The Gibson "Dirty Blonde" Guitar

To Whom This May Concern:

Upon Inspection of Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul # 076238 belonging to Robert Fausner I have discovered numerous anomalies in the construction, fit & finish & actual Architectural design flaws that make this guitar unusable for today's music. This actual guitar with it's inherent static problems is absolutely impossible to use in any recording situation.

This guitar, while being very attractive in an old school motif, is one of many we have seen like it, from Gibson that has totally eroded our confidence in Gibson's ability to build a quality guitar anymore.

The loud obnoxious static charge, that seems to amplify itself even louder, as you move your hand up and down, alone disqualifies this as an instrument that we could or would ever sell. We collectively tried to figure out what is actually causing it. We could not come close to figuring it out. The static buzz is extremely loud and would easily be audible to anyone who heard or played this guitar !!!!

The almost unbelievable dead spots on the G string of this guitar are deplorable at best. If anyone wants to argue with my findings. I suggest that they view the video tape filmed on 03/09/10 that Robert Fausner recorded at our facility in Las Vegas.   (See Above)

It is important to understand that, these guitars were first built in 1952, some 58 years ago. They resemble in looks & design the popular guitars that came out in the 1930's. The guitars I am speaking of is, the traditional old school jazz style guitar. The Les Paul is almost an exact copy from that antiquated old body shape, heel shape, neck joint, headstock and basic overall style except it has been made smaller by 2 inches and instead of leaving the body hollow it has been made solid. If you turn the guitar over and inspect the heel, It becomes immediately obvious that this guitar is built like an acoustic jazz guitar.

These guitars were never designed as lead instruments, they were designed for guitar players sitting in the back of the orchestra pit chording their guitar.

Today a guitar is considered the lead or first instrument and therefore the need for a longer neck & easy reach up to the higher frets is imperative.

Gibson actually addressed the problem in 1960 by completely discontinuing the Les Paul and replacing it with a completely new and totally different model of guitar, (Ironically the designer of the new guitar was Lester Polfus "Les Paul" himself who had little or nothing to do with designing the original famous model that was named after him.) It is a very common un-ethical marketing ploy in our industry to name a model after a famous guitarist.

This new improved SG (Solid Gibson) guitar was originally called "The Les Paul Model" also. The new model was lighter, had a much longer neck, it sounded better, played better and the headstock wasn't prone to breaking off anywhere near as much as the original Les Paul.

Sadly but probably for financial reasons Gibson did not heed all of Les Paul's design changes. The guitar was less than perfect. Neck stability was incredibly poor & caused problems in tuning & breakage at a different place than the Original Les Paul.

All The Original Les Paul's Break right behind the headstocks where they failed to put a volute.  All The SG's broke where the body connected to the neck (I don't know which was worse)  See This Link For Details On Breakage.

Gibson addressed the problem by using one band-aid after another to try to make the guitar neck stabilize. None of them worked too well. Worse than that, the original shape became distorted, the instrument went through numerous slight, and some not so slight, body re-shaping's. At one point the neck heel was so large that these instruments had to be some of the worst guitars Gibson or anyone else ever made. There are so many differently shaped Gibson SG's out there that I would or could not venture a guess as to how many.

In 1961 Les Paul himself insisted that Gibson remove his name from the guitar. Les Paul did not want to be associated with any substandard products. This is presumably why he redesigned the guitar in the first place. There were lawsuits, numerous, recalls & finally Gibson gave in and changed the designation to "The SG" this resulted in them no longer having to pay the design royalty to Les Paul.  (Don't Ya Just Love Big Corporations)

Over the last 58 years Les Paul made a tremendous amount of money with his association with Gibson, It was in his better interest not to let the general public know his true feelings for the substandard product that the company was manufacturing. After all he was paid by the number of units sold. There were many more disagreements, argument, lawsuits and general problems that the public was never privy to. For example Gibson neglected to pay his royalties on the Epiphone Les Paul's for years until Les took them to court again.

The critical design element that Gibson left completely out of the equation was the principle that Les Paul is actually famous for. (The prototype was actually called "The Log") Les Paul had designed a masterpiece, the first neck through body guitar.

The Original SG was designed to be a neck through body guitar. If Gibson had complied with all of Les Paul's designs not just the cosmetic designs the guitar would have been much more successful than it actually was. Not only would the stability problem be 100% solved. The guitar would have sounded heads & tails better. The pickups would have been mounted in the neck itself better facilitating the sustain and there would have been no neck joint to glue up and cut off much of the higher end harmonic overtones that come from the neck & fingerboard.

There should have been no need to re-introduce the original heavy, outdated original Les Paul on the market again. Sadly 10 years later in 1970, Gibson was starting to again mass produce the same first bloated design that people were asking for, Jimmy Page was using one, He made them popular again.

Today the vast amount of un-knowing un-educated general public believe as Robert Fausner once did that the Gibson guitars are of exceptional quality. I am here to refute that fact, I believe their reputation has been bought and paid for!! I believe their reputation is incredibly overrated. In fact when I worked for Gibson we were told the concept of placing the price high will make the public think the product is good. " The Most Expensive Product Is Usually The Best Product" "You Get What You Pay For" These are simply BS advertising slogans.

Please do not think that I am writing this letter as a disgruntled ex Gibson employee, I know there are many disgruntled Gibson employees who may or may not have an axe to grind with Gibson. See glassdoor.com

glassdoor.com is where you would go to check on a company before you apply there. Just like an employer will want to look at your resume, you can see what the current employees think about the company.

(In 2009 Gibson scored in the worst 10 companies to work for in the world.) Gibson actually was the winner or loser depending on how you look at it. Because Gibson was the worst of the worst 10.

As I said at the beginning of the above paragraph please do not take me for one of these disgruntled employees. When I left Gibson's employ in 1991 they treated me fairly and with much respect. They gave me 6 weeks full severance pay & 7 beautiful original Steinberger guitars. totaling in retail value to 15,000.00. During my employment I was paid extremely well, They even Gibson paid for my full time assistant who worked out of my house. I had a great job and my direct superiors are still my good friends to this day. One of my duties was to give free guitars away to Rock Stars and anybody I thought would or could become an "Opinion Leader".

I was hired by Gibson in 1991 & given a one year contract as a consultant, marketing man, teacher & domestic sales manager for their modern guitar division "Steinberger Guitars" I was never involved with the old Gibson models.

My shop foreman Mike Risinger & my parts manager Robert Becker also witnessed these anomalies. They agree with my findings. Both of them are Luthiers with over 20 years experience between them.

I will freely testify in court to these findings.

Very Sincerely !!

_____________________________

Ed Roman

___________________________      ____________________________

Witness                                          Witness

Design Flaws On The Les Paul Original Model 1952 to 2010

The pickup positioning is completely incorrect on the Les Paul. The location creates a node at the 2nd octave location because the pickup itself falls directly where the 24th fret would be if the guitar had a 24th fret. (which it lacks)

I have attached a document hereto "Exhibit A"

The document (Exhibit A) was prepared by Donald Johnson an independent physicist from Arizona. This document will explain another expert opinion on the subject of scales. These scales affect the stability of the tuning, The tension of the strings.
 

In 1952 Leo Fender introduced The concept of "Straight String Pull" which in the opinion of most guitar builders is the correct & most intelligent way for strings to mount to the headstock. It seems natural that Gibson would have seen the folly of their design at that time. In 1991 during my employment with Gibson the problem was addressed in discussions repeatedly but Gibson opted not to do anything about it. There were numerous other modernization improvements that have been discovered in the last 60 years Gibson has seen fit to ignore them also.

The Gibson neck has a very steep tilt at the headstock, This coupled with the incredibly overweight body creates a tremendous problem with breakage at the neck..

Gibson is fully aware of this problem and has done nothing to alleviate this problem. This problem could be easily rectified by using lighter more tonal wood for the body and adding a volute to the neck where the break spot always occurs.

Gibson glues their neck to the body, this layer of glue that separates the neck from the body only serves to act as a dampening barrier to the overtones from the neck, frets and fingerboard that could conceivably make the guitar a better & more versatile sounding guitar.

Gibson has somehow seen fit to continue to spring mount their pickups. These springs dampen the pickups and eliminate the direct contact much the same as Design Flaw #4 at the neck joint.

In the late 1970's Edward Van Halen demonstrated to the guitar world that hard mounting a pickup increased sustain & overtones.