My First Good Guitar – Gibson The Paul

This is the one that got away…and came back. In the late 70s/early 80s I had been working my way through a number of mediocre Japanese electrics. The cover band I was in (my only source of income at the time) was getting a lot of gigs and I was starting to squirrel away a little $$$ for a better guitar. One day my bandmates and I drove out to Bay Music in Saginaw, Michigan and I spotted a used Gibson “The Paul” hanging on the wall. I gave the dude behind the shop’s counter 20.00 to hold it for me until the next day. I went home, emptied my “savings”, borrowed 100.00 from my brother, and returned the next day to pay the balance.

This was my first Gibson and my first really good guitar. I played the shit out of it. I was pretty unsophisticated about guitars then so a lot of the subtleties were lost on me but I loved that it said “Gibson” on the headstock and that it sounded closer to the guitars on the rock records I was listening to at the time than my previous guitars. In addition to rocking it at countless parties, graduations, weddings(!) and bars I spent a lot of evenings on the couch strumming and noodling on it over Late Night With David Letterman (and the Rockford Files that followed).

Then something shiner appeared…One day the dude running sound for my band tempted me with a sunburst Ibanez Iceman that he had special ordered the year they came out (1978) and I got rid of the Gibson for it. The Ibanez was cool (and now very collectable) but I never bonded with it the way I did that Gibson. A year or 2 later the Iceman was gone and I never missed it.

Sometime in the 90s I started to pine for that old The Paul. I had an eye out for one during my stint at the vintage guitar shop but none surfaced. Later in the 2010s I started seeing some but nearly all had some form of modification. Usually replaced pickups or tuner swaps. I held out for an original example.

This one here is the same year as my first – 1979. It’s in considerably better condition than my original was even at the time I purchased it in ’82. It’s all original except for one pot and one knob. No case but I HATE CASES. Actually, I wouldn’t mind seeking out an era correct case for this one someday. My original came with the Gibson purple lined hardshell and not the chainsaw number.

The body is 4 pieces, the neck is 3. Both walnut. It has a nice ebony fretboard and T-Top pickups. This guitar feels really great. There is only a very thin layer of lacquer between you and the wood. It’s put together very well and the neck feels like it had a lot of personal attention at the factory. The frets Gibson was using in this era are low and fairly wide. This gives it a bit of a softer attack because your fingers make a little contact with the ebony when you play. It sounds a little dark. Dark but not muddy. It’s a very “woody” sounding guitar unplugged. Plugged in and cranked up it sounds real close to the guitars on the records I was listening to back in 1982.