How to Distinguish a Real Gibson Les Paul from a Fake?

Gibson Les Paul is highly valued guitars by musicians, and, accordingly, is expensive. Many non-honest producers try to profit from their popularity. They produce a terrible quality of Les Paul's replicas which are then sold at a price, many times greater than their real value. You have to understand that Gibson is expensive guitars, so a 300-400 dollar stick on which "Gibson" is written is most probably fake. Also, these Les Paul's have their unique quality, which no fake can forge.

Wood of the head of the neck

The USP of the majority (not all, however) Les Paul's guitar is that it is made from one bar of mahogany, i.e., the entire neck of the guitar is a single piece of wood. It is, thanks to this feature of the Gibson, that the heads of the guitars have the property of not breaking down.

For London Guitar Shop of counterfeit Gibson's, making an authentic head is a big problem, because, with this technology, there is still a lot of unused wood that is not suitable for future use. Therefore, they usually saw out the heads from smaller wood bars, and the missing parts are then simply glued.

Instead of decorating guitars with a beautiful (and quite expensive) "burning" maple top plate (flame maple top), the producers of false Les Paul’s just forget it. "Flame"- it's just a film that is glued to the deck. It looks pretty nice, but a similar method is used everywhere to produce budget tools.

At the very edge of the deck, the film does not adhere well to the edges, which causes a dark streak. It is not very noticeable. The potentiometers of the "Twist" volume and tone must be correctly screwed to the tamer block from the inside. But, since the knob of the potentiometer (in the picture above) is very crooked. At the same Les Paul's, the resistor knobs are always straight

And, finally, a guitar case. An unreliable case is very easy to calculate; with a genuine case from Gibson, it is only drawn by a leather surface. In the pictures below - fake cases. The non-genuine case is simply a cheap, completely ordinary, hard guitar case with a printed Gibson logo. It is not as rigid and solid as the original case from Gibson.

It has a rubber grip, which is fixed to the case itself with completely unconvincing metal staples. On inside, you will find some nasty nylon coating, which looks extremely poor. On the left and middle pictures, you can see that the material of the outer side of the case is somewhat like a varnish coating, which makes it look rather ugly.

And finally, a summary plus a couple more points:

Gibson is real if:

• The inscription "Gibson" is italicized;
• The cover of the anchor rod fits tightly to the neck and has two bolts (not three);
• The cavity under the adjusting bolt of the anchor is made in the form of a triangle with smoothed edges;
• The head of the neck is strongly bent back;
• All the wiring is neat and well done;
• Complete with the guitar comes the instruction manual, warranty card, and hard trunk.

Signs of fake Gibson:

• Vertical inscription "Gibson" on the lid of the anchor;
• The cavity under the pickup is painted black

For more information visit us at: http://sixtysixtysounds.com/