Review : Gibson Les Paul Special Tribute DC
The Les Paul Special is a classic model. Stripped down and simplistic, it evokes the Gibson of the late fifties and early sixties. I will not play bullshit bingo by using either "iconic" or "authentic" in my article, I will leave that shovelling to the Gibson talking head(s), but the idea is a simple guitar like in the olden days.
Perhaps they could have come up with a longer name but I doubt it. For the purpose of the article, I am going to call it the Special. In this case I mean the regular Special and not the Custom Shop version. This guitar is a slab mahogany body with a slim profile maple neck and rosewood fingerboard. The inlays are simple dots. The headstock is old style Gibson, of the smaller footprint and unadorned with any inlays. Clean and simple. I like it.
The bridge / tailpiece is of the stop wraparound variety, so intonation adjustments are rather limited. And the buyer probably doesn't care too much. There is one volume and one tone control along with a pickup selector. And that selector switches between a pair of proper P90 pickups.
As we know, the P90 is a big single coil. Single coils are typically noisy. My test rig for this evaluation is pretty simple. Guitar into a Line 6 HX Effects into the front of a PRS Dallas 50 watt tube combo. It was not all that noisy and I did not have a noise gate set up in the HX Effects. Cables are all Ernie Ball.
With the amplifier set for a clean tone, gain way down, master up, tone and reverb at noon, the guitar is bright and sparkling in the bridge, less so in the middle position and still bright but more subtle in the neck position. It sounds like you would expect P90s into a clean amp to sound like. I'm not crazy about the tone pot as the rolloff is rapid, and wonder if the 50's style wiring that I have on my R9 or recently re-pickuped SG could be used. I much prefer those tones and thank guitar technician Kevin Martel for recommending this configuration to me.
The Special sounds terrific clean. But do not think for a moment that those pickups lack oomph. Turn up the gain to about 10 o clock on the PRS Dallas and back off the Master, and the guitar delivers that Special crunch that players have loved for a very long time. There are no push-pulls, no tech adds, just a simple guitar that works a charm with a good amp. At the moment all my amps are tube based so I did not try it in a solid state or digital amplifier and so cannot offer any observations there.
The slim taper neck profile suits me well and fits my hands perfectly. I lack the long elegant fingers of some folks and the fit works really well with this neck. There is no binding, but the frets are finished beautifully and there are no sharp edges as I have found on similarly priced guitars from other makers. The neck uses a Graph Tech nut and has 22 medium jumbo frets.
The tuners have the small butter bean style knobs. I have never been a fan of these and nothing here changes my mind. I do not find that they hold tune all that well and I was retuning regularly, even considering that the guitar had the factory strings on it and had been hanging and played for a while. While mostly usable, I would prefer the Kluson style tuners as on my SG ('63 reissue).
The Special as it comes out of the box does have one Gibson consistency. I don't know which farm supply house Gibson gets its strings from, but I am pretty sure that they come from the same company that does rusty barbed wire. I feel bad for stores demoing Gibson guitars with factory strings because I have never found any Gibson product to feel good with the factory strings. This is an eval unit so I did not change the strings on it, but were I to buy one, that would be job #1. Either D'Addario XTs or Ernie Ball Paradigms as immediate first aid. It comes strung with 10-46 strings, so I would probably do a little intonation check and neck tweak to accommodate my preference for 10-52 strings.
I noted that the body is a mahogany slab. My evaluation unit is finished in a red stain on the body and neck. The top coat is a satin nitrocellulose lacquer. I prefer nitro as a finish, but would also prefer that it was gloss not satin. I simply do not like satin finishes. In addition to the deep red, there are options in black, dark blue and dark brown. All are satin. That there is no TV Yellow option in a double cut is a sin. Pricing is $999 USD or $1299 CAD MAP. It comes with a gig bag, not a hardshell case.
There is a near identical model called the Tribute Junior DC which removes the neck pickup for about $100 less. If I were buying I would still go with the dual pickup version. Confusingly there is a Les Paul Special at $1599 which is a single cut version with dual volume and tone controls, a 50s profile neck and orange drop capacitors. It comes only in TV Yellow with a gloss nitro top coat. You decide if it's worth an additional $300 USD for a couple of extra pots and a specific capacitor and the loss of the second cutaway.
It sounds great, and it plays great, and the colour I can get past, so why will I return it when the eval period is done? Simply put, it's overpriced for what it delivers. It is of no doubt a fine guitar. It's made in the United States. That does not make it a better build than guitars coming out of Korea, Japan or even some factories in Indonesia (I'm thinking of the PRS factory in particular). You can get a lot more guitar for a lot less money. It will not say Gibson on the headstock or course, but are you buying a guitar for the tone or for the name. Whatever you choose is right for you. I'd have to replace those tuners pretty quick because I don't think that they are very good. I dislike having to put more money into a new guitar.
If this unit was on the rack at under a grand Canadian, it would be a great buy. As it is, buyers can look to alternatives at a lower cost of acquisition that may have more legs and be a better and more practical spend. My thanks to The Arts Music Store for their support of this review