Les is More

I'll update you on the True/False thing next time I post (hopefully tomorrow). For now, though, I need to tell you a bit about my new guitar. I know that basically everyone who reads my blog comes here from my mom's blog, so you've seen the pics, and you've read what she has to say about the guitar, but you haven't heard what I have to say about it yet. First of all, it is one of the most beautiful guitars I've ever seen. I keep up with guitars pretty well. I read the catalogs, I check the websites. I know who's making what guitar in what finish with what pickups, etc. I enjoy knowing what's going on in the world of guitar. Sure, there are plenty more expensive guitars...there are guitars with more features, higher fret acess, 24K gold-plated hardware, etc. But it's not everyday that you see a finish like this. Most burst finishes are light in the middle and get progressively darker. Mine is like a color spectrum from top to bottom. The wood grain also shows through very nicely. With the flamed maple wood and the type of finish this guitar has, no 2 look the same, they're all unique (all 400). And the tone of this guitar is amazing. When I was contemplating buying this beauty, I had to ask myself "How much better is it going to sound?". There are two types of amps, solid state, and tube. Solid States is cheaper, Tube sounds better. At the moment, I have a solid state. Tubes replicate the guitar's sound much more accurately, so I was wondering if it would even make a difference until I got a nicer amp. Well, to my surprise, it makes a huge difference. With just a little overdrive, I can get a serious crunch, whereas with my old Danelectro, I struggled to get distortion at all. With a twist of the tone knob, I can get some thick blues sounds, and on the clean channel, I can get something like Jimmy Page on "Ten Years Gone" or even some fat jazz sounds (Les Paul, the father of this guitar, was a famous jazz musician in the fourties and fifties. He also invented the multitrack recorder, which is how all music is recorded today. He really revolutionized the industry). Someday, I'll upgrade to a tube amp, but for now, I'm content with the amazing tone I'm getting already. The pickups that came with this guitar are extremely versatile and of exceptional quality. Alot of Gibson players replace the pickups that come with most other Les Pauls right away, but the '57 Classics sound closest to the vintage pickups in the earlier Les Paul models, with the late fifties models being the most collectible. These pickups are hot enough to handle some pretty insane riffing (when I say that, I don't mean metal, I don't listen to that...think something like "Carry on Wayward Son" by Kansas), but they can also sound like butter. All in all, I couldn't be happier. My new guitar (which I've named "Layla", after the song Eric Clapton recorded while with Derek and the Dominoes) is virtually unsurpassed in looks, tone, or overall quality.