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The years Gibson reissued the Brown Lifton Case with the Historic Les Pauls

BSHARP

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Jan 31, 2003
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I could not find this info with a search, but, I remember reading somewhere in this forum that Gibson only issued the brown Lifton case for a few short years and then changed to the black historic case for a time. Does anyone have the history of this? Thanks in advance.
 

Tim Plains

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Aug 1, 2013
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They switched to the regular black cases at some point during 2009. My old 50th was #113. It had a Lifton but later 50ths came with black cases.
 

El Gringo

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Apr 8, 2015
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I have both the Brown Lifton case and the Black Custom shop case and the Black Custom Shop case is far nicer and better of a case .
 

Big Al

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Apr 24, 2002
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The R8’S came with the black case. At my 2002 R8 did.

All the Les Pauls had black cases after the 1999 40th Ann. run. Early 2000 on to when they brought the Lifton type back, in several versions. IIRC 99 was first year, then a large gap of several years until reintroduced. I can't remember the year.
 

marshall1987

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Jan 30, 2005
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There is no clear cut answer to this question. There was a degree of overlap regarding the different cases provided with Gibson Historic guitars.

If the guitar was not on display and still in it's original case in the stock room, then you may have been able to purchase a new Gibson Historic Les Paul with it's original case. But when the dealer puts the guitar out on display it's possible you wouldn't get the original case. The dealers could just swap out the hang tags and give you a different case.

Occasionally the guitars, hang tags, and cases would get mixed up. Or the dealers would let you pick the case you wanted.

This happened with my purchase of a 2000 R9 from Chuck Levin's Washington Music. The salesman would let me have either a brown Lifton case, or the more robust black Gibson Historic case. I chose the black Historic case since it was better built than the brown cases.
 

J.D.

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May 24, 2006
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All the Les Pauls had black cases after the 1999 40th Ann. run. Early 2000 on to when they brought the Lifton type back, in several versions. IIRC 99 was first year, then a large gap of several years until reintroduced. I can't remember the year.

2003 - 2008 for the version of the lifton style reissue with "thin" padding. Reintroduced the brown tolex in 2013 with pink interior on the standard black case construction.
 
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