If you like these kinds of breakdowns of Gibson guitars I highly recommend Troglys TH-cam channel, he doesn't deal in actual 59s (yet) but he's quickly becoming an authority on everything else Gibson.
@@blodpudding yep watch Austin`s channel a lot and even his playing is getting a lot better( lol ).... what he does not know or document ani`t worth watching i reckon
You have to remember that the 'vintage' market as we know it has only really been a 'thing' for 25/30 years, and we're still finding things out - Gibson's variability of handmade quality from the period is also still an issue - they were not built with the idea that one day they would be worth squillions! I've been a session player and luthier for 45 years +, and am still finding things out. I part-traded a nice, rare (now) 63 telecaster in Sherwood green for a 58 tobacco burst LP in 1978 which didn't cost me all that much at all...because then, it was just 'old', not 'vintage'. With my luthier hat on, I've had to disappoint quite a few successful musician friends over the years, particularly with Fenders and Gibsons as some fakes are just so good to the point given who owns them, no one really questions their veracity.
@@vsmicer I agree, but some of these findings are so obvious. 1960s slim neck, ok. Paint, really not ok. Weight, could be, but unlikely. Cavities, no way. So i do think that this is one of the insider secrets that no one wanted to become common knowledge until Entwhistle was dead and gone.
@@vsmicer Not all shops are great at authentication, but a lot of time it is a genuine mistake. Only a few a down right fraudulent. I remember going to pickup a 50s Les Paul Special, only to realize that once I saw the guitar it person it was obviously a fake made from original hardware and some random body. The guy tried to convince me it was real by pulling out a note from a well known shop saying it was authentic. I knew the shop, and they are a decent shop who had sold some of my own 50s Gibsons, but this guitar was obviously suspect, so I was surprised they had authenticated it. They gave everything I gave to them a look over, so I know they don't just say everything is genuine. You have to handle a lot of genuine vintage guitars to get a feel for the finishes, routings, parts. Photos are usually not enough.
I think perhaps the owner knows the truth so isn't taking the news badly. The guy is clearly French so he's from Quebec (Canada) and now living in Florida so probably some french dude back in Quebec faked the guitar using a 1970's Ibanez and messed with it back in the 70's or 80's. I remember back in Montreal in the 70's, you could buy Ibanez Les Paul copies for under $200 bucks and double necked SG's. There was a tiny pawn shop run by two old Jewish dudes that had about 100 guitars hanging from the ceiling and you had to be careful not to hit your head on them. They had another make called Eko and I think they were from Italy but who the hell knows.
I don't know. Who's to say. When serial numbers don't match, colors don't match. Tail pieces are changed, pick up cavities are routed out and/or painted. Can't be tough
So he traded a real Gold Top for $50,000 for Johns real fake burst. I think he makes enough at auction to buy a real 59 when it’s all said and done. Because John owned it and it made a book.
@@foofghtr Maybe. It depends on the value of people in that market feel there is to Entwistle owning it. I'm not convinced that the vintage guitar buying market is going to put a super high value on a fake guitar owned by Entwistle that was erroneously put in a book. Hopefully for him they do though.
what qualifies as a big loss depends a lot on how much you have. i have a feeling he won't miss this loss if there is one. i like his philosophy of let nature run its course.
I don't reckon people really missed anything. I think this was a case of passing the hot potato, hoping to make full on celebrity 'burst money somewhere before it was officially outed. ECG can't risk their rep with that though.
Crazy... Thought it was a replica in the previous video & was surprised that it was supposed to be an original burst. Pretty shocking that nobody has outed this guitar before now. Great video & thank you for sharing.
same here... having handled a considerable amount of top-notch replicas (which i wouldn't even call this one!) and a handful of originals, this immediately stuck out to me as a replica. for starters, you just did NOT see such "bbq" tops on any vintage ones... beyond that, the binding and other details, not to mention the lustre (which is among the hardest things to replicate... if not impossible) didn't match that of original ones. really, see enough of both (real and fake) and you'll be able to discern with fairly high certainty in time.
It's like the art market, it's got loads of fakes in it... It's not in the owners interests to investigate too much. I bet a significant percentage of vintage guitars are fakes to one degree or another.
First off, you guys have the coolest job in the world. For me, the only thing better whole be being one of those few "always in demand" sessions players, which i honestly would prefer to being a rock star. As far as vintage Gibsons go, the 50's Bursts get all the love (and money). Repairing guitars for twenty years, and playing them (pretty piss poorly) for over thirty has afforded me several opportunities to play vintage and Uber high-end guitars over the years. The accumulated experience garnered from all the different examples of models, years, conditions, changes modifications etc (and admittedly, some degree of person biase) has resulted with me being of the opinion that a big reason the LPs are the most coveted is linked heavily with the pedigree prestige, as opposed to it being because they're better guitars, and certainly not because they're the better sounding. For my money, if I were presented with the opportunity to own any single vintage guitar (that has the clause that I cannot ever sell it, because if I could than of course I'll go with the one I can get the most money for), I would choose an ES 335 everytime. Id prefer something like a 61-64 Dot, I like the smaller horns over the mickey mouse ears of the 1958/59. And seeing as this hypothetical patron is so generous, I'd ask that with some of the money saved from not buying that $350,000 LP, I'd get a good set of 57 PAFs. Speaking of that: when it comes to Gibsons and PAFs, again the Bursts get all the love. Undeservedly IMO. Don't get me wrong: a really nice, light and lively Les Paul with PAFs is a beautiful thing. However, If you ever get the opportunity to try a vintage 335 with PAFs, you'll understand why they were referred to as the Burst killer. The naturally dominant mid-range tone that semihollows produce, matched with the slightly scooped sound of the lighter wound early PAFs, and the added clarity that comes along with them is🤔…f'cking guitar tone apotheosis! Besides that, when it comes to being able to produce a modern guitar with the tone and feel of vintage ones: using period correct materials like old growth Honduran mahogany, Brazilian rosewood, the old school hide glue and nitro finishes before they started adding inhibitors and plasticizers and things like that, 335s are hardest to pull off. With Fenders and Les Pauls, I've seen them succeeded in getting the same tone that the actual vintage ones. I've yet to hear a 335 though. And when it comes to modern production and custom shop guitars the gap between convincing vintage like tone is even wider. A modern Les Paul standard sounds far closer to a vintage one than a modern ES335. Ironically, while they're beautiful and insanely well designed and built, I've never been a huge PRS fan. They use higher quality materials, in most ways they're better designed, and DEFINITELY have a better and more consistent quality control, but they just don't do it for me. That said, I'm seriously considering selling a few guitars, including a 335, and buying a PRS McCarty 594 Hollowbody II. And the reason is that I find them to sound closer to a vintage ES335 than my actual ES335. Side note: I just finished rereading my comment for spelling and grammar errors and discover just how long and rambling this is. But what am I going to do now: not post it? Just know you're fortunate, if I go on this long when I'm typing on phone screen, imagine what it's like when I'm actually talking. PS: i prefer gold tops
That top profile sure looks a lot like my 74 Les Paul standard. Very shallow and also a 10+ pounder. The neck heal also looks exactly like mine as does the slim taper neck. I inherited the guitar from my uncle who bought it brand-new at Rhythm City music in Atlanta Georgia in 1974 for $439.00 the store special ordered the guitar with humbuckers from Gibson. Before I inherited the guitar I already owned a 2012 59 R9 reissue and to my astonishment the 74 kills it in every way possible except for the weight.
There's something that needs to be said here, thats being glossed over. My expertise is in the PAF humbuckers, I reverse engineered them over a 22 year time span, using SCIENCE-based laboratories in the largest magnet wire company in the world, and a mentor Senior Ferromagnetics metallurgist who helped me in the history and materials in PAF for over 6 years; plus my own dissections and restorations of PAF's from every year. We also analyzed Gibson magnetic steel parts from every model guitar pickup made from 1937-1977, which shows the entire history of the steel used in that time span; how the materials were actually made, precise element content and much more. So, I know them, I know how to closely replicate them so that most can't tell them from the real deal. So ALSO, What really STUCK OUT, is that ALL the rules about how to identify vintage PAF's, basically MANY OF THOSE RULES ARE NOT TRUE and there are always exceptions. For instance, I own a vintage PAF, that has the PAF decal, but it has the black and white coil leads, and a poly insulation magnet wire. ITS NOT SUPPOSED TO EXIST. But it DOES. I've seen many things that just don't fit the "rules." Some of the things you identify, like the carve are not written in stone like you think they do. The carve was done by MACHINE. It was a pantograph machine which used a master model carved piece of wood that rollers followed to guide the cutting knife on the guitar. That master model wore out several times. And we HAVE seen '59 carves that don't follow the "rules," before this. Its not just a black and white world when it comes to anyting made by Gibson in that era. It is possible that those unmolested PAF's are not original under the covers too. Its pretty darn easy to remove and replace soldered on covers and age the solder joints as well when putting them back on. So, there's also that. ANOTHER HUGE THING YOU DIDN'T DO WAS UV PHTOGRAPHY of the entire guitar that would have shown indisputable data about the finishes. Same thing for the PAF's, you didn't shine a UV light on the decals, though probably real. Even the weight proves nothing. The control cavity is the most suspicious part of the guitar, the routing especially, but its not inconceivable that maybe one day things went wrong and the guitar was rerouted at the factory and refinished to cover cover up the do over. I could show you a ton of things about vintage PAF's that are way outside of your knowledge, and none of them are fakes, they just had things about them nobody had seen before because they aren't specialized enough to have seen these kinds of things among hundreds of example. One example, I had an early '57 set in here with the stainless bobbin mount screws, that had PAF decals with opaque aged white lettering. It even fell off with little handling. I thought it might be a replacement decal put on later, but then years later another identical decal showed up just like it. Probably they were the first run decals and decided shortly later to use gold Nazdar paint instead. Regardless its a great guitar and worth quite a bit of money just because of who owned it. There are also some things in the control cavity like the shrink black tubing thats totally smushed and placed oddly as well. Just amazing the UV photography was skipped......thanks for the video, but beware that "rules" when it comes to vintage Gibson, ALWAYS have exceptions.
Wow, that's quite the resume. Your PAF info may be "way outside of my knowledge," but I'm afraid that's where your expertise ends. Sure, templates wear and that's why we see the variation in top carves, headstock shapes, etc. that we do. This top is miles away from any reasonable range of variance, an obvious fact to anyone with any kind of Burst experience. As for UV imaging, if you're still relying on a blacklight you're setting yourself up for some serious heartbreak. Indisputable? Faking lacquer fluorescence is a skill even the most ham-handed counterfeiters have had mastered for decades now. I could spray you a finish today that will glow just as bright as a 50s Gibson. With a little artfulness I could blend new lacquer over old stuff and match the glow perfectly. Dozens of repair guys have been doing this since the 90s. PAF stickers glowing? That's also been on the forger's menu for years. The blacklight is essentially useless. As for the control cavity, you think they completely botched the shape, then custom cut and fitted a one-off cover plate for it? I understand playing devil's advocate but you're kidding yourself with this stuff man. Thanks for watching!
@@TylerECG I've never seen a faked PAF decal, there are a number of reasons they can't be. I've been silk screening since I was 15, I know the process and the materials, and for yuks played around with making the inks flouresce under UV light. Only thing that worked was glow in the dark material which will show in UV light but then it does glow in the dark, LOL. Same thing with the paper tape, and there is no modern tapes that match the old 3M flatback tapes. The glow of the tape seems to come from the black adhesive. It washes off in solvent. I've bought scores of paper tapes and none match. I do know how to age solder joints, very easy. A UV light would have shown if the neck had been shaved because it would have to have been refinished after shaving. Some things you mentioned you said you "think" and not "sure" of, like the Holly overlay and the logo etc. thats where things Gibson don't all fit these "rules." Thats where I would get a second opinion if I was the owner. But am sure you're right, its not an original, but if the neck WAS shaved, that that was only done pre-monetizations, and goes back prime time when LP's first became valuable. Then why would someone go to the massive effort to copy a guitar that was only worth about $300 back then. In '68 our local music store was rumored to have an old Les Paul and they wanted $500 for it. Every guitar player in town thought they were insane, and that was when these not so old guitars became MONEY. Our music store put out a metal basket with chunks of "Les Pauls" and wanted $50 for each piece. But there were chunks of a baby blue guitars that were definitely NOT Gibson product. It would be interesting to know WHEN Entwistle got the guitar, I do know there are purposeful counterfeits and have even heard some nasty goings on with famous 'Bursts being harvested for certain parts right before the sale, from insider friends. Anyway, thanks for the response. One last thing, I've heard people say there are counterfeit PAF's, but almost all the ones they say are that, are late 70's Gibson buckers with decals in the wrong font, easily identifiable. But then there's the late Duncan attempt to duplicate a PAF. Seymour bought his baseplates from Gibson, so they are correct and have the tool marks. He used a silk screened decal, but typically there's a lot of clear decal around the black rectangle. He used real butyrate bobbins, might also be bought from Gibson, plain enamel wire, sand cast alnico magnet, 3M paper tape. People get fooled by these a lot. They do flouresce on the decal and tape too. The slug tops have indistinct lathe marks, but the only way to nail what they are is to look on the bottom of the bobbins, they have round sprue marks, several of them, instead of the single mold mark line of the real ones.
@@williamlangeii4012 They were made by Semour around 1978. They look like real PAF's, have a decal, used butyrate bobbins, rough magnet, plain enamel wire. The slugs have messy looking lathe cuts that don't have the bull's eye crisp cuts. Pole screws were thread cutters. But when you flip the bobbins over, the mold marks are all little circular feed marks from the mold. Real PAF's only have a single line for the two halves of the mold. These are often mistaken for real PAF's. They have the right 3M paper tape, baseplates were bought from Gibson, and a PAF decal. Unfortunately they dont sound like real PAF's. These old buckers are much more complex than anyone knows, but I do KNOW. I am still the only person who spent more than 20 years doing science-based metallurgical lab works, including the vintage magnet wire and much more that amateurs dont have a clue about. I. have many videos of real PAF"s and my replicas to compare to, so you decide if my work speaks for itself or not. I don't advertise, I don't pay forums to show my videos and I don't post on forums where the trolls live :-) Stop by and you will get quite an education on PAF's and other vintage pickups, and my debunking videos and debunking the pathetic Gibson "reissues" that aren't reissues of anything accurrate, and how to upgrad any LP type guitar to make it sound way way better for not a lot of money....
Dave, your PAF pickups sound better than the PAF's in this video. I hope Christian got a fair price for his guitar and I commend him for allowing the story to go public.
that guy was very chill for losing alot of money. lots of this stuff happens, especially with Vintage cars....more 435hp 427 Corvettes have been sold at Mecum than were ever built, for example
There are people who would pay a half a million for a Les Paul with Chibson inlaid on the headstock if there was enough documentation that Entwistle played, owned, praised and had the guitar in his collection.
I played a 60 burst once. Bucket list moment. In my opinion its actual value as a guitar was easily $5000, but no more. But it was fun playing a guitar worth two of my houses.
Bigger fool theory in practice. Some ppl will say that ‘provenance’ gives it value, but no. A fake is a fake. I wonder how many rockstars get got into buying fake classics and wanted to pass them on as originals… Just look at Reverb with Fenders and Gibsons sorted by years - you’ll see the uneven distribution - the ‘classic’ years are over-represented. This is the peak bubble market and a lot of folks out there try to take advantage of clueless buyers… Thanks for the great video and stay safe!
The fact that it HAS a headstock would ring alarm bells to me!! Seriously though, I just don't care, I think it's more interesting BECAUSE of what it is. And, well, the sound and feel. it's all there is in the end. But it's certainly a very historical piece in contemporary music lore. I think it's IRREPLACEABLE. But then I play DOUBLE BASS, so an old instrument to me is from 1730. Also, thank you for honouring the ox as you did. He is a legend, and so much more than The Who's "bass guitarist". The latter of that (guitarist) he was always keen to point out. Thank you.
I'm no expert by any stretch, and I could tell how fake it was very, very easily. There is no way the previous seller was unaware. Shady stuff went on. They are Very lucky i wasnt the guy they tried to fool.
Top quality upload,content, presentation editing and honesty . A certain Exeter luthier did a reasonable job on this one ! Would be nice to find out where the remains of the original are now after it got wrecked.. Hard to believe that anyone with half a brain could accept this was right .
This was incredibly interesting and thank you for sharing this. That Entwistle died broke, high on cocaine, and with a call girl/roadie makes this make a little more sense.
12:39 - I dunno... I can't help but think that the owner should get some sort of compensation from the Toronto shop he bought it from because it is not what they said it was and the only thing that's holding it together with what he exchanged for it is purely the Entwistle connection
I have a Gibson 1959 M2M Burst that is supposed to be an exact replica down the last detail of a 1959 Burst. I would be interested in you taking a look at to see just how close it really is.
I’m no Burst expert, but that finish, that anemic belly carve and those wonky pickup routes are serious red flags. How did this go so long without being identified as fake?
I believe this one would have fallen under the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" mantra of the average luthier. Also, a 59 with zero evidence of a neck break, or even headstock damage, just doesn't seem right. The body has way too many nicks and buckle rashes to not have been a gigging guitar.
because dealers did this for years. Once published, that was it. Just like real ones get called fake on certain forums and tarnished. Once people BELEIVE something one way or other, facts be damned. And dealers knowlingly just sell the sizzle.
The value in these guitars is 100% in "believing" it is a genuine 1959 Gibson Les Paul. People could have went the rest of their lives happily believing.
Even as a fake, the fact that John loved on it and had it in his collection...not to mention the documentation...and it sounds so incredibly good, I think someone would be happy to have this in their collection Maybe not a high 5-figure or low 6-figure guitar, but price out the parts and the quality of the build and see who bites 🤷🏼♂️
Knob placement always seemed to be a little off to me but it's kinda hard to tell from photos because light and shadow play tricks sometimes. Now that I've seen it from different angles on video I'm even more convinced. The neck pickup volume knob is usually a bit closer to the tailpiece, and almost directly below it. That one seems to be further away and down a little, almost like an Epiphone Les Paul but not that exaggerated. Also the pot shafts don't seem to align with the body very well, I'm assuming because of the flat rout of the pickup cavity floor. Gibson routed this area in a particular way so that the knobs would sit flush with the carved top. Oh well, you know what they say about 'Bursts, right? Gibson only made about 1700 , and there's only 3500 left.
Closest I have is a custom shop 60 reissue (2018 model). I’ve seen many photos of a 59 and a few in person. But this one looked off in the first video I couldn’t put my finger on it like your expert did so well and detailed. Still a very nice guitar and owned by one of the greats.
You know it! 😂 The guy who who made Slash's Appetite For Destruction Les Paul Kris Derrig, his fake Les Pauls go for more that an 80's Gibson 1959 Replicas!
Who ever said it wasn't detected? Any guitar is as authentic as the next guy to buy it. Do you think Entwistle would have enjoyed it any less if he knew it was a fake? He would just sell it to the next guy for more than he paid.
Has anyone thought of the possibility of this guitar being made by Guitar Trader from Red Bank New Jersey??? Their guitars were heavier and had real leftover parts from Kalamazoo…… just a thought
Those Guitar Trader guitars are apparently spot on, like 100% perfect replicas, better than anything Gibson does. They almost never come up for sale bc they sound and play so well. I've read a few articles about them, very interesting story.
@@williamlangeii4012I have played 4 of them and should have bought them all in the 90s. They never show up for sale. They were all leftover parts when they shut down Parson St in Kalamazoo before going to Nashville. They were the real first replica/ bursts closer than anyone has ever made.
This just paves the way for an idea for guitar buyers to start a collection of fake guitars, even more if owned by famous musicians or people. The slash "appetite for destruction" Gibson guitar was also fake.
As a fan of The Who and Entwistle, I kinda think this makes the guitar even cooler. Now does that coolness factor equate to current day burst money..... no. But still, very cool! ❤
Why because its owned by a guy who plays bass not guitar? It lost all value which is sad. It was in the books because of it being a 59. They scammed this guy. They all knew
95% of the value of a Gibson Les Paul 59 burst is 100% based on the belief that a given example is genuine. If this guitar and it's rich history are worth a boat-load of money to someone,..then the guitar is worth a boat-load of money. It is all eye of the beholder, money.
Thanks for the rundown fellas, good that you're on the case with these guitars.......10.5lbs......that is a boat anchor and a very tight pinstripe and bright in the neck pup. Wonder who made it ?? Christian is a cool guy. Cheers Emerald City.
I enjoyed the comments more than the boring “EXPERT” . I agree with others , he should have had an authentic guitar there to compare the points he was making. I feel if you’re a true guitarist, all you care about is how the guitar feels, looks, playability, and sounds. I go to music stores and play many guitars of the same style but different brands and prices. Many times the small brands and cheaper priced ones are better. (To me) I took a LesPaul kit and built a gold top. I really liked the way it turned out, but wanted to know what other pickers thought of it. So, let three lead players gig with it. They all said pretty much the same. This thing is a beast! Or , this thing is Bad Ass. So, I put my name on the head stock as the brand and Badass as the model. But, it’s probably worth very little money in the market place. But, to me it’s priceless. Cheers!
Entwistle was a great musician but he wasn't exactly savvy when it came to money... he was a compulsive buyer of many things, including guitars, so I'm not surprised he got taken advantage of
I am by no means a expert But the output Jack plate is mounted on top of the binding? GIBSON never did that back then.. I cannot ever seeing another 59 where the plate was actually on top of the edge binding? And what is really telling and really gives it away Is in the control cavity there's no "chew" in the route edge where it should be due to Gibson's router.
Glad we got to hear it! Thanks ECG. This is the good stuff we expect on the page! Love it. How would you guys compare the sound and playability of it to some real bursts? Does it stand up or is it just a good fake that isn't that quintessential Burst we love?
I was flabbergasted! I’ve heard alot about it and of course I’ve seen a couple photos but this is my first time seeing it in an indepth video. I agree with all the things pointed out and actually see other things that i didn’t like. This is not a burst but what bothers me more is I can’t figure out what it is. It’s not a gibson but it is well made so I’m not sure what I’m looking at.
I have a left hand Derrig, commisioned by my father for my 21st. There is no way i would swap it for any Gibson. I know it's not real, but who cares. I certainly don't.
Interesting, there's a recent That Pedal Show interview with Noel Gallagher who has a burst gifted him by Johnny Marr who got it from Pete Townshend, and sure enough it's a Partsopaul with a replaced skinny neck. Might have been something they just did to keep their tour inventory running after Pete smashed them and less to do with getting some of that sweet blues lawyer money that came along later.
Entwhistle in the letter 2:51 never actually said it was genuine but deliberately misspelled "Standard" and so it is a "1959 Les Paul Standa"... this is important legally because you can't say he made a mistake in spelling when there was clearly enough room on the paper to make a correction... So he meant what he wrote and nobody caught it!
I was reading an article that Ed Roman built guitars for Entwistle. As you know Ed Roman was notorious for rebuilding and faking Les Pauls. Perhaps this Les Paul is one Ed Roman got his hands on?
Slash’s Les Paul was a copy too, what do you think that’s worth. These guys give themselves a little too much credit! Sorry, this belonged to the Ox! That makes it priceless
I live in Toronto, and I am surprised that it wasn't flagged as a fake. Obviously this instrument has fooled a lot of people along the way, but a true expert was able to easily identify the many things that didn't add up to being an original burst. I would have thought that if it went through the hands of a top notch Toronto music store that dealt in vintage guitars, that this would have been immediately identified as a fraud.
@@corneliuscrewe677 I believe there's only 1600 total sunburst made from 58 to 60. I got to tour the Kalamazoo factory after they bought it back from Heritage and read up a bit on the history of the LP. I also heard stories that some gold tops were just standards where the woods appearance didn't fit quality standards, so "eff it, paint it gold".
Thumbing through my Beauty of the Burst book, they definitely varied here and there due to being done largely by hand. Complete with top carve depths. Having seen original early 50's LPs at guitar shows, they were pretty crude in some areas like spindly little frets, coarse grain fretboards and rough inlay work, so it really jumps out after being so used to modern factory CNC accuracy. This one almost looks like it had fret nibs, but hard to tell. That logo is terrible. The dot on the Gibson "i" should be as high as the top of the "b" at least and the "o" much rounder and smooth. Pickup routes did come with some more squared off or rounded than others, even the control cavity routes being closer to the edge of the body on some than others. When used, UV light does show a lot of of secret things lying underneath, but generally only if it's actually nitro finished. Pretty much didn't need to go that far for determining authenticity here, but would have been interesting to see.
I'd heard a few years ago that this guitar from John Entwhistle's collection was thought as not being a legitimate 59 Burst from Vic DaPra, a very well-known collector and authority on vintage Gibson guitars.
I remember getting a call at around 3:am one morning. It was Peter "Max" Baranet coked up & demanding I sell him some real vintage PAF's. I lied & said I didn't have any, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. He knew I collected & finally I got off the phone. He made some amazing guitars & that guitar could be one made by Pete.
Very entertaining and informative discussion! It obviously took a lot of thought and skill to make a fake this good, even though it’s imperfect. I am a layman, but the two things that leapt out at me were the crudeness of the Gibson logo on the headstock and that back cover - the angles of the parallelogram are so “off” that even I noticed it, and my vision is not of the best!
still a lovely guitar and sounds phenomenal, what’s a bit weird is why the mystery maker took such care with certain details and missed so many others? guess they didn’t have a real one to copy from 🤷♂️
He was still working on it at this point. There was a dentist in Montreal that made some amazing faux Pauls, dude actually ended up doing some time for it if I'm not mistaken. Lost his dental license. Pretty sure this is one of his.
If a fake has actual 1957 to mid 1961 gibson PAf humbuckers the pickups can be removed and sold for far more than the guitar is worth . They have gone for as much as 10 000 dollars a set .
It's important to remember that the word "vintage" is nothing more than a marketing word that sounds more impressive than just, "old". That's the simple fact.* If something is old, it won't sell as well or for as high a price as if the same item is marked as "vintage". But I do appreciate the importance of preserving some pristine examples of things from the past that can not be replaced, and represent something important from that period of time it is from. That's history. But as such, all that is needed for guitars and amps that are old and have real historic significance, we only need a few examples to represent what that is, and they should be in protected and displayed in museums. But the vast majority of vintage gear, if it truly does have value more than just its age - or because of its age, those items should be kept in proper working order (with some respect for their age) however that needs to be. They should be played! A guitar that is not being played is nothing more than a chunk of wood with wires doing nothing more than getting older. Instruments are only instruments if they are making music. A '54 or '55 gold top Les Paul that has been beat to heck, but still plays well, to me, is far more valuable as the instrument it was meant to be compared to a pristine example, an icon of what that model was for its historic value. So the one in this video, it turns out, wasn't actually even a legitimate item. But - the owner loved it and enjoyed it, played it and held it in high regard. Some may scoff at that and deride it as "fake". Maybe so. But that only matters to persnickety collectors, not to real players. I can't help but think back to the early 80's when smart players were buying up the Tokai LP Standards instead of the 'real' Gibson models because they were light-years better and way less expensive as well. Also, the best-of-the-best players wielding priceless examples that have been modified or altered in some way, I have far more respect for those instruments than the ones that are pristine because they haven't had a note played on them or even seen the light of day in decades. *(there is slightly more to it, but not enough to really matter much)
I find it hard to imagine that someone would go to all the trouble of getting all correct parts and be so stupid as to not route the body correctly., AND, that no one noticed it before this.
in the mid '70s i borrowed a black les paul copy for awhile that had a blank headstock, no manufacturer or anything else. always wondered what its origin was
I don't know about early models control cavities but I I've seen enough older models that had a metal plate and a cover held down by screws encompassing the actual controls in a shielding box.
Could it be a factory 2nd or a test buid for a new Luthier who took it home and built his own after seeing Keef on the telly? ...or an early set neck Japanese Les paul(Heavy) with 50s pRts?
I haven’t been able to find out what year Entwistle acquired this guitar, but if it was before the 90s, this authenticity issue wouldn’t have been such a big deal. Vintage Les Pauls were just old guitars back at a point in time, not investment pieces. People used to think nothing about doing mods to old guitars back then, pickup swaps, covering burst finishes in spray-can metallic paint jobs, and so on. When John bought this it would not have cost him half a million dollars, so “authenticity” wouldn’t have mattered to him so much as just whether it was a good player or not.
Directors note: it would’ve been nice to actually have an example of an original 59 Gibson versus just saying not like the original over and over. I’m sure you’re right but for the viewer it would’ve been really cool to actually see the differences between the two instruments.
Not much its not even a famous guitar players its just a fake guitar fornerly owned by a famous guy who doesnt play guitar. Id rather have a real gibson
I'm in no way an expert, but as soon as you pulled the neck pickup out, I was like that routing job is nowhere close to right!! That's a sad thing to get hit with!!
The most ironic part in this, to me, is that this doesn't even come remotely close to being one of the best replicas- that distinction belonged to a fellow (RIP) out of the UK with the initials TM; his, at his best, were truly indistinguishable from the originals (when loaded with vintage parts/plastics), and it's said several are still in circulation today, being passed off as the real deal (not his intentions, but those of owners with nefarious intentions). Having owned several very high-end replicas myself, and having handled a couple of original Bursts, I have to say, while I despise the whole replica scene nowadays, that I do regret having sold my TM, if for no reason other than my great deal of respect for the builders sheer passion and unprecedented attention-to-detail. Nobody has, and nobody ever will, come close. A couple of people in the comments have alluded to this perhaps being either a Bobburst (a known scammer) or a Guitar Clinic, and that seems about right, as the attention-to-detail isn't there as you'd see on better replicas, especially in the case of Bob (I respect Guitar Clinic- NOT Bob). It seems Toronto has something of a reputation with fake Bursts, as another semi-well-known shop there had two fugazis come through in very close succession (talking months) a few years ago... Of course the shop, despite "specializing" in vintage, pleas none the wiser when it's discovered it's a fake... it was a commission. While I dipped my toes in the replica (and conversion) scene for a couple short years several years ago, I now am so far-removed from it and wish nothing to do with it ever again. I'll never understand that desire to get it as close as possible to real as possible, to the point of "fooling" experts and others, which a lot of guys who collect these seem to get off to. Why? It'll never be the real thing, and more than likely you don't have the balls to try and pass it off. Again, I'd only ever scoop up a TM build purely due to my admiration for his level of attention to detail, and because he was a great person, though I'm not chuffed about the Gibson headstock. Anyways, sorry for the tangent... screw replicas.
Here's a new YT video from Gibson about Paul Stanley's collection. At th-cam.com/video/nRc9sRGT0k4/w-d-xo.html in the video he produces an early custom shop attempt that's so "off" it's unreal, and without this provenance if someone ELSE went to sell Stanley's LP would we be having the same conversation as on this Emerald City? I think yes.
I watched that video, I agree 100% If Gibson can make guitars this poorly then there's no reason that this Entwistle LP can't be a real Gibson. Why not send it back to Gibson and ask them to authenticate?
To me it looks like a Gibson employee was making guitars from home. With original Gibson parts & doing all the work himself. Then selling them most likely a bit cheaper than the factory. Or someone at the factory built their own guitars for their own use. Sorta like the Johnny Cash song about the car. I forget the name but I remember that one line was like it's a 59, 60, 61, 62, 63...u get the idea. I believe that this was going on normally back then. Personally I believe that this is where we get a lot of these guitars. I think there most likely are some fakes, that are nothing like these home-made Gibson guitars that workers built for themselves & or their family members. Then over time these were sold off because the people needed money or that person may have passed away. Some guitars have definitely been made to fool others, but I believe there are quite a few out there made at home by factory workers who were taking what they learned at work & some parts from work & making their own guitars to their own specs.
I could see that being the case. I lived in Kalamazoo for years and there were lots of employee builds floating around town. Some were duplicates of current models, some were personalized with different necks, some were multi model hybrids. It happened.
@@thetonetosser Because in the 1950's $300 was like $3,000 today. The employee builds I saw when I lived in Kalamazoo weren't attempts by the Gibson employees to bootleg instruments, but rather make a personalized guitar for themselves at an affordable price.
@@Deuce_Luminox. to make a living on the side. Fair enough. Although none of them thought they'd command six figures eh. I guess they could have knocked a couple out in the 70s when the price was climbing, adding original parts along the way. Those cream surrounds only made it on to the Bursts and maybe the 58 V's as far as I remember. Rarest of the plastic
Really interesting and informative video, some great spots there, only thing I would question as a flag is the pick guard screw, if you look at a lot of 59s a number do have that screw in that position I'd say?
Someone "won't get fooled again".
LOL🤣😂
Because John owned it, it’ll probably sell for more than a real burst.
Ha!
👏👏👏
Very good Sir. Very good🤵🏼♂️
The total of sunburst Les Pauls that Gibson made in 1959 was 1,406. of these only about 7000 of them have survived.
Lol
@@thegoodguy44 it's true.
Sadly however, only 7000 of them have survived🤣🤣🤣
I’m not a vintage guitar guy but I love that you took the time to show all the red flags on this guitar. Very educational
If you like these kinds of breakdowns of Gibson guitars I highly recommend Troglys TH-cam channel, he doesn't deal in actual 59s (yet) but he's quickly becoming an authority on everything else Gibson.
@@blodpudding yeah I'm subbed to him already. Was just nice to see a shop do it for a change. Ya just dont see much of this often
@@blodpudding yep watch Austin`s channel a lot and even his playing is getting a lot better( lol ).... what he does not know or document ani`t worth watching i reckon
It’s refreshing to see people being transparent and honest!! Awesome video guys!!
It's crazy how long this guitar went without being identified as not Gibson. Especially considering how many people have looked at it.
You have to remember that the 'vintage' market as we know it has only really been a 'thing' for 25/30 years, and we're still finding things out - Gibson's variability of handmade quality from the period is also still an issue - they were not built with the idea that one day they would be worth squillions! I've been a session player and luthier for 45 years +, and am still finding things out. I part-traded a nice, rare (now) 63 telecaster in Sherwood green for a 58 tobacco burst LP in 1978 which didn't cost me all that much at all...because then, it was just 'old', not 'vintage'. With my luthier hat on, I've had to disappoint quite a few successful musician friends over the years, particularly with Fenders and Gibsons as some fakes are just so good to the point given who owns them, no one really questions their veracity.
@@vsmicer I agree, but some of these findings are so obvious. 1960s slim neck, ok. Paint, really not ok. Weight, could be, but unlikely. Cavities, no way.
So i do think that this is one of the insider secrets that no one wanted to become common knowledge until Entwhistle was dead and gone.
People were just being nice to Entwistle, regarded as one of the top rock bass players in history so people did not want to put a thorn in his ass.
@@vsmicer Not all shops are great at authentication, but a lot of time it is a genuine mistake. Only a few a down right fraudulent. I remember going to pickup a 50s Les Paul Special, only to realize that once I saw the guitar it person it was obviously a fake made from original hardware and some random body. The guy tried to convince me it was real by pulling out a note from a well known shop saying it was authentic. I knew the shop, and they are a decent shop who had sold some of my own 50s Gibsons, but this guitar was obviously suspect, so I was surprised they had authenticated it. They gave everything I gave to them a look over, so I know they don't just say everything is genuine. You have to handle a lot of genuine vintage guitars to get a feel for the finishes, routings, parts. Photos are usually not enough.
I think perhaps the owner knows the truth so isn't taking the news badly. The guy is clearly French so he's from Quebec (Canada) and now living in Florida so probably some french dude back in Quebec faked the guitar using a 1970's Ibanez and messed with it back in the 70's or 80's. I remember back in Montreal in the 70's, you could buy Ibanez Les Paul copies for under $200 bucks and double necked SG's. There was a tiny pawn shop run by two old Jewish dudes that had about 100 guitars hanging from the ceiling and you had to be careful not to hit your head on them. They had another make called Eko and I think they were from Italy but who the hell knows.
cool vid, that fat inlay on fret 12 is actually correct, but you nailed everything else
I don't know. Who's to say. When serial numbers don't match, colors don't match. Tail pieces are changed, pick up cavities are routed out and/or painted. Can't be tough
Hi Tom!
He missed the solder job was definitely not factory.
The big inlay was on the 15th fret
@@gregoriyefimovichrasputin4931 Indeed, in the video he said the size of the inlay looked like a 12th fret inlay (installed on the 15th fret).
Dude took that super well, especially when you consider he traded in an authentic vintage gold top toward the fake.
So he traded a real Gold Top for $50,000 for Johns real fake burst.
I think he makes enough at auction to buy a real 59 when it’s all said and done.
Because John owned it and it made a book.
@@foofghtr Maybe. It depends on the value of people in that market feel there is to Entwistle owning it. I'm not convinced that the vintage guitar buying market is going to put a super high value on a fake guitar owned by Entwistle that was erroneously put in a book. Hopefully for him they do though.
That shop knowingly ripped him off. Id have a long talk with them👊
what qualifies as a big loss depends a lot on how much you have. i have a feeling he won't miss this loss if there is one. i like his philosophy of let nature run its course.
Why would anybody care what guitar John Entwistle played? He was a bass player.
I don't reckon people really missed anything. I think this was a case of passing the hot potato, hoping to make full on celebrity 'burst money somewhere before it was officially outed. ECG can't risk their rep with that though.
Crazy... Thought it was a replica in the previous video & was surprised that it was supposed to be an original burst. Pretty shocking that nobody has outed this guitar before now. Great video & thank you for sharing.
I bet everyone who was in possession of this guitar in the past knew what it was and was not.
same here... having handled a considerable amount of top-notch replicas (which i wouldn't even call this one!) and a handful of originals, this immediately stuck out to me as a replica. for starters, you just did NOT see such "bbq" tops on any vintage ones... beyond that, the binding and other details, not to mention the lustre (which is among the hardest things to replicate... if not impossible) didn't match that of original ones. really, see enough of both (real and fake) and you'll be able to discern with fairly high certainty in time.
It's like the art market, it's got loads of fakes in it... It's not in the owners interests to investigate too much. I bet a significant percentage of vintage guitars are fakes to one degree or another.
First off, you guys have the coolest job in the world. For me, the only thing better whole be being one of those few "always in demand" sessions players, which i honestly would prefer to being a rock star.
As far as vintage Gibsons go, the 50's Bursts get all the love (and money). Repairing guitars for twenty years, and playing them (pretty piss poorly) for over thirty has afforded me several opportunities to play vintage and Uber high-end guitars over the years. The accumulated experience garnered from all the different examples of models, years, conditions, changes modifications etc (and admittedly, some degree of person biase) has resulted with me being of the opinion that a big reason the LPs are the most coveted is linked heavily with the pedigree prestige, as opposed to it being because they're better guitars, and certainly not because they're the better sounding.
For my money, if I were presented with the opportunity to own any single vintage guitar (that has the clause that I cannot ever sell it, because if I could than of course I'll go with the one I can get the most money for), I would choose an ES 335 everytime. Id prefer something like a 61-64 Dot, I like the smaller horns over the mickey mouse ears of the 1958/59. And seeing as this hypothetical patron is so generous, I'd ask that with some of the money saved from not buying that $350,000 LP, I'd get a good set of 57 PAFs. Speaking of that: when it comes to Gibsons and PAFs, again the Bursts get all the love. Undeservedly IMO.
Don't get me wrong: a really nice, light and lively Les Paul with PAFs is a beautiful thing. However, If you ever get the opportunity to try a vintage 335 with PAFs, you'll understand why they were referred to as the Burst killer. The naturally dominant mid-range tone that semihollows produce, matched with the slightly scooped sound of the lighter wound early PAFs, and the added clarity that comes along with them is🤔…f'cking guitar tone apotheosis!
Besides that, when it comes to being able to produce a modern guitar with the tone and feel of vintage ones: using period correct materials like old growth Honduran mahogany, Brazilian rosewood, the old school hide glue and nitro finishes before they started adding inhibitors and plasticizers and things like that, 335s are hardest to pull off. With Fenders and Les Pauls, I've seen them succeeded in getting the same tone that the actual vintage ones. I've yet to hear a 335 though. And when it comes to modern production and custom shop guitars the gap between convincing vintage like tone is even wider. A modern Les Paul standard sounds far closer to a vintage one than a modern ES335.
Ironically, while they're beautiful and insanely well designed and built, I've never been a huge PRS fan. They use higher quality materials, in most ways they're better designed, and DEFINITELY have a better and more consistent quality control, but they just don't do it for me.
That said, I'm seriously considering selling a few guitars, including a 335, and buying a PRS McCarty 594 Hollowbody II. And the reason is that I find them to sound closer to a vintage ES335 than my actual ES335.
Side note: I just finished rereading my comment for spelling and grammar errors and discover just how long and rambling this is. But what am I going to do now: not post it? Just know you're fortunate, if I go on this long when I'm typing on phone screen, imagine what it's like when I'm actually talking.
PS: i prefer gold tops
Did they make dotnecks in 52 3 and 4 ?
That top profile sure looks a lot like my 74 Les Paul standard. Very shallow and also a 10+ pounder. The neck heal also looks exactly like mine as does the slim taper neck. I inherited the guitar from my uncle who bought it brand-new at Rhythm City music in Atlanta Georgia in 1974 for $439.00 the store special ordered the guitar with humbuckers from Gibson. Before I inherited the guitar I already owned a 2012 59 R9 reissue and to my astonishment the 74 kills it in every way possible except for the weight.
Nice. I got my first Les Paul there, too. It was a great shop.
There's something that needs to be said here, thats being glossed over. My expertise is in the PAF humbuckers, I reverse engineered them over a 22 year time span, using SCIENCE-based laboratories in the largest magnet wire company in the world, and a mentor Senior Ferromagnetics metallurgist who helped me in the history and materials in PAF for over 6 years; plus my own dissections and restorations of PAF's from every year. We also analyzed Gibson magnetic steel parts from every model guitar pickup made from 1937-1977, which shows the entire history of the steel used in that time span; how the materials were actually made, precise element content and much more. So, I know them, I know how to closely replicate them so that most can't tell them from the real deal. So ALSO, What really STUCK OUT, is that ALL the rules about how to identify vintage PAF's, basically MANY OF THOSE RULES ARE NOT TRUE and there are always exceptions. For instance, I own a vintage PAF, that has the PAF decal, but it has the black and white coil leads, and a poly insulation magnet wire. ITS NOT SUPPOSED TO EXIST. But it DOES. I've seen many things that just don't fit the "rules." Some of the things you identify, like the carve are not written in stone like you think they do. The carve was done by MACHINE. It was a pantograph machine which used a master model carved piece of wood that rollers followed to guide the cutting knife on the guitar. That master model wore out several times. And we HAVE seen '59 carves that don't follow the "rules," before this. Its not just a black and white world when it comes to anyting made by Gibson in that era. It is possible that those unmolested PAF's are not original under the covers too. Its pretty darn easy to remove and replace soldered on covers and age the solder joints as well when putting them back on. So, there's also that. ANOTHER HUGE THING YOU DIDN'T DO WAS UV PHTOGRAPHY of the entire guitar that would have shown indisputable data about the finishes. Same thing for the PAF's, you didn't shine a UV light on the decals, though probably real. Even the weight proves nothing. The control cavity is the most suspicious part of the guitar, the routing especially, but its not inconceivable that maybe one day things went wrong and the guitar was rerouted at the factory and refinished to cover cover up the do over. I could show you a ton of things about vintage PAF's that are way outside of your knowledge, and none of them are fakes, they just had things about them nobody had seen before because they aren't specialized enough to have seen these kinds of things among hundreds of example. One example, I had an early '57 set in here with the stainless bobbin mount screws, that had PAF decals with opaque aged white lettering. It even fell off with little handling. I thought it might be a replacement decal put on later, but then years later another identical decal showed up just like it. Probably they were the first run decals and decided shortly later to use gold Nazdar paint instead. Regardless its a great guitar and worth quite a bit of money just because of who owned it. There are also some things in the control cavity like the shrink black tubing thats totally smushed and placed oddly as well. Just amazing the UV photography was skipped......thanks for the video, but beware that "rules" when it comes to vintage Gibson, ALWAYS have exceptions.
Wow, that's quite the resume. Your PAF info may be "way outside of my knowledge," but I'm afraid that's where your expertise ends. Sure, templates wear and that's why we see the variation in top carves, headstock shapes, etc. that we do. This top is miles away from any reasonable range of variance, an obvious fact to anyone with any kind of Burst experience. As for UV imaging, if you're still relying on a blacklight you're setting yourself up for some serious heartbreak. Indisputable? Faking lacquer fluorescence is a skill even the most ham-handed counterfeiters have had mastered for decades now. I could spray you a finish today that will glow just as bright as a 50s Gibson. With a little artfulness I could blend new lacquer over old stuff and match the glow perfectly. Dozens of repair guys have been doing this since the 90s. PAF stickers glowing? That's also been on the forger's menu for years. The blacklight is essentially useless. As for the control cavity, you think they completely botched the shape, then custom cut and fitted a one-off cover plate for it? I understand playing devil's advocate but you're kidding yourself with this stuff man. Thanks for watching!
@@TylerECG I've never seen a faked PAF decal, there are a number of reasons they can't be. I've been silk screening since I was 15, I know the process and the materials, and for yuks played around with making the inks flouresce under UV light. Only thing that worked was glow in the dark material which will show in UV light but then it does glow in the dark, LOL. Same thing with the paper tape, and there is no modern tapes that match the old 3M flatback tapes. The glow of the tape seems to come from the black adhesive. It washes off in solvent. I've bought scores of paper tapes and none match. I do know how to age solder joints, very easy. A UV light would have shown if the neck had been shaved because it would have to have been refinished after shaving. Some things you mentioned you said you "think" and not "sure" of, like the Holly overlay and the logo etc. thats where things Gibson don't all fit these "rules." Thats where I would get a second opinion if I was the owner. But am sure you're right, its not an original, but if the neck WAS shaved, that that was only done pre-monetizations, and goes back prime time when LP's first became valuable. Then why would someone go to the massive effort to copy a guitar that was only worth about $300 back then. In '68 our local music store was rumored to have an old Les Paul and they wanted $500 for it. Every guitar player in town thought they were insane, and that was when these not so old guitars became MONEY. Our music store put out a metal basket with chunks of "Les Pauls" and wanted $50 for each piece. But there were chunks of a baby blue guitars that were definitely NOT Gibson product. It would be interesting to know WHEN Entwistle got the guitar, I do know there are purposeful counterfeits and have even heard some nasty goings on with famous 'Bursts being harvested for certain parts right before the sale, from insider friends. Anyway, thanks for the response. One last thing, I've heard people say there are counterfeit PAF's, but almost all the ones they say are that, are late 70's Gibson buckers with decals in the wrong font, easily identifiable. But then there's the late Duncan attempt to duplicate a PAF. Seymour bought his baseplates from Gibson, so they are correct and have the tool marks. He used a silk screened decal, but typically there's a lot of clear decal around the black rectangle. He used real butyrate bobbins, might also be bought from Gibson, plain enamel wire, sand cast alnico magnet, 3M paper tape. People get fooled by these a lot. They do flouresce on the decal and tape too. The slug tops have indistinct lathe marks, but the only way to nail what they are is to look on the bottom of the bobbins, they have round sprue marks, several of them, instead of the single mold mark line of the real ones.
@SDPickups what is the late Duncan paf that you mention?
@@williamlangeii4012 They were made by Semour around 1978. They look like real PAF's, have a decal, used butyrate bobbins, rough magnet, plain enamel wire. The slugs have messy looking lathe cuts that don't have the bull's eye crisp cuts. Pole screws were thread cutters. But when you flip the bobbins over, the mold marks are all little circular feed marks from the mold. Real PAF's only have a single line for the two halves of the mold. These are often mistaken for real PAF's. They have the right 3M paper tape, baseplates were bought from Gibson, and a PAF decal. Unfortunately they dont sound like real PAF's. These old buckers are much more complex than anyone knows, but I do KNOW. I am still the only person who spent more than 20 years doing science-based metallurgical lab works, including the vintage magnet wire and much more that amateurs dont have a clue about. I. have many videos of real PAF"s and my replicas to compare to, so you decide if my work speaks for itself or not. I don't advertise, I don't pay forums to show my videos and I don't post on forums where the trolls live :-) Stop by and you will get quite an education on PAF's and other vintage pickups, and my debunking videos and debunking the pathetic Gibson "reissues" that aren't reissues of anything accurrate, and how to upgrad any LP type guitar to make it sound way way better for not a lot of money....
Dave, your PAF pickups sound better than the PAF's in this video. I hope Christian got a fair price for his guitar and I commend him for allowing the story to go public.
that guy was very chill for losing alot of money. lots of this stuff happens, especially with Vintage cars....more 435hp 427 Corvettes have been sold at Mecum than were ever built, for example
I'm glad that the owner, Christian, already knew that there were doubts.
Imagine someone who didn't and how they'd feel.
It's a substitute for another guitar.
"I can see right through your plastic mac"
There are people who would pay a half a million for a Les Paul with Chibson inlaid on the headstock if there was enough documentation that Entwistle played, owned, praised and had the guitar in his collection.
I played a 60 burst once. Bucket list moment. In my opinion its actual value as a guitar was easily $5000, but no more. But it was fun playing a guitar worth two of my houses.
Holy moly, awesome episode. I'm a Who fanatic and enjoyed every second of your investigation!
Bigger fool theory in practice. Some ppl will say that ‘provenance’ gives it value, but no. A fake is a fake. I wonder how many rockstars get got into buying fake classics and wanted to pass them on as originals… Just look at Reverb with Fenders and Gibsons sorted by years - you’ll see the uneven distribution - the ‘classic’ years are over-represented. This is the peak bubble market and a lot of folks out there try to take advantage of clueless buyers… Thanks for the great video and stay safe!
The fact that it HAS a headstock would ring alarm bells to me!! Seriously though, I just don't care, I think it's more interesting BECAUSE of what it is. And, well, the sound and feel. it's all there is in the end. But it's certainly a very historical piece in contemporary music lore. I think it's IRREPLACEABLE. But then I play DOUBLE BASS, so an old instrument to me is from 1730. Also, thank you for honouring the ox as you did. He is a legend, and so much more than The Who's "bass guitarist". The latter of that (guitarist) he was always keen to point out. Thank you.
I'm no expert by any stretch, and I could tell how fake it was very, very easily.
There is no way the previous seller was unaware.
Shady stuff went on.
They are Very lucky i wasnt the guy they tried to fool.
Top quality upload,content, presentation editing and honesty . A certain Exeter luthier did a reasonable job on this one ! Would be nice to find out where the remains of the original are now after it got wrecked.. Hard to believe that anyone with half a brain could accept this was right .
I was really surprised there weren't photos added to show us what all the mistakes look like on a real one.
The dealer who sold him the guitar knew it was dodgy, hence the song-and-dance about the replaced parts being the reason for the reduced price.
Yup exactly. I think everyone but this guy knew. Even John Ent just kept it in a case. If it was a 59 Pete Eric and the guys would use it.
This was incredibly interesting and thank you for sharing this. That Entwistle died broke, high on cocaine, and with a call girl/roadie makes this make a little more sense.
12:39 - I dunno... I can't help but think that the owner should get some sort of compensation from the Toronto shop he bought it from because it is not what they said it was and the only thing that's holding it together with what he exchanged for it is purely the Entwistle connection
I have a Gibson 1959 M2M Burst that is supposed to be an exact replica down the last detail of a 1959 Burst. I would be interested in you taking a look at to see just how close it really is.
I’m no Burst expert, but that finish, that anemic belly carve and those wonky pickup routes are serious red flags. How did this go so long without being identified as fake?
I believe this one would have fallen under the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" mantra of the average luthier.
Also, a 59 with zero evidence of a neck break, or even headstock damage, just doesn't seem right. The body has way too many nicks and buckle rashes to not have been a gigging guitar.
because dealers did this for years. Once published, that was it. Just like real ones get called fake on certain forums and tarnished. Once people BELEIVE something one way or other, facts be damned. And dealers knowlingly just sell the sizzle.
He should have shown it to Pete Townshend before, get his blessing of 'crown jewel'.
The value in these guitars is 100% in "believing" it is a genuine 1959 Gibson Les Paul.
People could have went the rest of their lives happily believing.
The top is big-leaf soft maple. Gibson only used hard maple on their 58-60 Les Pauls.
Even as a fake, the fact that John loved on it and had it in his collection...not to mention the documentation...and it sounds so incredibly good, I think someone would be happy to have this in their collection
Maybe not a high 5-figure or low 6-figure guitar, but price out the parts and the quality of the build and see who bites 🤷🏼♂️
I expect given its history and the great 50’s parts it would still be worth quite a lot of money.
As parts, definitely - but you can no longer sell it as a Gibson.
This guitar has such a cool story, and it sounds amazing!
Knob placement always seemed to be a little off to me but it's kinda hard to tell from photos because light and shadow play tricks sometimes. Now that I've seen it from different angles on video I'm even more convinced. The neck pickup volume knob is usually a bit closer to the tailpiece, and almost directly below it. That one seems to be further away and down a little, almost like an Epiphone Les Paul but not that exaggerated. Also the pot shafts don't seem to align with the body very well, I'm assuming because of the flat rout of the pickup cavity floor. Gibson routed this area in a particular way so that the knobs would sit flush with the carved top. Oh well, you know what they say about 'Bursts, right? Gibson only made about 1700 , and there's only 3500 left.
Closest I have is a custom shop 60 reissue (2018 model). I’ve seen many photos of a 59 and a few in person. But this one looked off in the first video I couldn’t put my finger on it like your expert did so well and detailed. Still a very nice guitar and owned by one of the greats.
I’m not surprised he said it was the finest guitar he ever played and it is not a real Gibson.
You know it! 😂 The guy who who made Slash's Appetite For Destruction Les Paul Kris Derrig, his fake Les Pauls go for more that an 80's Gibson 1959 Replicas!
I’m no burst expert, but I’ve owned over 50 LPs. Even I could see a few of those issues. Shocked that it made through a few shops without detection.
That headstock logo was ridiculous.
They probably knew and didn't want to lose money and tried to make some too.
Business.
Who ever said it wasn't detected? Any guitar is as authentic as the next guy to buy it.
Do you think Entwistle would have enjoyed it any less if he knew it was a fake?
He would just sell it to the next guy for more than he paid.
Has anyone thought of the possibility of this guitar being made by Guitar Trader from Red Bank New Jersey??? Their guitars were heavier and had real leftover parts from Kalamazoo…… just a thought
Those Guitar Trader guitars are apparently spot on, like 100% perfect replicas, better than anything Gibson does. They almost never come up for sale bc they sound and play so well. I've read a few articles about them, very interesting story.
@@williamlangeii4012I have played 4 of them and should have bought them all in the 90s. They never show up for sale. They were all leftover parts when they shut down Parson St in Kalamazoo before going to Nashville. They were the real first replica/ bursts closer than anyone has ever made.
@@williamlangeii4012 th-cam.com/video/jUYktzm6VF4/w-d-xo.htmlsi=2j-lsXblsZu78-uz
I hadn't even thought of that. Let me explain some of the differences I've seen over the years
@@bradleyshuppert3393how are they identified? Can they be? Well, how did you tell the four?
This just paves the way for an idea for guitar buyers to start a collection of fake guitars, even more if owned by famous musicians or people.
The slash "appetite for destruction" Gibson guitar was also fake.
As a fan of The Who and Entwistle, I kinda think this makes the guitar even cooler. Now does that coolness factor equate to current day burst money..... no. But still, very cool! ❤
Why because its owned by a guy who plays bass not guitar? It lost all value which is sad. It was in the books because of it being a 59. They scammed this guy. They all knew
95% of the value of a Gibson Les Paul 59 burst is 100% based on the belief that a given example is genuine.
If this guitar and it's rich history are worth a boat-load of money to someone,..then the guitar is worth a boat-load of money.
It is all eye of the beholder, money.
Thanks for the rundown fellas, good that you're on the case with these guitars.......10.5lbs......that is a boat anchor and a very tight pinstripe and bright in the neck pup. Wonder who made it ?? Christian is a cool guy. Cheers Emerald City.
Weighs the same as my 2008 LP custom. I have had some 70s and 80s ones that were a lot heavier too.
I enjoyed the comments more than the boring “EXPERT” . I agree with others , he should have had an authentic guitar there to compare the points he was making. I feel if you’re a true guitarist, all you care about is how the guitar feels, looks, playability, and sounds. I go to music stores and play many guitars of the same style but different brands and prices. Many times the small brands and cheaper priced ones are better. (To me) I took a LesPaul kit and built a gold top. I really liked the way it turned out, but wanted to know what other pickers thought of it. So, let three lead players gig with it. They all said pretty much the same. This thing is a beast! Or , this thing is Bad Ass. So, I put my name on the head stock as the brand and Badass as the model. But, it’s probably worth very little money in the market place. But, to me it’s priceless. Cheers!
You danced around calling it a fake ! 😜
I think they stumbled on another Chris Derig Les paul.
You may be correct because of the top maple used on the guitar. Derrig i believe used western maple not eastern?
it has real uniform thin stripes.
I’m baffled that it fooled anyone with that bridge pickup ring. it’s way too short.
Entwistle was a great musician but he wasn't exactly savvy when it came to money... he was a compulsive buyer of many things, including guitars, so I'm not surprised he got taken advantage of
I am by no means a expert But the output Jack plate is mounted on top of the binding? GIBSON never did that back then.. I cannot ever seeing another 59 where the plate was actually on top of the edge binding? And what is really telling and really gives it away Is in the control cavity there's no "chew" in the route edge where it should be due to Gibson's router.
It has the hallmarks of an early Guitar Clinic burst copy.
This was exactly my reaction. I have first hand experience with the Clinic Les Paul. However, they were stamped as “REPLICA”
Interesting quote from John Entwhistle; “... one of the finest examples I’ve ever heard and played...”.
“Authentic” or not that says a lot.
That wall of Marshall half stacks is insane!!
Glad we got to hear it! Thanks ECG. This is the good stuff we expect on the page! Love it. How would you guys compare the sound and playability of it to some real bursts? Does it stand up or is it just a good fake that isn't that quintessential Burst we love?
Maybe its one of Pete Townsends broken up stage guitars that his tech pieced back together and Pete gifted it to John Entwistle
this sounds possible.
Pete's were all "Norlin" Les Pauls, which are WAY different in construction than the originals. Although the weight would be about right for a Norlin.
did you get this from tundra music ed mcdonald? i live in toronto i can update you if you in fact did
I was flabbergasted! I’ve heard alot about it and of course I’ve seen a couple photos but this is my first time seeing it in an indepth video. I agree with all the things pointed out and actually see other things that i didn’t like. This is not a burst but what bothers me more is I can’t figure out what it is. It’s not a gibson but it is well made so I’m not sure what I’m looking at.
I would have known this was fake within seconds when I was 15 years old. how were people fooled?
What would be cool if the person who built it came forward. It's a lot harder to make something look that old than make it look new.
I have a left hand Derrig, commisioned by my father for my 21st. There is no way i would swap it for any Gibson. I know it's not real, but who cares. I certainly don't.
Wish as you are pointing things out you had a side by side comparison photo...
Possibly a Les Parts built with spare parts kicked around the Gibson shop off hours.
Forget all the big dollar guitars, I want that Paul Cauthen shirt! Sadly that one was sold out when I tried to get it. Paul’s the man!
You guys are the best. JB might want it for work it is a great wrench it has the sound, but the wood is not real, not a huge deal.
Interesting, there's a recent That Pedal Show interview with Noel Gallagher who has a burst gifted him by Johnny Marr who got it from Pete Townshend, and sure enough it's a Partsopaul with a replaced skinny neck. Might have been something they just did to keep their tour inventory running after Pete smashed them and less to do with getting some of that sweet blues lawyer money that came along later.
Tyler is epic, what a champion
Entwhistle in the letter 2:51 never actually said it was genuine but deliberately misspelled "Standard" and so it is a "1959 Les Paul Standa"... this is important legally because you can't say he made a mistake in spelling when there was clearly enough room on the paper to make a correction... So he meant what he wrote and nobody caught it!
I was reading an article that Ed Roman built guitars for Entwistle.
As you know Ed Roman was notorious for rebuilding and faking Les Pauls.
Perhaps this Les Paul is one Ed Roman got his hands on?
Finally one of the three times as many 59 burst that were ever made is disqualified 😆. Seriously great job ECG!
The pickup placement is off too. The bridge pickup ring is a tad too close to the bridge itself.
I don't know if it's the amplification they're using when they play it at the end, but it doesn't sound so great to me
Slash’s Les Paul was a copy too, what do you think that’s worth. These guys give themselves a little too much credit! Sorry, this belonged to the Ox!
That makes it priceless
I live in Toronto, and I am surprised that it wasn't flagged as a fake. Obviously this instrument has fooled a lot of people along the way, but a true expert was able to easily identify the many things that didn't add up to being an original burst. I would have thought that if it went through the hands of a top notch Toronto music store that dealt in vintage guitars, that this would have been immediately identified as a fraud.
Around 1,500 made & left the Gibson factory, about 3,000 in the world today 🤔
Kinda like Stradivari violins! 😆
I feel like that number is way low😂
@@corneliuscrewe677 I believe there's only 1600 total sunburst made from 58 to 60.
I got to tour the Kalamazoo factory after they bought it back from Heritage and read up a bit on the history of the LP.
I also heard stories that some gold tops were just standards where the woods appearance didn't fit quality standards, so "eff it, paint it gold".
great playing by Skylar, best part of the video.
Where is "Part 1"? Did TH-cam take it down or did it have a different title than this one?
Thumbing through my Beauty of the Burst book, they definitely varied here and there due to being done largely by hand. Complete with top carve depths. Having seen original early 50's LPs at guitar shows, they were pretty crude in some areas like spindly little frets, coarse grain fretboards and rough inlay work, so it really jumps out after being so used to modern factory CNC accuracy. This one almost looks like it had fret nibs, but hard to tell. That logo is terrible. The dot on the Gibson "i" should be as high as the top of the "b" at least and the "o" much rounder and smooth. Pickup routes did come with some more squared off or rounded than others, even the control cavity routes being closer to the edge of the body on some than others. When used, UV light does show a lot of of secret things lying underneath, but generally only if it's actually nitro finished. Pretty much didn't need to go that far for determining authenticity here, but would have been interesting to see.
yes! I don't know how you do a biopsy on this without UV light.
The knob placement gave it away for me right away!
I'd heard a few years ago that this guitar from John Entwhistle's collection was thought as not being a legitimate 59 Burst from Vic DaPra, a very well-known collector and authority on vintage Gibson guitars.
I remember getting a call at around 3:am one morning. It was Peter "Max" Baranet coked up & demanding I sell him some real vintage PAF's. I lied & said I didn't have any, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. He knew I collected & finally I got off the phone. He made some amazing guitars & that guitar could be one made by Pete.
Looks like a BobBurst. Especially since it was purchased in Toronto.
Yeah and the finish is a big giveaway, plus the routes and the other things the guy picked out.
Don't trust anything out of that place.
Very entertaining and informative discussion! It obviously took a lot of thought and skill to make a fake this good, even though it’s imperfect.
I am a layman, but the two things that leapt out at me were the crudeness of the Gibson logo on the headstock and that back cover - the angles of the parallelogram are so “off” that even I noticed it, and my vision is not of the best!
still a lovely guitar and sounds phenomenal, what’s a bit weird is why the mystery maker took such care with certain details and missed so many others? guess they didn’t have a real one to copy from 🤷♂️
He was still working on it at this point. There was a dentist in Montreal that made some amazing faux Pauls, dude actually ended up doing some time for it if I'm not mistaken. Lost his dental license. Pretty sure this is one of his.
If a fake has actual 1957 to mid 1961 gibson PAf humbuckers the pickups can be removed and sold for far more than the guitar is worth . They have gone for as much as 10 000 dollars a set .
It's important to remember that the word "vintage" is nothing more than a marketing word that sounds more impressive than just, "old".
That's the simple fact.* If something is old, it won't sell as well or for as high a price as if the same item is marked as "vintage".
But I do appreciate the importance of preserving some pristine examples of things from the past that can not be replaced, and represent something
important from that period of time it is from. That's history. But as such, all that is needed for guitars and amps that are old and have real historic significance,
we only need a few examples to represent what that is, and they should be in protected and displayed in museums.
But the vast majority of vintage gear, if it truly does have value more than just its age - or because of its age, those items should be kept in proper working order
(with some respect for their age) however that needs to be. They should be played! A guitar that is not being played is nothing more than a chunk of wood
with wires doing nothing more than getting older. Instruments are only instruments if they are making music.
A '54 or '55 gold top Les Paul that has been beat to heck, but still plays well, to me, is far more valuable as the instrument it was meant to be compared to a pristine example, an icon of what that model was for its historic value.
So the one in this video, it turns out, wasn't actually even a legitimate item. But - the owner loved it and enjoyed it, played it and held it in high regard.
Some may scoff at that and deride it as "fake". Maybe so. But that only matters to persnickety collectors, not to real players.
I can't help but think back to the early 80's when smart players were buying up the Tokai LP Standards instead of the 'real' Gibson models because they
were light-years better and way less expensive as well.
Also, the best-of-the-best players wielding priceless examples that have been modified or altered in some way, I have far more respect for those instruments than the ones that are pristine because they haven't had a note played on them or even seen the light of day in decades.
*(there is slightly more to it, but not enough to really matter much)
I find it hard to imagine that someone would go to all the trouble of getting all correct parts and be so stupid as to not route the body correctly., AND, that no one noticed it before this.
Didnt have a reference...
That shop ripped you off big time. No way they didnt notice these issues. They need a phone call and some handcuffs
Wow, even the Ox got fooled by this guitar. RIP Ox!
Surprised John's band mate Pete who is a Les Paul guy didn't offer his opinion to John ???
in the mid '70s i borrowed a black les paul copy for awhile that had a blank headstock, no manufacturer or anything else. always wondered what its origin was
I don't know about early models control cavities but I I've seen enough older models that had a metal plate and a cover held down by screws encompassing the actual controls in a shielding box.
Could it be a factory 2nd or a test buid for a new Luthier who took it home and built his own after seeing Keef on the telly? ...or an early set neck Japanese Les paul(Heavy) with 50s pRts?
Japanese would have been poly finished for sure.
I haven’t been able to find out what year Entwistle acquired this guitar, but if it was before the 90s, this authenticity issue wouldn’t have been such a big deal. Vintage Les Pauls were just old guitars back at a point in time, not investment pieces. People used to think nothing about doing mods to old guitars back then, pickup swaps, covering burst finishes in spray-can metallic paint jobs, and so on. When John bought this it would not have cost him half a million dollars, so “authenticity” wouldn’t have mattered to him so much as just whether it was a good player or not.
Looking at a Burst Believer book and not all the pick guard screws line up with the 22nd fret perfectly just sayin'
Uhh roooh!
Considering he's a bass player....🤔....I'm not sure if it matters or not to the now deceased John Entwhistle.
Being dead doesn't stop someone from making a TH-cam video and pissing all over your corpse.
Directors note: it would’ve been nice to actually have an example of an original 59 Gibson versus just saying not like the original over and over. I’m sure you’re right but for the viewer it would’ve been really cool to actually see the differences between the two instruments.
Looks like my home, with amps, cases and work “desk”. Wife only mentioned it once, now I have my own house!😊
Crazy situation, would be interested to see what it goes for
Not much its not even a famous guitar players its just a fake guitar fornerly owned by a famous guy who doesnt play guitar. Id rather have a real gibson
@@Airhead348 So it has some value.
Neat video. I liked all the people and the Entwistle guitar surprise at the end. Good sleuth work.
I'm in no way an expert, but as soon as you pulled the neck pickup out, I was like that routing job is nowhere close to right!! That's a sad thing to get hit with!!
The most ironic part in this, to me, is that this doesn't even come remotely close to being one of the best replicas- that distinction belonged to a fellow (RIP) out of the UK with the initials TM; his, at his best, were truly indistinguishable from the originals (when loaded with vintage parts/plastics), and it's said several are still in circulation today, being passed off as the real deal (not his intentions, but those of owners with nefarious intentions). Having owned several very high-end replicas myself, and having handled a couple of original Bursts, I have to say, while I despise the whole replica scene nowadays, that I do regret having sold my TM, if for no reason other than my great deal of respect for the builders sheer passion and unprecedented attention-to-detail. Nobody has, and nobody ever will, come close. A couple of people in the comments have alluded to this perhaps being either a Bobburst (a known scammer) or a Guitar Clinic, and that seems about right, as the attention-to-detail isn't there as you'd see on better replicas, especially in the case of Bob (I respect Guitar Clinic- NOT Bob). It seems Toronto has something of a reputation with fake Bursts, as another semi-well-known shop there had two fugazis come through in very close succession (talking months) a few years ago... Of course the shop, despite "specializing" in vintage, pleas none the wiser when it's discovered it's a fake... it was a commission. While I dipped my toes in the replica (and conversion) scene for a couple short years several years ago, I now am so far-removed from it and wish nothing to do with it ever again. I'll never understand that desire to get it as close as possible to real as possible, to the point of "fooling" experts and others, which a lot of guys who collect these seem to get off to. Why? It'll never be the real thing, and more than likely you don't have the balls to try and pass it off. Again, I'd only ever scoop up a TM build purely due to my admiration for his level of attention to detail, and because he was a great person, though I'm not chuffed about the Gibson headstock. Anyways, sorry for the tangent... screw replicas.
Wow, the soldering job is brutal, only a rookie would solder like that. Definitely not a Gibson job!
Here's a new YT video from Gibson about Paul Stanley's collection. At th-cam.com/video/nRc9sRGT0k4/w-d-xo.html in the video he produces an early custom shop attempt that's so "off" it's unreal, and without this provenance if someone ELSE went to sell Stanley's LP would we be having the same conversation as on this Emerald City? I think yes.
I watched that video, I agree 100% If Gibson can make guitars this poorly then there's no reason that this Entwistle LP can't be a real Gibson. Why not send it back to Gibson and ask them to authenticate?
To me it looks like a Gibson employee was making guitars from home. With original Gibson parts & doing all the work himself. Then selling them most likely a bit cheaper than the factory. Or someone at the factory built their own guitars for their own use. Sorta like the Johnny Cash song about the car. I forget the name but I remember that one line was like it's a 59, 60, 61, 62, 63...u get the idea. I believe that this was going on normally back then. Personally I believe that this is where we get a lot of these guitars. I think there most likely are some fakes, that are nothing like these home-made Gibson guitars that workers built for themselves & or their family members. Then over time these were sold off because the people needed money or that person may have passed away. Some guitars have definitely been made to fool others, but I believe there are quite a few out there made at home by factory workers who were taking what they learned at work & some parts from work & making their own guitars to their own specs.
I was gonna say the same thing!
Its called "One Piece At a Time".
I could see that being the case. I lived in Kalamazoo for years and there were lots of employee builds floating around town. Some were duplicates of current models, some were personalized with different necks, some were multi model hybrids. It happened.
This was a 300 buck guitar back in the 50s. Why would anyone bother doing that back then?
@@thetonetosser Because in the 1950's $300 was like $3,000 today. The employee builds I saw when I lived in Kalamazoo weren't attempts by the Gibson employees to bootleg instruments, but rather make a personalized guitar for themselves at an affordable price.
@@Deuce_Luminox. to make a living on the side. Fair enough. Although none of them thought they'd command six figures eh. I guess they could have knocked a couple out in the 70s when the price was climbing, adding original parts along the way. Those cream surrounds only made it on to the Bursts and maybe the 58 V's as far as I remember. Rarest of the plastic
Really interesting and informative video, some great spots there, only thing I would question as a flag is the pick guard screw, if you look at a lot of 59s a number do have that screw in that position I'd say?