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Les Paul top carve

Mats A

Member
Joined
Jan 15, 2008
Messages
799
Was in 1968 when the Les Paul was reintroduced that it got a flatter top carve or was it after Norlin had taken over in the 70’s?
 

Wilko

All Access/Backstage Pass
Joined
Mar 11, 2002
Messages
20,853
late '69, early '70 got the flatter carve.
 

Mats A

Member
Joined
Jan 15, 2008
Messages
799
Thanks! Like when the Deluxe was introduced then? Was it in the 80’s the more vintage top carve with more of a belly came back?
 

lhric

Member
Joined
Aug 3, 2007
Messages
197
Thanks! Like when the Deluxe was introduced then? Was it in the 80’s the more vintage top carve with more of a belly came back?

Later 1970 or so the top carve became less pronounced and more dome shaped. I'm presuming to save on production time and produce more guitars as Gibson was making hundreds a week or so. But there were some anomalies or so later. I had a 1971 54/58 Goldtop standard reissue that had a distinct top carve with a more pronounced "dish" toward the outer perimeter edge binding.
 

mrbeasty

New member
Joined
Dec 19, 2002
Messages
114
I don’t recall how ‘70s manufacturing changed from the ‘60s manufacturing, but if they started to use computer controlled routers, I would suspect that complex 3D was a challenge. The recurve on a LesPaul can be intricate to program. Carved manually, it can be time consuming, something Norlin probably wanted to minimize.
 
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