How to spell D-E-L-U-S-I-O-N-A-L

Is someone on crack? $9K USD for a repro junk Norlin era Les Paul

The cheap answer is “go into marketing at Gibson” but Gibson is certainly not the only maker high on their own BS.

Back 50 years ago, the most commonly available Les Paul was the Les Paul Deluxe. At the time Gibson was owned by Norlin, a company focused on its own navel working hard to milk the Gibson name while producing some truly execrable pieces of, well, excrement.

The Les Paul Deluxe had a mahogany body, or more specifically a body made of two pieces of mahogany glued together like a sandwich. Finishes were a credit to the company hiring people with no eyesight to handle the application. The pickups were an underpowered toneless mini hum bucker. The necks were often twisted and the electronics were the best you could get for 29 cents.

The seventies were a terrible decade for American made electrics, and those guitars were so horrible whether Gibson or Fender that they created the opportunity for brands like Ibanez to enter the market and achieve strong share.

Guitars from this decade are old. They are not vintage. Vintage implies aged excellence. Not those guitars. They were just old bad. It’s hard to find a 70’s Deluxe as released because all of them have been heavily modified to make them playable. I know this. I still have one.

Gibson offers a 70’s reissue Goldtop for about $2500 CAD. It is a proper reissue of a lousy guitar complete with sandwich body and limited pickups. However, if you want the hook suck really deep, you could order the Mike Ness 1976 Custom Shop version where the stock pickup have been replaced with a pair of P90s and the thing beat to crap and affixed with So Cal style automotive stickers like we put on toolboxes back in the day. It’s only $8999 USD. Yes $9K for a reissue of some junk, then beaten up at high margin.

Gibson needs a smack upside the head for their delusion and anyone actually buying one of these things should consult with a mental health professional.

Yikes.