Customer Reviews

The Gibson Les Paul Book: A Complete History of Les Paul Guitars

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Bacon gets points for overall organization but looses a great deal for leaving out key details and making too many mistakes. For instance, the early years were covered well, but the end of and the post Norlin period was full of glaring ommissions and mistakes. As an avid Les Paul collector and frequent contributor to vintage guitar magazine I was sorely disappointed. There was no mention of the 1988 Showcase series where Gibson installed EMG pickups in its guitars. No mention of the experiment with Steinberger and the bizarre mutant Les Pauls that surfaced in 86-87 timeframe. The Norlin 81 Silverburst was not covered nor was there any mention of the Kahler tremelo collaboration, the Ferrari Red and other color experiments. The reference tables are packed with errors and more omissions. This book wont help a collector identify or understand Les Pauls. If you are going to write a book about the Gibson Les Paul then make sure it is accurate if not complete. This book has great photos and a very good summary of key early year facts....but enough already about the 59-61 bursts already. There is no much more to the Les Paul history.

Depending upon your degree of knowledge about vintage guitars and Les Pauls in particular you may find this book a helpful and informative resource or a complete waste of time.

Tony Bacon has written a lot of books on vintage guitars and guitar collecting. I like his stuff, but he very often gets things just plain wrong. I am certain it has more to do with mistakes in the editing process than anything, but there are some nit-picky errors in this book.

The best treatment of Les Pauls and vintage Gibson electrics that I have seen is A.R. Duchossior's excellent and exhaustively researched book "Gibson Electrics - The Classic Years" (published by Hal Leonard).

This little book is a good introduction to the history of this important model and it has some nice photographs of various iterations of the Les Paul model from 1952 to the date of publication in the late 1990s, but if you're looking for a completely comprehensive guide/history to the Les Paul guitar that is 100% accurate this is not it. Still, if you're a guitar nut (like me) it's a nice little book to have.

The book is rather small and thin -- despite that it contains quite a lot of information but unfortunately much of it is in a dry tabular form. That said, what text there is inside is quite enjoyable. The story of the magical 1959 Les Paul is insightful. They varied tremedously as they were hand made by old ladies for the most part -- so the whole concept of a 1959 specification and 1959 is really somewhat flawed. I also like the pictures: 2 of Jimmy Page's Les Pauls and Gary Moore's "Peter Green Les Paul" (yes that Les Paul, the one with the reversed magnetic in the neck pick-up). Some of these guitars have passed into guitar folklore -- they have become well known characters over the last 43 years or so of their existance. Pity they didn't have an image of Eric Clapton's Les Paul -- the one used on the seminal Beano album -- as it was stolen back in the 60's. [There was a rumor recently -- in Guitar Techniques magazine -- that another London professional, Bernie Marsden, is currently playing that guitar but who knows.]. The book should be brought up to date and some holes filled in - hence only 3-stars (actually more like 3.5) but if you like Les Pauls, I mean really like Les Pauls - then you will probably want to take a look at this.

The book is rather small and thin -- despite that it contains quite a lot of information but unfortunately much of it is in a dry tabular form. That said, what text there is inside is quite enjoyable. The story of the magical 1959 Les Paul is insightful. They varied tremedously as they were hand made by old ladies for the most part -- so the whole concept of a 1959 specification and 1959 is really somewhat flawed. I also like the pictures: 2 of Jimmy Page's Les Pauls and Gary Moore's "Peter Green Les Paul" (yes that Les Paul, the one with the reversed magnetic in the neck pick-up). Some of these guitars have passed into guitar folklore -- they have become well known characters over the last 43 years or so of their existance. Pity they didn't have an image of Eric Clapton's Les Paul -- the one used on the seminal Beano album -- as it was stolen back in the 60's. [There was a rumor recently -- in Guitar Techniques magazine -- that another London professional, Bernie Marsden, is currently playing that guitar but who knows.]. The book should be brought up to date and some holes filled in - hence only 4-stars (actually more like 3.5) but if you like Les Pauls, I mean really like Les Pauls - then you will probably want to take a look at this.

i LOVE gibson les pauls and the like!!! i have seen this book in a library in palm springs,ca and fell in love with. wanted to steal it. but when i discovered it on amazon. i bought it. i also paid more than when i could have waited to pay less. this is a great book. thank you.

This book is quite good, but I really think that the idea has a lot more to offer. The book is great for a quick reading of Gibson's history and the evolution of the Les Paul model in particular, but I think it could have been more clearly-structured. Not everything is negative though, there are great pictures, and I like the emphasis on descriptive details about the guitars. I wish this book had 30 or 40 more pages worth of text and pictures, that would have been great!

Well Done! Even the layman can walk away with a grasp of this instrument. Anyone who researches the history of rock and roll needs to read this book, even if they don't play guitar. I can't wait for their next book.-JDC

This is a wonderful resource especially for those of us that own and play these fine instruments. The author is a absolute expert on the history and complex business interactions that brought this instrument to market. This is a outstanding piece of work

This is a good book with llots of great info on les pauls. I am getting one tommorow!