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tjon901 « When a Les Paul Custom is not good enough »
Published on 07/11/11 at 17:06The Supreme models were a set of models Gibson made that were placed above their Custom level guitars. Now only one model remains in the Supreme line and it is the Les Paul Supreme. This guitar has some crazy features no other Les Paul has but then it has some antiquated features Gibson should have changed decades ago. The most noticable feature is the AAAA figured maple top on this guitar. It is really beautiful and has a really deep look to it. The guitar is your standard Les Paul shape. It has a mahogany body and a fat mahogany neck with an ebony fretboard. The fretboard has 22 frets and has split block inlays I dont think Gibson puts on any other guitar. The pickups in this guitar are a pretty strange choice. The SG Supreme I am comparing this to came with Classic 57s while this guitar has a 490R in the neck and a 498T in the bridge. I dont know why they would put seemingly worse pickups in the Les Paul Supreme I was expecting them to have similar electronics and its not like you can easily upgrade the pickups on the Les Paul Supreme like you can on the SG Supreme the Les Paul Supreme has no control cavity plate cover. It has a guady Gibson globe Logo on the headstock instead of the split diamond and a gold truss rod cover. It has non locking Grover Tuners on the headstock also with a standard tune-o-matic as the bridge.
UTILIZATION
You can really see that Gibson put form over function with this guitar. To show off the fancy wood they used for the tops and back of the guitar they did not put a control cavity plate on the back. If you are to do any modifications of the inside of the guitar you will have to do it all through the jack plate. I hope you have small hands. The neck on this guitar is pretty fat so you will have to get use to it if you are more accustom to guitars with more modern neck shapes. The tuners are non locking and the bridge is non locking which is more of a gripe for me. With standard tune-o-matic bridges when you are changing strings or working on the guitar the bridge can fall off when it doesnt have string tension. This can easily mess up your intonation making the guitar sound off. There are no straplocks either so be careful if you play this guitar standing up. These are things I would upgrade immediately but I should need immediate upgrades on a guitar that cost 5000 dollars. There are 600 dollar ESP's and Epiphones that have these features why cant Gibson put them on a 5000 dollar guitar. This guitar cost 2000 dollars top to produce a set of 10 dollar tuners are not going to hurt Gibson.
SOUNDS
I dont know who would have picked these pickups for this guitar. I think Classic 57s would have worked better all around. The 498T is a pretty hot pickup to be in a classy Gibson like this. I think the output is around 13k. This is pushing into heavy metal output territory. This is a far cry from the smooth tones you would get with a PAF or something similar. The neck position 490 is overly dark and muddy. You can not get any clarity with the neck position on this guitar unless you crank on the tone knob. Normally a set of lousy stock pickups isnt much of a problem but with this guitar you have no real choice unless you are an expert luthier use to working on hollowbody guitars. This guitar has no control cavity cover plate. So any internal work you do on this guitar has to be done through the input jack plate which is about 2 inches by 1.
OVERALL OPINION
I think this guitar is more of a collectors piece than a real player. This guitar has less features than a standard Les Paul and tries to make up for them by looking pretty. Pretty wood does not equal good tone all it equals is pretty wood and theft target. If you have the bread and are considering a Les Paul Supreme I would strongly recommend you try out a standard Les Paul Custom first. The Custom is a time tested design and sounds good and is more of a player than this guitar. The Supreme is just a pretty face. This cant be said of the SG Supreme which has the pretty face and all the playability of a normal SG.
UTILIZATION
You can really see that Gibson put form over function with this guitar. To show off the fancy wood they used for the tops and back of the guitar they did not put a control cavity plate on the back. If you are to do any modifications of the inside of the guitar you will have to do it all through the jack plate. I hope you have small hands. The neck on this guitar is pretty fat so you will have to get use to it if you are more accustom to guitars with more modern neck shapes. The tuners are non locking and the bridge is non locking which is more of a gripe for me. With standard tune-o-matic bridges when you are changing strings or working on the guitar the bridge can fall off when it doesnt have string tension. This can easily mess up your intonation making the guitar sound off. There are no straplocks either so be careful if you play this guitar standing up. These are things I would upgrade immediately but I should need immediate upgrades on a guitar that cost 5000 dollars. There are 600 dollar ESP's and Epiphones that have these features why cant Gibson put them on a 5000 dollar guitar. This guitar cost 2000 dollars top to produce a set of 10 dollar tuners are not going to hurt Gibson.
SOUNDS
I dont know who would have picked these pickups for this guitar. I think Classic 57s would have worked better all around. The 498T is a pretty hot pickup to be in a classy Gibson like this. I think the output is around 13k. This is pushing into heavy metal output territory. This is a far cry from the smooth tones you would get with a PAF or something similar. The neck position 490 is overly dark and muddy. You can not get any clarity with the neck position on this guitar unless you crank on the tone knob. Normally a set of lousy stock pickups isnt much of a problem but with this guitar you have no real choice unless you are an expert luthier use to working on hollowbody guitars. This guitar has no control cavity cover plate. So any internal work you do on this guitar has to be done through the input jack plate which is about 2 inches by 1.
OVERALL OPINION
I think this guitar is more of a collectors piece than a real player. This guitar has less features than a standard Les Paul and tries to make up for them by looking pretty. Pretty wood does not equal good tone all it equals is pretty wood and theft target. If you have the bread and are considering a Les Paul Supreme I would strongly recommend you try out a standard Les Paul Custom first. The Custom is a time tested design and sounds good and is more of a player than this guitar. The Supreme is just a pretty face. This cant be said of the SG Supreme which has the pretty face and all the playability of a normal SG.