Les Paul Push Tone Bummer

[JGundry]

Well I got my Gibson Push Tone today and it's going back and I don't want another one. I was hoping it would be the perfect solution to quick pickup swaps for testing humbuckers. But the mounting system is hopelessly out of alignment. On top of that the workmanship is not so good. One of the maple trapezoid inlays had the grain torn out to the point where you could feel it when you played and there was a completely unbuffed sanded spot on the top of the guitar. I think they sanded out a scratch and never had it buffed out. Plus the volume pots are 300K and mounted to a PCB. It would be a pain in the ass to swap them out for 500K pots. For $2,900.00 you could hog out a used Historic Les Paul and be better off.

Here is a pic.

[David Schwab]

The pickup alignment thing was one of my concerns as well.

Plus those maple inlays would get dirty fast.

For a lot less money you can mod an Epi LP.

[Possum]

Gibson quality strikes again....

they just don't care do they?

[kevinT]

It was a great concept...Gibson was probably in a rush to get it to market and didn't fine tune a few things. They'll sell them all anyway, i'm sure....Their marketing and research department probably surfs the forums and uncovers what is hot right now. They probably realized that more folks are learning about pickups and the effects on tone and that they were switching them out of their guitars more often...they saw an opportunity.

[kevinT]

I have gotton really good at switching out pickups quickly out of my guitars.

The "Players pickup tester guitar" that i bought off of ebay that I posted pics here a while back is going up for sale again on ebay because I find that it is quicker to use a real guitar and jerryrigging it so that you can use gator clips or nuts to avoid the hassle of soldering. I'll let folks know when i list it if anyone is interested.

[JGundry]

Gibson had to know that these would end up in the hands of pickup makers. It would have been very easy to design it correctly to begin with. But really there is no excuse for a guitar, whose purpose is to showcase pickups, to have such a poorly aligned mounting system.

[Possum]

...

I looked at it on Musician's Friend website, they don't even have them yet but the photo shows the pickup sitting in there perfectly, I bet the photographer straightened it out for the shoot :-)