Studio Blues - What happened to Les Paul Studio Values?

It would seem that I'm having a more difficult time selling my Les Paul Studio than I would have predicted.  It isn't the end of the world, and makes for a compelling AND unavoidable reason for keeping it. It did get me thinking about why my thinking was so far off the mark.

I'm still here.

I've commented before on why I think Gibson made a huge mistake in pricing the SGJ and LPJ as they did, and it feels like their chickens are coming home to roost. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that makes me a giant cock.

That image search could have ended poorly.

Stupid pricing decisions, combined with their infamous rosewood seizure, have combined to create the perfect shit-storm on the used market.

Half-Baked Ideas

In 2011, US Agents raided Gibson and confiscated most of their rosewood.  Apparently, it had something to do with acquiring Indian Rosewood that wasn't "finished" by Indian workers.  Under Indian law, that meant it was illegal to export, and under US law, that meant it was illegal to import.

Gibson had been doing it anyway.

Obviously, not having enough rosewood around was going to significantly impact production, so a solution was devised - baked maple.  Take regular maple, bake it at 200 degrees Celsius, then reintroduce moisture at pressure (torrefaction).  This results in a material that looks and feels like rosewood.

Anderton's Music in the UK offers the best comparison, so here it is, but credit where credit is due. 

Looking at the picture above, you'd be forgiven for thinking the top neck is rosewood - it's dark and chocolatey.  I've played a few in stores, and I can't say that the feel is any different to rosewood.

Does it sound different?

I honestly don't know.  It's hard to isolate just one element of the guitar and ascribe a tonal difference to that part alone.  Obviously a baked maple fingerboard isn't going to result in a Les Paul sounding like a Telecaster, but one would expect that if you think there is a difference between a Custom (Ebony) and a Standard (Rosewood), a baked maple Les Paul might sound different as well.

Whether or not there is an actual sound difference misses the point; guitar players and collectors were destined to value "baked-maple" Gibsons less highly than their rosewood counterparts.  We're troglodytes by nature, and anything new is scary and weird.  Baked maple was definitely scary and weird, so we had the better part of 5 years being awfully suspicious of Gibson guitars. 

That was only half the problem though.

When everyone is super...

Gibson was always an aspirational brand for me.  In high school, I can remember one guy much older than me with a Les Paul Custom in white, and two other guys slightly older with Studios (wine red and Alpine Gold with Ebony).  Everyone else had "other" guitars - Squiers, Yamahas, Epiphones, etc.

Eventually somebody got an SG Standard.  It was black.  I still remember how impressed we all were.  The point is that owning a Gibson was special.  The Studio was about as "budget" as it got, and it wasn't exactly affordable.  

Then Gibson started pushing more models, specifically the LPJ and the SGJ.  Stripped down versions of the classic Les Paul and SG, these guitar featured faded finishes, maple necks (not just baked maple boards), and black covered pickups.

Combine these guitars with more and more of the "faded finish" Les Paul Studios and suddenly owning a Gibson was no longer that special.  For nearly as much scratch as it cost to buy a MIM Stratocaster, you could have yourself a honest to goodness Gibson.  Sure, it didn't have the fancy finish or necessarily the typical woods, but they were Gibsons.

In 2014, they updated the line, and made the above looking model look even better, by adding zebra pickups.  I played a model exactly as pictured below, which had the grippy knobs and an excellent feeling neck.  It was listed for $599 in Long and McQuade and I almost walked out with it that day.

It was that good.

See the maple neck?

Quality seemed a bit all over the place though, and the introduction of these guitars to Best Buy certainly didn't help, with staff who didn't know the first thing about guitars, and an environment that seemed to actively encourage fret-swell.

Now What Cat, Now What?

Things for the 2016 model year certainly aren't helping either.  While the LPJ has been retired, the Les Paul Studio Faded seems to be taking up the mantle.  While still priced higher than the LPJ, check out this Faded in "Satin Fireburst", listed for just a shade under $1000 CAD before tax.

Really Gibson?

If you showed me that pic without telling me what it was, I'd be hard pressed to tell you that it was a faded.  Aside from finish, this ones comes with Burstbuckers rather than the 498/490 set, and a gig bag instead of a HSC.

See the problem?

A Hard Sell

While I'm not ready to revise my thinking on pricing, I have built myself a bit of a buffer through a succession of trades that lead me to this piece.  A "real" Les Paul Studio, spec'd identically to the one I currently have, is listed at $1849 plus tax, meaning that my price range is well below the 50% threshold, OHSC or not (in this case, not).

Guess I'll just have to hold onto it... for now...