'58, '59, '60 Bursts and R9 Comparison

[Rock City]

Fair enough, but on the other hand, who the f#ck uses this model guitar to play clean tones? LOL. Yes, I'm sure you could post a dozen examples to my 2,000, but 90% of the time or more, these axes are not used for clean tone playing. When I think Les Paul, I think classic ROCK tones...Billy Gibbons, Gary Moore, Jimmy Page, and on and on.

My guess is nobody posts "clean neck tone" , or any other pickup combo clean tone because it's fairly irrelevant to the instrument.

Absolutely. Many considering "clean tone" actually think of slightly overdriven/crunch which, IMHO, shows the best character of neck pickup.
Straight clean is jazz only

 

[Platte City Paul]

Pretty cool. My ears heard the 2008 as slightly brighter and more trebly. Of the originals, I liked the 1958 the best, but that was a matter of degrees.

As for the clean tone debate, we talk a lot about that in the band. Over time, as my playing has improved and as Jason and I have gotten used to playing together, we both lay off the distortion pedal a lot more. There is enough of a break between the guitar and amp to get a nice crunch, and we save the pedals for specific songs. I hope that makes sense.

For reference, I'm playing a 94 standard with Zhangbuckers through a Fender 2 x 12 Deville on the clean channel.

 

[PierM]

Absolutely. Many considering "clean tone" actually think of slightly overdriven/crunch which, IMHO, shows the best character of neck pickup.
Straight clean is jazz only

At amplifier/settings parity, a clean signal it’s describing the real voice of a guitar. You preserve the original waveform, foundamentals and harmonics. As soon as you overdrive that signal, you are clamping, cutting, compressing, normalizing every guitar into a similar frequency spectrum. Also real dynamics coming from the pickups, are being clipped and compressed as well.

Having a crunch test it’s great, not having a clean tone tested it’s a mistake, believe it or not. Not that I care really, I’d never buy any burst, ever, but would be nice to have imho.

 

[lpfan1980]

"In this video Simon Karlsson and I compare a 2008 Gibson Les Paul 1959 Reissue R9 to three original Bursts from 1958, 1959 and 1960 which all are pretty different but all mind blowing instruments. The 1960 (early 1960 so 59 specs) being the greatest instrument I have ever played."

Wathching this again your 2008 holds up pretty good little peppier than its older bros but very nice.

 

[1allspub]

What would have been really interesting would to have been if it was all a blinded test. 3 of these are Bursts, 1 is a reissue, don’t tell which is which and let people try to figure it out based solely on their ears. Doug & Pat did something similar to this a while ago, but with a Tokai Love Rock mixed in... was very interesting.

Anyway, cool vid regardless.

 

[Mike J.]

I think that this video clearly shows what a great job Gibson does on the reissues. They all sound very close, with the 59 a little outstanding, but that difference is rather marginal. Cool playing by the way, you’ve dialed in exactly the sounds I personally consider with a Les Paul!

 

[korus]

While OP clip by itself is truly good and interesting, let's make one step beyond usual routine.

The question is : do tonal differences these 2 clips (also created by Johan) corelate with the tonal difference in OP clip?

 

[1969 weatherman]

liked the 2008 the least.... thinner and colder than the oldies. thanks for sharing

 

[brentrocks]

From what I heard, the custom shop is a great guitar for the money!!

 

[timmytVA]

I thought the 58 and the 08 sounded similar-ish and the 59 and 60 sounded similarish. Favorite? Probably the 60.

Tim

 

[LtDave32]

I love to hear clean tones of 58 to 60 burst. I wanna hear the guitar in its natural state. There's a few clips like that...i watched a clip of chris buck playing Bernie madenson 59 the beast burst n the tone he was getting was greater than anything Bernie ever did to me. Bernie tone always sounded really dark. You can tell Chris had the controls full n when he did i understood why it was called the beast. Chris sounds better on it then Bernie imho

Me too. Such as the lead out on Zep's "The Ocean".

Much of the work by Dickie Betts on "Jessica"

Clean tones on the neck pup of a LP are a thing of beauty.

 

[Jim Klein]

Bloomfield on super session..no distorted stuff there .just a LP into a twin reverb just the best .when i owned my old '59 i got lots of compliments from the jazz guys on how my guitar sounded like a ''big hollowbody''. I played jazz gigs country gigs rock concerts.all with the burst. to me good tone starts with the natural sound of the guitar then it expands from there with amp choices distorted tones etc. not everyone just plays distorted rock guitar .and yes the les paul was designed for jazz and country players. the blues guys taught us about distorted tones with their small amps cranked up into that sweet spot. just an old guys 2 cents fun stuff..jk

 

[BigJim]

The 60 sounded the best, IMO.

08 wasn't bad, but they showed it way too much!

 

[Phaedrum]

Fair enough, but on the other hand, who the f#ck uses this model guitar to play clean tones? LOL. Yes, I'm sure you could post a dozen examples to my 2,000, but 90% of the time or more, these axes are not used for clean tone playing. When I think Les Paul, I think classic ROCK tones...Billy Gibbons, Gary Moore, Jimmy Page, and on and on.

My guess is nobody posts "clean neck tone" , or any other pickup combo clean tone because it's fairly irrelevant to the instrument.

What an astoundingly inane comment. Boggles the mind.

 

[John_P]

The Reissue sounds spanky, like top wrapped with low action. When looking closely this also appears to be the case. The originals are all string through and they sound better to my ears. The setup makes a huge difference. Maybe there are good reasons the reissue has to be wrapped, maybe not.

 

[Great R8]

It's easier to tell differences in the neck position.

 

[freebyrd 69]

What an astoundingly inane comment. Boggles the mind.

My statement=truth.

 

[hrpoms9]

tone wise for me it went 60 > 59, as the top 2

 

[Andrew1225]

What an astoundingly inane comment. Boggles the mind.

Agree, and disagree at the same time.

I think as a general tone comparison for the masses, I agree that a clean/overdriven demo should be recorded in all pickup positions.
As a rock/blues guy, I agree with you 100%.

But to some people who only play heavier stuff, they could care less about the neck pup, let alone clean tones.

So in this regard I think it’s to each his own man.

 

[rjwilson37]

I think the 58 and 2008 sounded pretty similar, the 59 was the warmest smoothest sounding then the 60 came next. At least to my ears.