Gibson Les Paul Standard 60s UB

There are not enough words to say how great this guitar looks and sounds like. The "unburst" definitely looks amazing, but the finish is slightly darker than it is shown in the pictures. The hardcase is also awesome. However, I have to say a few other things, not so great things:
- Even though the quality control of the Gibson's has improved, there still are quality control problems. Mine's had a red stain (from the guitar neck finish) on the nut. The stain on the side of the nut is not big, but it can be seen quite clearly. This was a bit disappointing.
- Fretwork also is not a masterpiece. The heights of some frets are uneven. But nothing very bad. More or less, height it was okay.
- The nut was extremely high. I had to take the guitar to the luthier to take care of the nut height.
- The set-up was quite bad also. String action was very high and the 6th and the 5th strings were buzzing on the 3-5th frets. Proper set-up solved these problems.

In general, all of the problems were quite minor and were solved by doing proper set-up (except for the stain on the nut and frets).

In my youth, I never liked Les Pauls. I tried dozens of them and none of them appealed to me. Now I'm older, am no longer dyeing my hair green and am perfectly okay with not having high output Destructo-buckers in my guitars.

The neck is a comfortable thickness, neither a baseball bat or a wafer. The pickups have the grit you want without turning everything into a chugfest, the separate volume and tone controls for each pickup give you a huge range of sounds. Unless you absolutely NEED a whammy bar, this will play any genre of music you want and look that part while doing it. The figuring of the top is subtle rather than ostentatious and the weight is solid without being an anchor. If you audition with a Les Paul and don't get the gig, it wasn't the guitar.

It's become a trope to gripe about Gibson build quality, but the only fault I could really find with mine was that the nut and frets were too low for me to be truly happy, but that's just personal preference. I had a new bone nut and had some Jester 57110 stainless steel frets installed. Bam! Perfect.

I now get why the Les Paul appeals, and have since added a white Les Paul Custom to my collection to keep this one company. Get one, take a deep whiff of that vanilla-like aroma as you open the case, plug in and rock!