# He may not know how to spell,but he knows how to charge



## rollingdam (May 11, 2006)

1976 Les Paul Costume - Ottawa Musical Instruments For Sale - Kijiji Ottawa Canada.


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## sulphur (Jun 2, 2011)

I'm wondering about well warn the freats are.

I love Les Paul Costumes though, very comfy.


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## smorgdonkey (Jun 23, 2008)

Definite winner.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

sulphur said:


> I'm wondering about well warn the freats are.
> 
> I love Les Paul Costumes though, very comfy.


Varie well warn. After all, it's his freatless wonder.


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## marcos (Jan 13, 2009)

Wonder what a fretless wonder is on a LP?


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## djmarcelca (Aug 2, 2012)

Hmmmm, 3k for a used guitar?
At 37 years old, the wood will be dry and brittle (don't drop it!!)

The spot on the rear of the neck looks more like damage than (warn) worn paint.
Needs a re-fretting (250.00-300.00) Look in the first picture of the headstock... you can see the first couple of frets are worn flat on the crown. There does not seem to be a lot of material left to re-crown.
Most likely the pots will need replacment from wear and age. (150.00 to re-wire)
But at least it doesn't have belt buckle rash on the back.

So total for buying and re-pairing this semi-vintage guitar: 3450.00

To buy a Brand new LP custom?

Long & McQuade - Gibson Les Paul Custom - Ebony

You could probably get that down to under 2K if you brought in good trade in & are skilled at haggling.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

djmarcelca said:


> Hmmmm, 3k for a used guitar?
> At 37 years old, the wood will be dry and brittle (don't drop it!!)
> 
> The spot on the rear of the neck looks more like damage than (warn) worn paint.
> ...


I thought the very same thing. The guy is dreaming if he thinks he'll get that unless someone has no idea what he's buying.

You can get a new LP custom at MF for $3400.00 before any haggling and no trade.


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## Guest (Jan 21, 2013)

George Grunn on why your guitar from the 70's isn't "vintage". Old does not equal good.

[video=youtube;_bER-st-KjM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_bER-st-KjM[/video]


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## Rick31797 (Apr 20, 2007)

I have an LP custom, that's 31 yrs old and i would not let it go for less, 3 grand either.. mine is in better condition than this one.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

What the hell kind of belt buckle wears off the paint _there_? Maybe the owner has one of those Johnny Cash type strumming styles where you hold the neck down over your belly and strum the strings across the 18th fret.

Me, I'm jonesing for the Harmony over in the corner.


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## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

$3000 for a Norlin era LP?

I'd rather have a new one.


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## Hamstrung (Sep 21, 2007)

marcos said:


> Wonder what a fretless wonder is on a LP?


It refers to the frets which are very flat and low. The action is seriously low on these. 
I have a '74 Custom that is like this (not for sale). It's not fret wear that makes them low and flat. It's the way they were made. Here's an article with a brief description of the "Fretless Wonder"

Les Paul Custom: Black Beauty or Fretless Fiasco?


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

rollingdam said:


> 1976 Les Paul *Costume* - Ottawa Musical Instruments For Sale - Kijiji Ottawa Canada.


A little side story on "Costume" and "Custom". A very bright friend of mind who makes the odd literary mistake wrote and invoice out to "Custom" Jewelery, only he spelled it "Costume" Jewellery. I was told she had called his office and said she would not pay the bill until the invoice was changed to read "Custom" Jewellery. 

Sometimes a few misspelled letters can make a world of difference.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

1) Back when I was doing my M.Sc. in the early 80's, final drafts of theses were still often typed out by secretaries on an IBM Selectric. The received wisdom, and running joke, was that one should try to avoid using the word "causal" anywhere in your thesis, because inevitably, the secretary working on it would misspell it as "casual". So, variable A had a "casual" effect on variable B.

2) I mentioned it here a few weeks ago, but there was an ad in the local paper, a couple years back, for an apartment near the community college (Algonquin). The ad went on about all the amenities, how many rooms, appliances, bus connections, etc., and noted that "head was included". I imagine they got a few annoying phone calls about that from guys snorting milk out their noses as they spoke. It was one of those ads I just had to keep a photocopy of. Of course, if the apartment had a "costume kitchen" in addition to what was "included" in the rent, they might have received even more inquiries.

Yes kids, learn to spell AND check your spelling _yourself_! Your software is not able to tell when what you typed has gone naughty.


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## smorgdonkey (Jun 23, 2008)

Check this one out...this dough head posts consistently on my local kijiji:

HERE IS 2 GUAITRS THAT SPEAK FOR THEM SELFS ALL SET UP NEW STRINGS GOOD ACTION. YOUR MISSING OUT ON A GOOD BUY, SIMON AND PACTRIC AND GIBSON DOVE COPY NICE GUAITARS BOTH OF THEM DON,T MISS A BUY THANKS 

...and ALWAYS caps locked.

Idiot.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

One can usually spot a dyslexic by their writing, principally by their spelling. In this case, not only is "guitar" mis-spelled, but is mis-spelled in two different ways. And THAT is the tell-tale sign.

Why? One of the cardinal traits of dyslexics is that they eventually stop monitoring their own comprehension. Competent readers might make an error and think "Well, THAT can't be right". And if you look at their eye movements as they read, we see that they constantly backscan over the preceding few words, uconsciously checking for whether the current word makes sense. Whatever the source of a person's reading difficulties (and most often it is a very slow decoding of the letter-to-sound correspondance that makes it feel like one is reading a book one-letter-to-a-page), the throughput rate of what's on the page is too slow to keep track of everything and make sense of what one reads (see Gerry D's bit about the kid in his class who would read aloud "And the bee-ARE like-ed the HO-knee"), so people just stop checking to see if what they_ thought _they read actually makes sense. In turn, that translates into not checking whether what you put on the page (or screen) makes sense or not.

If I look at my keyboard and see that a spelling error might have arisen from one key being too perilously close to another (e.g., spelling "another" as "anothet" or "anothef" or even "anothe5"), I understand. But when the same word is spelled several different ways and the keys aren't anywhere near each other, I know I have someone with reading problems.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

mhammer said:


> One can usually spot a dyslexic by their writing, principally by their spelling. In this case, not only is "guitar" mis-spelled, but is mis-spelled in two different ways. And THAT is the tell-tale sign.
> 
> Why? One of the cardinal traits of dyslexics is that they eventually stop monitoring their own comprehension. Competent readers might make an error and think "Well, THAT can't be right". And if you look at their eye movements as they read, we see that they constantly backscan over the preceding few words, uconsciously checking for whether the current word makes sense. Whatever the source of a person's reading difficulties (and most often it is a very slow decoding of the letter-to-sound correspondance that makes it feel like one is reading a book one-letter-to-a-page), the throughput rate of what's on the page is too slow to keep track of everything and make sense of what one reads (see Gerry D's bit about the kid in his class who would read aloud "And the bee-ARE like-ed the HO-knee"), so people just stop checking to see if what they_ thought _they read actually makes sense. In turn, that translates into not checking whether what you put on the page (or screen) makes sense or not.
> 
> If I look at my keyboard and see that a spelling error might have arisen from one key being too perilously close to another (e.g., spelling "another" as "anothet" or "anothef" or even "anothe5"), I understand. But when the same word is spelled several different ways and the keys aren't anywhere near each other, I know I have someone with reading problems.


Since we are seeing more and more of it these days, I blame the education system first. There are, of course, some people with deficiencies but when the education system allows students to misspell words as long as it sounds right, it leads to literary laziness. Much of what we see today is just that and nothing else.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

pffft. i see the newspapers, and stories on the web. their spelling is worse than mine. i often wonder what those people make. i know the right times to use there, their, here, hear, to, too, two, etc. somebody sign me up and cut me a fat check!


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

Gruhn overstates the Norlin & 70 stuff as if on Jan 1, 1970 guitars suddenly became crap.
Maybe I'm overstating him, but that's only fair.

I've played guitars made in the 70's that I love, and ones that weren't so good.

What he's saying should be taken as general, not specific.

there are some awful guitars from before 1970 as well.

But then again he is a vintage dealer and has his own interests to protect.

Although I agree that age alone isn't enough to make a guitar vintage.
My Les Paul was made in the early 70's and is definitely a Norlin, but I don't consider it vintage.
ALso--it was modded before I got it, which also counts against the vintage thing.


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## Rick31797 (Apr 20, 2007)

*guitars*

I think My 82 Custom is a really nice Gibson, i have picked up a few news ones that other then felt better in weight, didn't play very well at all.
1982 was the last year the custom had the 3 piece maple neck, i think this is better then have a one piece mahogany neck,and of course more money for the company to produce. it has the Tim Shaw pickups which have been praised by many, it has the speed winders on the tuners , which really work and ar*e **unique .*This Guitar has been very staple over the years, The Ebony fret board is no different then when i bought the guitar new.Were the Binding meets the body its dead even.The Norlin era means nothing to me, as the Baldwin era for Gretsch


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## smorgdonkey (Jun 23, 2008)

Rick the late guitars of the Norlin era are much better than the early guitars of the Norlin era. The early ones had all of the changes and suffered the growing pains of the new ownership. The ones from the early '80s are great. Many of the people making them had more experience by then and the pancake bodies were gone (which was the worst issue of the Norlin era - notice they didn't do any '70s Tribute guitars with that feature).

The problem is that 'Norlin' as a derogatory term really means the early ones but the entire era gets painted with the brush of the beginning of that era.

I had a 1982 as well and it was fantastic (it also had the 3 piece neck which is an expensive feature on many guitars because it is a high end improvement). Way too heavy for me to ever use for a long period of time but fantastic none the less.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

zontar said:


> Gruhn overstates the Norlin & 70 stuff as if on Jan 1, 1970 guitars suddenly became crap.
> Maybe I'm overstating him, but that's only fair.
> 
> I've played guitars made in the 70's that I love, and ones that weren't so good.
> ...


I don't think it is protecting his own interests as much as the sheer volume of product he sees coming through his doors. Some of that product is stuff he ends up selling, some is stuff the guys on the 3rd floor repair/restore, and some is stuff he decides not to buy. Note as well that he gets to see a huge spectrum of instruments from over a very long swathe of guitar history, such that major inflection points in overall quality can be more apparent to a guy in his position than they would be to us.

It's a bit like being a movie critic. If you or I go out to maybe a half dozen movies in a year, chances are we'll tolerate, and maybe even enjoy most of those films. The person who has to see several hundred in a year, will get impatient with the mediocre and "merely adequate".

Finally, I think it is worth noting that when folks like him make a comment about declines in quality, often what they mean is greater inconsistency in the final product. So, if one in every 50 was a stinker, and 20 in every 50 were absolute timeless gems, prior to Norlin's ownership, but AFTER Norlin took ownership, 10 in every 50 were gems and 10 were stinkers, that is a change in overall consistency of product that you or I woud not really be in a position to detect.


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## Roryfan (Apr 19, 2010)

Steadfastly said:


> djmarcelca said:
> 
> 
> > Hmmmm, 3k for a used guitar?
> ...


I'm not defending 70s Gibsons or the prices that they seem to be fetching these days, but you'd still have to spend a few bucks to swap the pups on the new guitar mentioned above, the 498T/490R that they use on non-Historic Customs are terrible.

FWIW an all-mahogany 50s spec Custom is a very different animal from the maple cap/neck version, but if I was jonesing for a mapley Custom I'd seek out an early-mid 80s with Shaws.


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## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

mhammer said:


> One can usually spot a dyslexic by their writing, principally by their spelling. In this case, not only is "guitar" mis-spelled, but is mis-spelled in two different ways. And THAT is the tell-tale sign.
> 
> Why? One of the cardinal traits of dyslexics is that they eventually stop monitoring their own comprehension. Competent readers might make an error and think "Well, THAT can't be right". And if you look at their eye movements as they read, we see that they constantly backscan over the preceding few words, uconsciously checking for whether the current word makes sense. Whatever the source of a person's reading difficulties (and most often it is a very slow decoding of the letter-to-sound correspondance that makes it feel like one is reading a book one-letter-to-a-page), the throughput rate of what's on the page is too slow to keep track of everything and make sense of what one reads (see Gerry D's bit about the kid in his class who would read aloud "And the bee-ARE like-ed the HO-knee"), so people just stop checking to see if what they_ thought _they read actually makes sense. In turn, that translates into not checking whether what you put on the page (or screen) makes sense or not.
> 
> If I look at my keyboard and see that a spelling error might have arisen from one key being too perilously close to another (e.g., spelling "another" as "anothet" or "anothef" or even "anothe5"), I understand. But when the same word is spelled several different ways and the keys aren't anywhere near each other, I know I have someone with reading problems.



It's lysdexic.


sheehs


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## gtone (Nov 1, 2009)

Don't y'all worry about George Gruhn in that video clip. While some of what he's speaking is truth, a lot of is pandering to his own business interests. After all, there's little margin with his business model in reselling a Norlin-era Gibson as it simply isn't collectible and therefore, he has little interest in doing so. As well, he has inherent bias to pump up the pre-Norlin Gibson and pre-CBS Fender guitars as these are good examples of his "bread'n'butter" inventory while dissing anything that came later.

While the Norlin-era Gibbies were hampered by spotty quality control and some downright bad business decisions, the fact remains that a lot of toneful tracks laid down in the 70's were recorded with perfectly fine examples of that very same era of instruments. Examples of outrageously good tone recorded with those godawful instruments - Jimmy McCulloch's solo on the live version of Wings' _Maybe I'm Amazed_ (mid-70's SG) or Stone the Crows' _Niagara (_early 70's medallion Firebird). So while George Gruhn's "collector" clients like Richard Gere might prefer to pay $29G for pre-CBS Strat or $100G for a LP Goldtop, those of us who live in the real world don't mind picking up 70's-era instruments for more realistic prices, particularly if they sound/play great (some of us actually use them).


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## Roryfan (Apr 19, 2010)

Disclaimer #1: Yes, there were a few dogs made before '66 & yes there were a few good 'uns made afterwards.

Disclaimer #2: Richard Gere is a tool, even if he did give the money from the Sotheby's auction to charity. I like the part in the pre-sale interview where he gripes that a certain Tele has terrible action. G.E. then looks at him in utter shock/disdain/wretched self-awareness that he too is party to the circle jerk & says. "Are you kidding? This thing plays great!" 

Disclaimer #3: I don't automatically hate a guitar because its' from the 70s. Thanks to The Edge & Randy Rhoads, I'll admit to lusting after an aged white '74 LP Custom & '76 Explorer. 


Being born in '72, I've been hunting for a good guitar from my birth year for a while now, but with the exception of 2 Strats (a '73 hardtail & '74 trem) I can't think of one guitar from the 70s that I've owned/played that I'd take over a decent reissue. Fender & Gibson's Custom Shops have produced some absolutely stellar instruments, hard to argue with tone, playability & reliability.

Disclaimer # 4: My '72 Thinline is way too heavy for a chambered guitar, doesn't play very well & has that awful sticky poly on the neck, but it's a non-factor in this discussion until someone can truly recapture the magic of the original Wide Range pups.


Some of the crazy vintage prices from 4-5 yrs ago really drove up the prices of 70s Fender/Gibsons, but they've really only risen dramatically in the last 2-3 yrs. The trickle-down effect is understandable, but what strikes me as odd is the delay: Prices on 70s guitars are rising as the prices for pre-66 guitars are declining. As the gap continues to narrow, vintage guitars that are not perfect museum pieces are becoming relatively affordable. A refinished pre-CBS Strat is now in the same ballpark as a clean 1970 (I saw one for $7K this summer, really?!?). I know what one I'll take, and it's not the poly-covered boat anchor.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

mhammer said:


> I don't think it is protecting his own interests as much as the sheer volume of product he sees coming through his doors. Some of that product is stuff he ends up selling, some is stuff the guys on the 3rd floor repair/restore, and some is stuff he decides not to buy. Note as well that he gets to see a huge spectrum of instruments from over a very long swathe of guitar history, such that major inflection points in overall quality can be more apparent to a guy in his position than they would be to us.
> 
> It's a bit like being a movie critic. If you or I go out to maybe a half dozen movies in a year, chances are we'll tolerate, and maybe even enjoy most of those films. The person who has to see several hundred in a year, will get impatient with the mediocre and "merely adequate".
> 
> Finally, I think it is worth noting that when folks like him make a comment about declines in quality, often what they mean is greater inconsistency in the final product. So, if one in every 50 was a stinker, and 20 in every 50 were absolute timeless gems, prior to Norlin's ownership, but AFTER Norlin took ownership, 10 in every 50 were gems and 10 were stinkers, that is a change in overall consistency of product that you or I woud not really be in a position to detect.


Hey, I agree with some of what he says--but I also think he overstates some of it--even stuff I agree with overall...


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