u/Stage53_1984

I seldom venture into Guitar Center these days but this morning I sold an acoustic to them and picked up this Les Paul for no real reason only to immediately spot four large flaws in the edge finish, clearly visible here. They were asking 3k for this until it was recently marked down. I pointed it out to the guy who gave me the check for mine and he just shrugged…. I’m sorry to say that it’s been my repeated experience over 18 years of handling guitars that Gibson has the worst QC when it comes to finish work compared to the other major players. Sire has some real problems with consistency, too. Buyer beware✌️

My happy corner. Intro, L-R:
Brian Miller M1 w/Bareknuckle pups, brand new Yamaha Pacifica with BEAUTIFUL Rupert Neve inspired pickups, Gibson Blues Hawk 2003 with B90s, 2025 MIM Player II sss Strato’various w/roasted neck, Gold Tone Mojotone resonator and a Suhr Classic T w/nickel humbucker and flame roasted neck.
I AM shallow enough to fall for a pretty face, but……
They all play as pretty as they look!! ✌️

I’ve been obsessed with slide and resonator sounds since I heard Bukka White playing with a knife one afternoon about 50 years ago. But when I tried my first one, a National Steel strung high with 12s, I felt beat up…so I did a bit of looking and found this unique instrument, a resonator with a lipstick pickup. Very few reviews on Sweetwater but one confirmed that it played well strung with 10/52s, so I asked them to set it up like any lower action guitar and my first impression is it plays like a gem. It’s small bodied for a resonator so it’s not impressive as a standalone acoustic at all, but the pup is very well balanced. Plugged into my Princeton Reverb set super clean and started playing, really nice tone but not particularly resonatorish unless you hit open notes and let chords fade…tried my Bugera acoustic amp and it was more of what you would expect, a bit drier and metally in a good way, sounded pretty good with Keb Mo’ cranked.
But…..not quite what I was hoping for, whatever that was, and then I, by accident, discovered what happened when I ran a cable to both amps through my Black Mountain volume wheel!!! Omg, with acoustic as the main I rolled on the Princeton and the combination is incredible, crisp and fat at the same time. I picked up a slide and tuned to open E…..figured out pretty quickly that I was confused until today about exactly how to bear on a fret and made some sounds that were really exciting and didn’t sound like cats on fire 🔥. A HUGE BREAKTHROUGH 🙏