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Dating a Les Paul Custom

Mickeyrouse

New member
Joined
Sep 13, 2017
Messages
9
Unfirtunately
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I'm still seeing a maple top in this photo.
Got another photo of the top clearly showing mahogany? :hmm
Unfortunately, after these shots the guitar was refinished. I agree the color of the wood looks like maple, but the grain looked (at the time, to my unschooled eye) like mahogany. I know that mahagony can lighten if exposed to air very long, and the candy apple auto paint had been removed 5-6 years prior to these pics. After all this discussion, I'm more in the re-issue camp on this. Since I more or less knew this guitar for 8 years or so before I acquired it in '79, I have always had a hard time thinking why anyone would want to "improve" a guitar that at the time would have been still somewhat new. But then again, we're talking musicians here, and musicians have done stranger things- just ask me.
 
Last edited:

Wally

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 27, 2003
Messages
3,535
That is a maple top, imho. One can see the contrast of the maple to the mahogany in the pockets. It is difficult to confuse maple with mahogany when one is looking at the wood since mahogany has open pores while maple is a close-pored wood.
One can see this in a finished guitar as well even with an opaque finish.... unless the finish is so thick that it obscures the pores in the mahogany.
 
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