Les Paul - my hero

I've owned many guitars in my life and other than one (i'm sorry Les) butterscotch telecaster I always came back to my Les Pauls. I agreed with Les that while the SG is badass looking, it was not a Les Paul. I tried to work it out with 2 different SG's and we just didn't see eye to eye or eye to hand or whatever.....

So, in his honor, tonight, I will play my Brown sunburst Les Paul Special 55-77 ('55 reissue made in '77), my Wine Red 88 Les Paul Standard and my White Les Paul Custom at the same time. and the tone will sing songs to the heavens.

I've also owned an early 2000's Natural Les Paul Smartwood which was an interesting one, it was the thickness of an SG, but with 490 and 498 pickups and it had no Nitro finish. It was almost like the finish of the newer 'faded' series but all the woods were from reclaimed forests and the lacquer and plating were all pretty green as well. Nice guitar, but didn't really sound like a Les Paul.

Then after that one I found a '75 Les Paul Deluxe in a guitar shop that was near my house in Narragansett, Rhode Island in the town of Wakefield. They were only asking $900 for it, so I knew something was wrong. after some long negotiations, i walked out with a beast of a guitar for 700 of my college loan dollars. that was SUPPOSED to help me pay for my room and board, but cash in the hands of a musician is never a good idea.

WELL, here was the checklist of the issues:

it WAS a Deluxe Goldtop, but someone stripped the gold finish and refinished it natural blond.
it WAS routed for the mini humbuckers but someone routed out the fucking body to fit standard sized humbuckers
oh it weighed almost 12 pounds - which hurts the shoulder.
it did have the SWEETEST neck profile though, i still miss that.

Turns out the neck started to get the sweet mid 70's 3 piece maple warp and it got to the point where the headstock was almost visually rotating....so i got rid of it. it wasn't Les's fault though....so don't blame him for that era of weird 3 piece necks, 3 part pancake bodies and improperly routed les paul belly's...