Ax of the Month

PRE-ISSUES

History usually holds some clues, but when it came to bringing back the Les Paul Standard, Gibson appears to have been clueless. As everyone knows, Gibson changed the finish on the Les Paul Standard from gold to sunburst in 1958 and then killed off the model at the tail end of 1960 in favor of the SG body style (although it was still called Les Paul Standard for three more years). The first surge of demand for the old Standards came in the late '60s, and it came from players. Gibson reissued the Les Paul in 1968 with goldtop finish and, for reasons no one has ever explained, single-coil P-90 pickups rather than humbuckers. Maybe someone in marketing had a friend or a family member who thought the goldtop P-90 Les Paul version was the coolest ever. Who knows?
A year later, in another misguided move, Gibson replaced the goldtop with a cherry sunburst Les Paul Deluxe, which was the right color, but with mini-humbucking pickups, which were wrong. The minis were an identification mark of the Epiphone line, but because Epi production was about to be moved to Japan, it's likely that someone in engineering feathered his cap with a plan to use up existing stock. Hey, a humbucker's a humbucker, right? Doesn't matter how big it is.

1954 Les Paul Reissue

Until 1976 Gibson didn't offer a Les Paul Standard in the catalog, but the company made them anyway. All a dealer had to do was order a Deluxe with full-size humbuckers and he got a Standard, complete with "Standard" on the truss rod cover. Judging from the numerous sightings today of standards with six-digit serial numbers (1970-75), a lot of guitar buyers wanted a Standard like the old Standard. But what they were getting was a far cry from the original, thanks to Gibson's numerous "improvements" in the model, such as polyurethane-coated pickup wire, a wider peghead, a three-piece neck (instead of the original one-piece), a four-layer "pancake" body (instead of the original two layers) and a three-piece top (instead of two bookmatched pieces). These changes may have made sense at the time to engineers and accountants and maybe even to marketing people, but not to guitar players.
THESE CHANGES MAY HAVE MADE SENSE AT THE TIME TO ENGINEERS AND ACCOUNTANTS AND MAYBE EVEN TO MARKETING PEOPLE, BUT NOT TO GUITAR PLAYERS.

Keep in mind that by the mid 1970s, intracompany communications at Gibson were probably at an all-time low. Marketing and other corporate offices of Norlin Industries (Gibson's parent company,) were located in Lincolnwood, Illinois. Kalamazoo, the original home of Gibson, was technically just a manufacturing facility. Although the Kalamazoo plant was still the heart and soul of Gibson as far as the guitar world was concerned, Les Pauls were no longer being made there; Les Paul production had been moved to the Nashville plant that had opened in 1974. Surely there were some people in the Gibson organization who knew what was happening in the guitar market, but if they tried to pass the word along, it got lost in the corporate structure.

By 1974 or '75 the demand for original-style sunburst Les Pauls was strong enough that a dealer took matters into his own hands. Chris Lovell, one of the owners of Strings and Things in Memphis, called Kalamazoo and asked if the original Les Paul Standard specs were still around. They were, and Lovell placed a custom order. He asked for a narrower headstock than the current style, narrow binding in the cut-away, a deeper carve in the top, full-size humbuckers and a two-piece flamed maple top. Lovell also told Gibson not even to bother with finishing the top. The bright yellow center of Gibson's 1970s cherry sunburst finish was so garish and ugly compared to the deep amber of the originals that Lovell had Gibson put a clear coat on the top, which he then sent out to be stripped and refinished to the original look.

That was the first reissue. All the key elements of today's Reissue were important (if not fully implemented) from the beginning: the original styling (headstock size, binding width, top carving), the original sound (humbuckers), the original finish and a curly maple top.

Hold it right there. When did the curly top become important? Many of the originals had curly tops-some of them with dramatic "flame"-but not all of them by any means. The reason was probably pragmatic: Gibson used curly maple when it was available. Curly maple obviously was appreciated by Gibson, as illustrated by the curly pieces that were chosen for the bookmatched backs of F-5 mandolins as far back as the early 1920s. But Gibson never promoted curly maple in connection with Les Paul tops, for fear of running out. Which apparently they did from time to time. Nevertheless, sometime between 1961 and 1974, Les Paul players had clearly fallen for the flame. The flame top had become as much a part of the classic look as the thin binding or the small headstock.

AAAAA Flametop on an R9 Reissue

The Strings and Things reissues marked the beginning of the reissue era, but they weren't much of a reissue. Some were so bad they had to be returned, and Strings and Things only ended up with a total of 28 guitars from 1975-78.

From Gibson's point of view, the Strings and Things Les Pauls were probably a fly in the ointment of smooth production. Twenty-eight guitars in four years? Hardly a demand worth cultivating. Gibson's only response was to begin officially listing the Les Paul Standard, which the company had been making anyway for the past five years, in 1976.

The movement may have been barely perceptible, but Strings and Things had gotten the ball rolling on the Les Paul reissues. The next push came in 1978, and again it came from a dealer. Jimmy Wallace, who was working at the time for Arnold & Morgan in Dallas, saw the Strings and Things reissues and made a trip to Kalamazoo to personally pick out some maple tops for his own order of reissues. Gibson made some reissues for Wallace, who sold most of them to Japanese customers and then ordered more. Like the Strings and Things reissues, Wallace's had a nice top but that was about it. The rest of the guitar was standard Gibson issue for the period.

Someone in Kalamazoo took notice, but what could anyone in Kalamazoo do? Les Pauls were made in Nashville. Possibly fired up by a rivalry between the Kalamazoo and Nashville plants, the Les Paul Kalamazoo appeared in 1979. It was basically a Les Paul Standard with no pickup covers, the klunky rectangular tune-o-matic bridge and "KM" on the truss rod cover. It would have had nothing to do with the evolution of reissues except that it had a two-piece flamed maple top. Because Les Pauls weren't in the Kalamazoo plant's domain, the Les Paul KM was offered in a "limited" run of 1500. Coincidentally-or maybe not-1500 was about the total number of original sunburst Les Pauls produced from 1958-60.

Whether it was rivalry between plants or increased market awareness, the Nashville plant jumped into the reissue action in 1980. By this time, one of the most glaring deficiencies of new Les Pauls (compared to the originals) was the humbucking pickup. In preparation for its first attempt at a reissue, Gibson assigned engineer Tim Shaw the job of designing a reissue of the original Patent-Applied-For humbucking pickup-within certain restrictions. "This was 1980 and Norlin was already feeling the pinch," Shaw said, referring to Gibson's long decline through the 1970s and early '80s. "We weren't allowed to do much retooling. We redid the bobbin because it was worn out. We got some old bobbins and put the square hole back in. We did it without the T-hole, which stood for Treble."

To replicate the magnets, Shaw gathered up magnets from original PAFs and sent them to a lab to be analyzed. "Most were Alnico 2's," he said, "but some were 5's. In the process of making an Alnico 5, they stick a magnet in a huge coil for orientation, but an unoriented 5 sounds a lot like a 2. They started with Alnico 2 and then switched to Alnico 5."

Shaw discovered that the original magnets were a little thicker than 1980 production magnets. "Magnetic strength is largely a function of the area of the polarized face; increasing the face size gives you more power," he explained. So he specified the thicker magnet for the new PAF.

Wiring on the originals was #42 gauge, which Gibson still used. However, the original wire had an enamel coating and the current wire had a polyurethane coat, which also was of a different thickness or "buildup" than that of the original, which affected capacitance. Norlin refused to go the extra mile-or extra buck, as it were. Enamel-coated wire cost a dollar more per pound than poly-coated. Shaw could change the spec on the buildup without additional expense, so the thickness of the coating was the same as on the original wire, but he was forced to use the poly coat. The difference is easy to see: purple wire on the originals, orange on the reissues.

Shaw later found a spec for the number of turns on a spec sheet for a 1957 ES-175. "It specified 5,000 turns because a P-90 had 10,000 turns and they cut it in half," Shaw said. In reality, however, originals had anywhere from 5,000 to 6,000 turns, depending on how tight the coil was wound. Shaw later met Seth Lover, who designed and patented Gibson's humbucker, at a NAMM show. Lover laughed when asked about a spec for windings, and he told Shaw, "We wound them until they were full."

The spec for resistance was even less exact, Shaw said. The old ohmeter was graduated in increments of .5 (500 ohms). Anywhere between 3.5 and 4 on the meter (3,500 to 4,000 ohms) met the spec. Consequently, Shaw pointed out, there is no such thing as an exact reissue or replica of the 1959 PAF pickup. There can only be a replica of one original PAF, or an average PAF. As Gibson would find out in the early 1990s, the same could be said about the entire guitar.

Shaw's PAF reissue debuted on Gibson's new Nashville-made Les Paul Heritage 80 in 1980. Compared to anything Gibson had previously made (which is to say, compared to nothing), it was an excellent reissue of a sunburst Les Paul Standard. It had a nice top, thin binding in the cutaway, nickel-plated parts, more accurate sunburst finish and smaller headstock, but the body shape, body size and three-piece neck, among other details, were just regular production. It appears that Gibson still didn't understand the demand for an accurate reissue, because Gibson accompanied the Heritage 80 with fancier versions: the Heritage 80 Elite, with an ebony fingerboard that had no relevance to the reissue market (although it did have a one-piece neck) and the Heritage 80 Award, with gold plated hardware that also had no relevance to the reissue market.

The Heritage 80 was still not good enough for those who wanted a Standard like the original Standard, and the push for a more accurate reissue came once again from dealers and from the Kalamazoo plant. In 1982, Jimmy Wallace opened his own store in the Dallas area and continued ordering what were becoming known as "Jimmy Wallace Reissues." At the same time, Leo's Music in Oakland, California, and Guitar Trader in Redbank, New Jersey, began ordering reissues. These dealers requested more accurate specs for body size, body carving and neck shape, although they usually didn't get them. Also in 1982, the Kalamazoo plant added fuel to the fire with the Les Paul Standard '82, which was distinguished from the Heritage 80 primarily by its one-piece neck and the fact that it was made in Kalamazoo.

2. Reissue

3. The R9

4. The Future