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Early 1970’s Les Paul Deluxe Tobacco Bursts

Mats A

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How come that some of the early 1970’s Tobacco Burst’s Les Paul’s looks more like a darker red sunburst than the more common almost black sunburst? Or are they really wrongly named as Tobacco Burst?
 

guitplayer

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How come that some of the early 1970’s Tobacco Burst’s Les Paul’s looks more like a darker red sunburst than the more common almost black sunburst? Or are they really wrongly named as Tobacco Burst?

wrongly named. painters leeway.
 

Bob Womack

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paulybody3.jpg


lpincasetouched.jpg


This a '74 Kalamazoo Small Script Standard, one of those oddities from the early '70s that was only available by special order. I was told by a man who worked at the Kalamazoo plant that this finish was called "Dark Wineburst." Internet mavens correct both of us and say that "tobacco burst" was the only burst available at the time; it is clear because it is the only burst in the catalog. Of course, this entire model wasn't in the catalog.

Here is the guitar above and me, left, side-by-side with a tobacco burst and my college roommate and band mate, Bob Haymes, in 1978:

bobnbobsm.jpg


It's the Bob and Bob Show. The photo is black and white but you can see the difference between them.

Bob
 

SpencerD

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Man. Threads like this are exactly why I'm a Norlin dork from hell. Proud of it too. :yah:dude: Things could be all over the place .... kind of a fucked up way to run a business but hey -- I own some and they're fantastic instruments.


Heavy! :hee
 

marshall1987

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paulybody3.jpg


lpincasetouched.jpg


This a '74 Kalamazoo Small Script Standard, one of those oddities from the early '70s that was only available by special order. I was told by a man who worked at the Kalamazoo plant that this finish was called "Dark Wineburst." Internet mavens correct both of us and say that "tobacco burst" was the only burst available at the time; it is clear because it is the only burst in the catalog. Of course, this entire model wasn't in the catalog.


Nice guitar Bob! And a very nice looking maple top w/ desirable sunburst finish.

So the description....." '74 Kalamazoo Small Script Standard...." I have never come across this designation before. Was there another Gibson factory making Les Pauls other than Kalamazoo in 1974?

Thanks. :2cool
 

Bob Womack

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Nice guitar Bob! And a very nice looking maple top w/ desirable sunburst finish.

So the description....." '74 Kalamazoo Small Script Standard...." I have never come across this designation before. Was there another Gibson factory making Les Pauls other than Kalamazoo in 1974?

Thanks. :2cool
Thank you! I've discussed these Standards for years on the Internet and the description evolved from misunderstandings. Some believe that there were only Deluxes before 1976. If you talk about an early-70s Standard they'll reply, "Oh you mean a routed Deluxe." Nope. Some believe no LPs came from Kalamazoo in the '70s, that they only arrived from Nashville. The description evolved around the fact that the Standard model only became official in 1976 with the opening of the Nashville plant BUT the model existed before then.

What happened was that Gibson had no idea what a Standard LP was because the guitar was constantly in flux during the 1950s-60s run. Their consumers and Les Paul pressuered them to restart production of a "standard" LP and they started in 1967. However, they tried P-90s and then people asked for humbuckers and they went to the stock of small Epiphone humbuckers they inherited when they bought Epiphone. Think of it as an upgrade they called it the LP Deluxe. This model had the sandwich body, a three-piece mahogany neck, an LP Custom-sized headstock, and typically a three-piece maple top. Hardware with chrome and the tuners were dual-ring tulip Klusons with nickel finish. Finally people screamed, "No! Give us a STANDARD LP with BIG humbuckers. In 1973 Gibson began offering LPs with large humbuckers (T-Tops) as dealer special orders. Their bodies and hardware were the same as the Deluxe but they were factory routed for the large humbuckers and had a truss rod with the legend, "Standard," engraved with a small script. Gibson first screwed around with the serial numbers and then lost the shipping ledgers and the Standard wasn't in the catalog so there is little record. We think there were a total of about 3200 made to custom order in Kalamazoo between 1973 and 1975. At the time, the only sunburst finish designation in the catalog was "tobacco" so people tend to say there were only tobacco bursts. I finally called Gibson and got a guy on the phone who worked at Kalamazoo and he told me about the "Dark Wineburst."

The Standard became so popular that Gibson decided to make the Standard an official model in the catalog and made it the flagship model of the newly-opened Nashville facility. On that new version they changed to a three-piece MAPLE neck, metal tuners, a chrome metal jack plate, and a truss rod cover with a larger, bolder script "Standard." The Nashville plant was more "hard tooled" than the Kalamazoo plant, meaning that more was done by hand in Kalamazoo. When I was shopping for an LP in '77 I could easily tell the differences between the used Kalamazoo-built LPs and the new Nashville-built ones. All I could afford was the used '74 Standard you see above.

'73-'75 script size:
lpscriptsm.jpg


New truss rod script size on a modern LP Standard headstock:
lpstock.jpg


So, the designation has evolved from multiple misunderstandings about this small group of guitars. In one swell foop it describes everything that sets these apart from the Nashville .

So, no, only Kalamazoo was making Standards before '76. Oh, there may have been a few proofs in Nashville in late '75 but the line officially started in '76.

Bob
 

Scozz

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Those colors look very much like the Iced Tea color Gibson had available for a few years, I don't know if that color is still available. The finish I associated with Tobacco Burst is actually a Vintage Burst, you know, the very dark, almost black edges.

Gibson seems to have had a penchant for some oddities during the early Norlin ownership.
 
Last edited:

Bob Womack

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Those colors look very much like the Iced Tea color Gibson had available for a few years, I don't know if that color is still available. The finish I associated with Tobacco Burst is actually a Vintage Burst, you know, the very dark, almost black edges.

Gibson seems to have had a penchant for some oddities during the early Norlin ownership.
I agree with you. When I had the guitar appraised by a vintage dealer in the '90s he described the guitar's finish on the document as "Iced Tea Burst." In the pic above of myself and my band mate in '77, his guitar , also a '74 Standard, is finished exactly as you described, almost black at the edges. Interestingly, his had metal saddles and mine has nylon. It's like Gibson threw whatever was lying around in the bins onto the guitar.

Bob
 

Bob Womack

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none of those guitars are Deluxes.
Understood. However, if you notice in my description above, the early '70s Standards shared everything with the Deluxes except the pickups, routes, and truss rod legend.

Bob
 

guitplayer

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To me , this is a tobacco finish. A 1974 Deluxe/mod.
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This is a 1974 Standard with more of an Iced tea.
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Wilko

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Ive had a few tobacco bursts. They really were tobacco bursts. Only one of them had red in the finish:

Deluxe with factory humbucker routs:
74_deluxe.jpg


75_deluxe.jpg


1974_deluxe_1.png
 

Strings Jr.

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FWIW, when I started at Gibson in '77, the Tobacco Bursts were actually called Tobacco Brown ​Sunburst.
 

fender69

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I had one back in 74 or so. It was the closest I could get to Duane's back then. It had full sized humbuckers factory installed. Not bad, nothing special. Of course neither was I and had no idea what I was doing back then either. :rofl
 
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