Les Paul top carve

[Mats A]

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]

late '69, early '70 got the flatter carve.

 

[Mats A]

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]

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]

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.