Originally Posted by
GAR
That "Norlin Inc. Era" Paul was a piece of shit. It ran from 1972 as a custom-color option celebrating twenty years' anniversary of the thing until 1976.
Here's my dream wish for this thing:
FIRSTLY and most importantly:
1. Hand-apply and hand-mount the fingerboard glue and fingerboard to the necks. Back in the 70's they had this tool to economize the application of glue to the fingerboard and it had five nozzles that would deliver these blobs on the neck blank, then it was spread with a roller leaving some dry spots in these repeat areas: roughly 9th fret, 12th fret, and then the point fingerboard meets body.
It was like a 3-point hump and the only way to correct it back then was to either mill the hell out of the fret tops (which really ground up that hill between frets #12-16) or pull 'em, replane the fingerboard starting with 80 grit thru 320 and refret. Gibson needs to make sure their neck-fingerboard-body bonds are sufficiently saturated and clamped so these unstable rises in the fingerboard ever happen again. I've had Gibsons since The Henry took over there from Norlin, but I won't own a Paul because I dont' trust that those necks are stable even to this day.
2. Norlin-era necks on Pauls all suck, I hate em.. but the binding is an embarrassment nobody should have to deal with, there's always this paint-ledge, wood-ledge, or both paint/wood ledge where the binding meets the body all the way around (except the Custom headstock, they paid attention to that for the extra $275) and it makes you feel like nobody gave a shit over there about the player(s) - plural - destined to own the thing and hand it down to the next owner/player after him.
Gibson needs to flush that fucking binding, tape the color properly, build up and level those clear layers sufficiently. Just look at a Dean USA's, or the Connecticut Hamers! Their bindings are perfect, no ledges, no seams - every Gibson I've had has at least a seam in the clear layer and I won't pay custom-shop prices for accoutrements that are sold as standard features of this model or that. Bindings ought to be flawless without seams or ledges.
3. The cream Customs like Randy's came with the stock stamped-shell Klusons, but 8 times out of ten you find somebody changed 'em over to Grovers or Schallers and that's what I'd expect - gold-plated high-ratio, modern tuners not them loose-shell bieouyatches and I don't wanna see some five-dollar Ping bullshit potmetal things from China sold AS Grover. Fuck that, gimme Schaller W. Germany's then if they're gonna play that game.
4. The one thing you did get no matter regardless of these other 3 mandatory FAILS! was a perfect bone nut with a low-action setup. If you can't get a properly-cut nut with an above-average setup on a straight-ass neck of premium maple I don't wanna see it.
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