Here's "my baby:"
And "my baby" on a visit to "her papa" for some loving care last December:
That's Carl Thompson with my bass that he built back in December of 1975, one of the first dozen or so he built.
Mark
Many of these guitars are handcrafted by Chinese and Korean luthiers and so closely mimic the originals that experts from Gibson had to be called in to verify that the guitars were fake. In many cases, these instruments far surpass Gibsons in quality and playability!
I was gonna say that they are probably a step up from Gibson’s current productions... but ya beat me to it!
Now that's interesting.
I used to own a J-45, many years ago.
wait till we get swamped with Supernotes.
Interesting statement. I suppose the chinese and koreans will knock off basses, drums and cymbals next, then corner the market on musical instruments.....oh wait. to late..... On an a side note, I have a Lee Jackson Metaltronics (complete with instructions signed by Lee Jackson) and a few very nice really beautiful old tube amps that I will keep for my kids.....enjoy your chinese junk.....
Here's "my baby:"
And "my baby" on a visit to "her papa" for some loving care last December:
That's Carl Thompson with my bass that he built back in December of 1975, one of the first dozen or so he built.
Mark
Having owned several of these now “vintage guitars” I don’t see what all the hubub was about. In most cases, the originals had very poor quality of materials and workmanship. I guess that it that they are now 50 years old and that is the allure.
My latest axe is a custom guitar where the materials and workmanship are second to perfect and about the same price as the average Gibson.
I have a mid-70’s Gibson ES347 which is pretty smooth and of excellent quality. Many of the mid-70’s to mid-80’s Les Paul’s had some pretty funky quirks about them with setting up the intonation and harmonics and would not sustain very well.
except mine is a 1962, this ones a 1963 
Nope; not worth going digging for...
I’ve been buying and selling old guitars since about 1968. I used to insist on playing older, vintage guitars with fetish value. But as the prices of these older instruments has climbed, I now feel that much of the hoopla is pure fetish. There are valid arguments on both sides of the old vs. new issue.
On one hand, to some extent, most musical instruments (other than the violin family) are mechanical devices plus sounding devices. It is true that for most acoustic instruments, aged woods can impart tonal qualities that simply cannot be duplicated with newer woods. That is, if they were quality instruments to begin with. Not all old ones are great guitars. It is also true that SOME high quality older instruments have certain intangible inspirational qualities to them. Some of this is imaginary, but some is not. I’ve owned and played older guitars that have amazing “vibe” to them.
But, as a fan of Strats and having owned well over a hundred vintage examples over the years, I recently bought a near new one on ebay, never having actually played it. I knew, though, from playing others of that specific model, that this model had a neck profile that I really liked, was unavailable elsewhere, and was a precision-made deal. I’m about the last one who would reco a new guitar over and old one, but this one utterly devastates any one of the six 35+ year old ones I own. Maybe tonally it isn’t quite as good as my favorite old ones, but it’s better in every quantifiable way. And after you run it through effects and whatever, the tonal differences are pretty much swamped.
Better or worse, older or newer, is pretty subjective. I owned a 1959 Strat that was an absolute dog, both sound wise and playability wise. I’ve owned a very low-end Squier guitar, which is a Korean $139 Strat that had a killer, knockout neck and made a super guitar with a drop-in pickup upgrade ($150). I will say that a brand new or near new guitar (or most any other instrument) will tend to have much more uniform mechanics. Likewise, older instruments in the era I happen to prefer (say 1957-1968) more often than not have wear-based mechanical issues that (in some, many cases) you can’t fix because fixing them will de-originalize them, and/or they are too valuable to take out and jam on in a sleazy bar. In fact, the more valuable some of these things get, the more they seem like liabilities.
| Chinese Les Paul |
How can I tell the difference between an original Gibson Air Guitar and a cheap knock off?
I did some google research on these Chicom Gibsons when I noticed them en mass on eBay last year. It was something about buying a ‘59 Les Paul re-issue for $20 with $175 shipping that made me curious.
End result was I found an Chicom goods importer website where they had thousands of items that had to be ordered in bulk and could be customized to your specs, whatever you wanted it to look like they would do; The musical instrument inventory section showed a picture of a knock-off Les Paul.
My $150 Chinese Epiphone plays better than my 1972 Les Paul Anniversary special (which I sold).
I beg to differ. They are made "after hours" in the Epiphone factories in China, but they use crap wood (usually plywood). They're not anywhere close to real Gibsons in terms of construction or playability. These things flooded ebay about a year ago, and it was just a matter of time before they started showing up in the US on resale.
a person with skill in their hands and in their heart can make a daisy-rock guitar sing.
Later bump