A host of New Gibson R9 59 Les Paul's with Brazilian Rosewood

guitars4you

Sadly USA only by the looks of things but Dave's Guitar shop has a host of new 59 reissues with Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard - Not sure if this is exclusive to Dave's or available via other major dealers as well
 
https://davesguitar.com/products/gibson-custom-shop/type/electric/condition/new/series/R9B/

Whitecat

Pretty sure Gibson made these late 2017/early 2018... other dealers had them as well (USA only). Not too many out there in total but obviously quite a price hike to get one.

Brize

Meh. The simple fact is that there will be some non-Braz R9s that play and sound better than the Braz versions. You play the guitar, not the spec sheet.

randella

Oooosh!  Some very pretty guitars - I'd love to have any single one of them, but my word they ain't cheap.  I expect the shop will just be selling them on at roughly what Gibson charge.

Given the stronger dollar and the odd way the USA does sales tax kinda after the fact, I would expect those to come to the UK at dollars for pounds.

Maybe I'm out of touch with these things.  

Whitecat

randella said:

Given the stronger dollar and the odd way the USA does sales tax kinda after the fact, I would expect those to come to the UK at dollars for pounds.

That is accurate, high-end guitars seem to be virtually 1:1 now in terms of the number after the currency symbol - but there is no way you'd get those over legally... although tbf at the moment I'm not sure how closely Customs would look at anything like that, they've got bigger fish to fry...

stickyfiddle

Given 20% VAT and a pound sitting at $1.18 (at time of writing) these would be higher numbers in pounds then dollars. 

Though tbh while I like a bit of figuring I've never seen the fascination in these sorts of ludicrous "look at me" tops.

Fishboy7

Nice, but I wouldn't pay more for Brazilian.  Not that much more anyway 

danny_777

A $2-3k upcharge for a fingerboard is ludicrous. Very "Gibson".

crunchman

randella said:

Oooosh!  Some very pretty guitars - I'd love to have any single one of them, but my word they ain't cheap.  I expect the shop will just be selling them on at roughly what Gibson charge.

Given the stronger dollar and the odd way the USA does sales tax kinda after the fact, I would expect those to come to the UK at dollars for pounds.

Maybe I'm out of touch with these things.  

They can't legally come over to the UK because of CITES.

If you go to the US, you could bring it back as a personal possession, but you would never be legally allowed to sell it again.  Neither would your kids if you croak.

SteveRobinson

I wonder what the quality of the wood is like? Some Gibsons I've seen from used stump wood that was full of knots.

Whitecat

SteveRobinson said:

I wonder what the quality of the wood is like? Some Gibsons I've seen from used stump wood that was full of knots.

PRS has been using a lot of garbage like that as well. I suppose unless they find old reclaimed furniture and things like that (which is of course undocumented) it's all they can otherwise get.

roberty

Guess it's easier to chop down now Bolsonaro's at the helm

Whitecat

roberty said:

Guess it's easier to chop down now Bolsonaro's at the helm

Probably sadly true but the only countries they can easily send new cuts to are China and North Korea. Everyone else tends to respect CITES...

ICBM

SteveRobinson said:

I wonder what the quality of the wood is like? Some Gibsons I've seen from used stump wood that was full of knots.

Yeah, but... Braz.

That seems to be all most of the buyers for this sort of thing care about. It's not as if they're actually going to get played anyway.

brooom

Brize said:

Meh. The simple fact is that there will be some non-Braz R9s that play and sound better than the Braz versions. You play the guitar, not the spec sheet.

this

WezV

SteveRobinson said:

I wonder what the quality of the wood is like? Some Gibsons I've seen from used stump wood that was full of knots.

these ones don't look too bad compared to some you see, but certainly not as straight grained as i would be after in any other fretboard wood.

johnhe

I don’t spend enough on my guitars to have need to educate myself on CITES. But I thought that restrictions on the use of rosewood in guitars had changed recently so it was no longer a problem?

Or did that exclude Brazilian RW?

WezV

Braz RW was well protected before any of the recent changes back and forth for all other rosewood.

It's only an issue when it comes to crossing borders, which is why these were USA only.

Kittyfrisk

I used to have a kind of mental component checklist for the 'perfect' guitar, which included Brazilian rosewood.
Now I tend to view it in the same way as I do ivory.
Yes it is beautiful, but the environmental price is just too high to use it any more.

earwighoney

ICBM said:

SteveRobinson said:

I wonder what the quality of the wood is like? Some Gibsons I've seen from used stump wood that was full of knots.

Yeah, but... Braz.

That seems to be all most of the buyers for this sort of thing care about. It's not as if they're actually going to get played anyway.

Agree.

BRW seems to induce an odd sense of hype. I've owned guitars with it, Madagascar, Cocobolo and Indian RW and it was clear the Indian RW was the softer of the ones but in terms of sound I don't think I could tell a difference.

Darren/ @Danielsguitars showed me a few different types of rosewood fretboard blanks and the one which seemed hardest was the Amazon RW one, which was unsurprising as it is one of the denser RW's, but again whether it makes a difference to a finished electric guitar is something I personally I don't think I could tell the difference.

Danielsguitars

I hear braz this braz that, unless you've actually built anything and compared it it's internet bollocks as usual, cocobolo has apparently been found and probably other rosewood too, just the same as the honduran nonsense, African mahogany was found on a refinished goldtop

When it's aged you can't tell what the hell it is, it's either a good guitar or not 

I have a 58 DC junior that I need to restore and my old Madagascan rosewood looks really like that board, I do have some old braz boards kicking about but I don't use them as I don't think they're the be all and end all