Fresh off a recent scare of my Amazon gift card being hacked and caught in time, I decided to take that at-risk amount and convert it to something safer.

Chicago Music Exchange had a Gibson Les Paul Studio Faded T in satin cherry, and I nabbed one of the last remaining. The box arrived last week. Apologies for some of the blurry iPhone pics.

First, the dog got a hit indicating something of interest, so we had to wait for clearance. I gave him some kibble to speed that up.


Inside was a nice box within a box. CME included some nice swag, including Some picks and a microfiber cloth.


The case candy included a shot of the guitar on the tech's test bench.


Blurry, but too bad:


Back:


Electronics cavity on back. Note the 4-conductor pickup wires, suitable for future upgrades.:


Front:


Now they're not lonely anynmore.


And a first for me: video of me strumming. It was impromptu working through the backing riff of Def Leppard's "Hysteria." I'm a perpetual beginner - don't expect much fretboard wizardry from me, and do expect bad audio from the iPhone.

I like it. I've an Epiphone LP Custom that I don't play nearly enough!!

Jammin.  Looks great and sounds good!!!!  Are you in scrubs?

Scrubs make great PJs. I don't even wear my scrubs in to work - they're for home. The hospitals prefer to launder their own for the OR.

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Did CME do any setup on the guitar beyond the factory setup?
I've never bought from them, but I've heard good things.

I keep looking at their '52 Tele reissues in the "used" portion of the site.... so tempting.

I'll look at the CME card when I get home. Without having taken a micrometer or measuring pick thickness between fret & strings, I'm pretty happy with the setup. When able, I'll snap some phone pics of the setup.

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Just curious.  I will say that the 2016 Gibsons have been a pretty solid bunch.  I picked up an SG Standard a day or so after they hit the racks and brought it home... it's a magical SG.  (And I had a 20% off coupon ).
I also ended up with a 2016 Flying V... also 20% off.  It's wasn't magical, but rewired to 50's wiring and it came alive.

Both were factory setups (as we know GC doesn't do anything but pre-rust the strings and perhaps relic em a bit) and were actually setup pretty dang well all considered.

So asking about a Gibson might not be the most telling.

My Trad Pro is one of those lucky LPs that just is something special. Enough so that SWMBO intends to give it to her brother when I die. Given that he's as close as a flesh and blood brother to me, is finishing his doctorate in studio & jazz guitar, does loads of session work, and will soon be playing a big part in a huge guitar company's online presence, I approve. His main touring guitar for years was a 1970s cherry burst LP Standard, and he describes mine as "magical."

That one was pleked but still needed some work to get where I wanted it half a dozen years ago. This Studio, at half the price, is set up well enough that I'm not jonesing to mess with it. It's a nice playing guitar out of the box.

It won't replace the clownburst, but I feel better leaving it out than the nicer one SWMBO gave me. She walked into Guitar Center, not knowing what to look for, but wanted to give me one for our 10th anniversary. She asked, "if you could take any one of these Les Pauls home, which one would you choose?" A few employees unanimously said, "that one" and indicated my plain top cherry burst. I married up.

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ETA: checklist from CME tech:

Congrats!

Awesome.

Update:

Though not afraid of a soldering iron, I wasn't thrilled about breaking mine out to mess with the wiring. Just before giving up, I scoured the net one last time and found a push-pull board from a Standard. They use Bourns pots, tap the coils of both p/u, and do a quick hardwiring of the bridge p/u to the jack.

For $85 shipped, that's close enough to the $80-100 and several hours I would have spent to do Page wiring. That'll do for now, and it'll take a couple weeks to get the board in.

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Edit: I still suck, but here's a slightly better video: