like mine below.

bandmaster188

I've got a custom just like that. its vintage sunburst but some folk do call it tobacco sunburst.

bandmaster188

Neil said:

I think the colours have changed subtly over different years but tobacco burst  is brown fading into yellow/amber.

You'll just have to go on individual models.

Just to muddy the waters a bit there is also vintage sunburst (virtually tobacco but darker)  like mine below.

Going by this then, mine is actually a tobacco burst, but my 335 is almost identical, which is a vintage sunburst. Confusing!

WezV

If you ever see a copy of Beauty of the Burst they have a name for all these different shades of burst with example of each.   they are mainly made up by the vintage market and variations on a theme, but gibson has adopted a lot of the names for its reissues

WezV

These were all sold as the same thing in the late 50's.   some have aged and faded, others just started life darker

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e31/WezV/temporary_zps477c5a0c.jpg

madcult

Do you think that all those three might started as the same colour ?

WezV;381158" said:

These were all sold as the same thing in the late 50's.   some have aged and faded, others just started life darker

WezV

I think they all used the same paint and the same techniques on those early ones.   The level of red in the burst did change, but also the number of coats and the thickness of the burst which are more down to the technique of the sprayer than anything else.  the red is the colour that fades the most so its really hard to know how they looked when original

they apparently did some darker to cover up the flecks you get in some species of maple, so there was a choice being made which lead to tobacco burst,  but not a real distinction in the product range.  

They are all Gibson Les Paul Sunburst Standard Guitars at this point

WezV

here is the 1960 catalogue with the single colour option 

http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac286/drfaustjr/Gibson-Catalog-1960-Scanned10.jpg

WezV

This 58 pic tells a story too

http://home.provide.net/~cfh/fade.jpg

WezV

sorry, i realise i didn't answer the question about the 3 in the original post, but instead went off at a tangent about 50's ones.

I believe all 3 would have been sold as the same tobacco burst custom, purposely darker than a cherry burst and would have all been pretty similar when new.  Certainly closer in colour than the late 50's cherry sunbursts, but you still have to allow for some variation in mix and sprayer technique

I also think you would see how similar they are if you had them all in the same room and lighting conditions

Voxman

That definitely looks like tobacco sunburst to me.  Here's my 1990 LP Custom in TS for comparison:

impmann

Remember that the pigment in Gibson paint seems to fade in sunlight worse than others - therefore it could be that all of these Customs left the factory with the same colour on them. Some of them may have been left in a window...