2004 Les Paul Standard

Mark Wein

Grand Poobah
Staff member
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This is my 2004 Gibson Les Paul Standard. It is all stock (except for a chrome jack plate ) if a little worn. It has 2 Gibson Burstbucker pickups and the 60's neck shape. The finish is called "Latte Creme" and is not a very popular color :embarrassed:

I got the guitar in May 2004 while on an overnight trip to San Diego. My wife and I were getting ready to open our teaching studio and this was to be our last "getaway" for some time. I was NOT guitar shopping...

While wandering around the Gaslamp District we stumbled into Centre City Music, which at the time sold only Gibson Guitars and Marshal amps. I had had my 1979 "The Paul" for some time and had yet to find a Standard (or any new Gibson, for that matter) that I liked enough to spend the money on. I still liked trying them out, though so I spent a half hour or so noodling away on an increasingly disappointing pile of Les Pauls. Most played "so so" and none sounded all that great.

As I was getting ready to leave my wife pointed to what I considered the ugliest guitar in the store and asked "why don't you try that one"? :facepalm:

Just to humor her I had the salesman get it down and played it for a few minutes. It kicked the living crap out of every other guitar in the store. At a certain point my wife tells me "You know you'll have to buy that, right?". Even my non-guitar playing wife could hear that it was a one of a kind find for me. I decided it was time to go to lunch and I would think about it. I really shouldn't be spending $2000 or so on a guitar I don't "have to" own. Eventually we ended up back there and asked about the price. $1596+tax case included. That year the street price on that guitar was $1999 and I think they just wanted it out of the store. So I bought it biggrin

One thing about the guitar is that it played horribly. I did a minor setup on it when we got home and played it that way for about a month or so, and then had a pro setup done. The intonation was terrible as well. It was like an untrained monkey had done the final setup and inspection at Gibson. The guitar sounded too good to worry about it, though. All easily rectified by a trained professional....

I had only had my 2002 Suhr Classic about 2 years at that point but this guitar immediately replaced it. At that time I was gigging constantly and teaching full time. After 6 months it needed another setup and even a fret dressing due to excessive fretwear messedup0

One thing that sets this guitar apart from my other guitars and even other Les Pauls is that it has a really huge onstage sound. When I was doing trio cover gigs it would fill quite a bit of sonic space even clean.

I don't have too many recoded examples of this guitar at the moment but here are a few...


Here I am playing the LP through my old Top Hat Ambassador 35 on a gig. Very clean tones:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txAZMXfVTLA

This is a demo of my 1971 Deluxe Reverb where I play the Suhr Classic 1st and then this guitar at about :40

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoLcYYI0vyU

"Radiate" - with my rock band "Felt" on a gig

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57V-sviHIAU


Here is solo I did for a music library compilation through a Zvex Nanoamp into a Demeter Isolation cabinet. I think we also used a Barber Direct Drive on this one, too: http://markwein.com/soundfiles/RockGod.mp3

I'd have a really difficult time replacing this guitar if lost or stolen. Its also a reminder that I have the coolest wife in the world, too smi

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Nice.

About the price, I wouldn't be surprised if that was what the price of every LP Standard in the store was.

I called Saul up a year or two ago to ask about his prices on R8s. At the time, a burst Standard was $2300 in Musicians Friend, and an R8 was $3200. He quoted me $2300 for an R8.

It was all I could do not to whip out the credit card. :facepalm:
 
I wouldn't doubt it. Saul is well known as being a great guy. I think they were a Gibson "Mega Dealer" or whatever they call it and got screwed pretty hard by Gibson so they started carrying other lines.
 
markwein said:
I wouldn't doubt it. Saul is well known as being a great guy. I think they were a Gibson "Mega Dealer" or whatever they call it and got screwed pretty hard by Gibson so they started carrying other lines.

what Gibson did to the dealers is absolutely ridiculous, but somehow they got away with it. Gibson and Fender can only lose market share, but I guess they're betting on the big box stores instead of the indies. hasn't seem to have hurt them yet, but you have to wonder what the long term ramifications of their actions will be.
 
I think that Fender and Gibson are like the GM and Ford of their industry. They'll continue on doing whatever they want to do but because they are "American" companies and sell products that are basically a part of "Americana" they'll continue to do fine. No matter what crap products they shovel down our throats.

I can't believe that Gibsons prices aren't killing the company but people continue to pay what they ask. Fender makes a consistently mediocre product that the consumer can surpass with off the shelf parts from companies like Warmoth and Seymour Duncan.

Its as much lifestyle as it is music for many of my adult students....like their Harley Davidson motorcycles....
 
The local music store owner used to sell gibsons. He stopped selling because Gibson raise the minimum purchase order to more than he would be able to sell in the year, so he dropped them and brought in Ibanez. idn_smilie

I guess gibson is abandoning the Mom and Pop shops that were there bread and butter for so long for guitar center, and the like.
 
markwein said:
As I was getting ready to leave my wife pointed to what I considered the ugliest guitar in the store and asked "why don't you try that one"? :facepalm:

Just curious: Has the look of the guitar grown on you over the years, or do you still think it's fugly? (I think it looks great.) Obviously sounds killer--I really liked the clean tone in the first video.
 
thredlok said:
The local music store owner used to sell gibsons. He stopped selling because Gibson raise the minimum purchase order to more than he would be able to sell in the year, so he dropped them and brought in Ibanez. idn_smilie

I guess gibson is abandoning the Mom and Pop shops that were there bread and butter for so long for guitar center, and the like.

I was curious when I opened this place what it would take to become a Gibson dealer. I was told $160,000 buy-in and $80,000 a year minimum stock orders. messedup0

I think Truetone music in Santa Monica dropped Gibson for a while because they couldn't afford to re-up one year...
 
thredlok said:
That's an interesting color btw AOK

you don't see that too often.

I've only seen one other one in person. I don't know if they still offer it or not.

FMC said:
markwein said:
As I was getting ready to leave my wife pointed to what I considered the ugliest guitar in the store and asked "why don't you try that one"? :facepalm:

Just curious: Has the look of the guitar grown on you over the years, or do you still think it's fugly? (I think it looks great.) Obviously sounds killer--I really liked the clean tone in the first video.

Its grown on me but its still not what I would look for if I were to shop for another Les Paul.

Ultimately you are buying tone and playability and looks should be secondary. As you can see in this case :embarrassed:


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markwein said:
thredlok said:
The local music store owner used to sell gibsons. He stopped selling because Gibson raise the minimum purchase order to more than he would be able to sell in the year, so he dropped them and brought in Ibanez. idn_smilie

I guess gibson is abandoning the Mom and Pop shops that were there bread and butter for so long for guitar center, and the like.

I was curious when I opened this place what it would take to become a Gibson dealer. I was told $160,000 buy-in and $80,000 a year minimum stock orders. messedup0

I think Truetone music in Santa Monica dropped Gibson for a while because they couldn't afford to re-up one year...

the other component of that was all Gibson dealers had to buy into their mandolin and banjo line. for many dealers, those lines don't sell. the big box stores can get away with it because they ship all over the country. But unless you have an internet presence, the chances of walk in business spending $XXXX+ on mandolins isn't very good.
 
I didn't know that...that's not very practical for most smaller stores unless they are the only Gibson dealer in 500 miles...and here, almost no one plays mandolin or banjo.
 
markwein said:
I didn't know that...that's not very practical for most smaller stores unless they are the only Gibson dealer in 500 miles...and here, almost no one plays mandolin or banjo.

exactly. it allowed Gibson to pull their lines from the stores and cut competition while raising prices. another issue was that independent stores like Dave's and Willcutt were taking pics of their stock and posting them on the internet for sale. Gibson put a moratorium on that, and sites still aren't allowed to post pics of their stock. you have to call them and request it.
 
hey mark....what do you think made your les paul so special....luck of the wood....components....i guess what i'm asking is why would one les paul sound better than another with the same makeup....
 
I think the biggest thing is that wood is an organic material, and you are dealing with all of the randomness that entails.

I think also that some guitars are just made better than others...its the whole "built on Wednesday when the workers aren't hungover on Monday morning or planning for the weekend on Friday afternoon" thing...
 
There's a little music store in Ripley WV that had a Latte Creme LP on consignment a few months ago. I think the guy wanted something like $1500 for it. I actually thought it looked pretty cool.

I was tempted by it, until I saw that the idiot who owned it previously had taken a dremel or something and destroyed the binding along the treble side of the fretboard.
 
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