Is the Myth of the Les Paul Headstock True?

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Clyde Elliott
5 years ago
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1 Is the Myth of the Les Paul Headstock True? When I first read the above forum-post title on SeymourDuncan.com, I thought I was missing out on some awesome historical Kalamazoo shop secrets, or some long ago rumor of Headstocks of Power, given to the ancient Rulers of Men. Instead, it was this stupid exchange: User: Is the myth of the Les Paul headstock true? I keep hearing people say that Les Paul headstocks break easily. I've had a LP Studio for five years now and the headstock is still intact. Where did this myth come from? How true is this myth or is it just isolated incidents exaggerated by haters? I don't know if the guy got banned or just run off by us villagers with our flaming pitchforks, but there was a dude who insisted that all Gibsons were pieces of crap with geometry problems that lended themselves to headstock breaks, especially Les Pauls. It's basically an inside joke to everybody here. I don't know if the guy got banned or just run off by us villagers with our flaming pitchforks, but there was a dude who insisted that all Gibsons were pieces of crap with geometry problems that lended themselves to headstock breaks, especially Les Pauls. It's basically an inside joke to everybody here. It might be a joke on here but there are so called experts in the real world who claim it is true I thought it was pretty well known that they have a weak spot there. But unless there's an impact around that area, they'll be perfectly fine. any guitar with an angled headstock has the same issue. So what? No one here has actually broken one have they? Depends. Do you drop your guitar on the ground a lot or smash the headstock into things? I've had a LP Studio for five years now and the headstock is still intact Clearly you need to leave your guitar laying around more. Say, on the kitchen table or on the sofa...maybe leaned up against your amp or better yet a wall in the hallway. Then you'll know what all those folks are talking about!

Les Paul headstocks not only break-off approx 10,000,000 times more than anything else on the planet ever breaks-off of anything, every guitar in the Gibson catalogue will breach a headstock as

2 Is Seymour Duncan the Fox News of forums? What about that dude that was chased with fucking pitchforks? I want to know what happened to that guy. If some one, say, a guy with diagrams and stuff, suffers abuse from these guys just for entertaining the idea that LP headstocks are prone to breaking, then I m gonna get punched right in the dick. Les Paul headstocks not only break-off approx 10,000,000 times more than anything else on the planet ever breaks-off of anything, every guitar in the Gibson catalogue will breach a headstock as easily as a little kid looses his ice-cream cone. Maybe that s not fair ice-cream cones have a vertical structure which tends to be much stronger than a 17 right turn through a straight piece of cheap mahogany. We ll get into this deeper, but for now, I ll answer the question of the quivering masses. It is NOT a myth that Les Paul headstocks break off. A lot. I make my living repairing stringed instruments, mostly guitars. I am currently in production of three different electric guitar models of my design, (see us soon on kickstarter) but I butter my bread by repairing and restoring guitars. My specialty is catastrophic structural restoration, and I m super good at it. I get on average two or three broken headstocks a month. When I m done hopefully the headstock will be stronger than before (I install 2 mahogany splines laterally at the headstock break) and unless another repair guy puts it under a microscope, not even the closest scrutiny can tell a repair has been performed. Enough of those repairs are Gibson (acoustic or electric) guitars to assume that they all are Gibsons. PHOTOS!

4 Keeping score? That s a 68 B-23, an SG, a Hummingbird, and a Les Paul with broken headstocks, and that was just over Christmas. Like a month and a half. C mon Fake News! any guitar with an angled headstock has the same issue. So what? No one here has actually broken one have they? Oh, you will my inquisitive friend, you will. Here s why: Guitars with angled headstocks, (acoustic or electric) a not prone to braking. Guitars have had angled headstocks for millions of years and there has never been a problem. The reason is in how the luthier creates the headstock tilt. The joint commonly used to joint the neck and headstock together is called a scarf joint. Scarfing a joint meant something totally different when I was a kid, but in this case it s the joint creates the headstock angle by turning the grain to a complementary angle of the desired tilt, making a turn that wont peel out the grain. Here s an easy pic:

5 EASY PIC As one can see, the joint is easy to make and requires almost no math. It is the perfect solution for a straight piece of wood that needs to take a left turn of 17, and Gibson Les Pauls don t use em. Gibson doesn t scarf the necks of their guitars for one simple reason but they won t say. Here s what they do say: Headstock Angle (Pitch) Just like the original Les Pauls of 50s, and many classic Gibson models, the Les Paul Traditional headstock is carefully angled at Gibson s traditional 17 degrees. This subtle yet crucial element of the guitar s design increases pressure on the strings and helps them stay in the nut slots. An increase in string pressure also means there is no loss of string vibration between the nut and the tuners, which equals better sustain. Gibson.com

6 That s what we call in the guitar making biz Bullshit. The following is a diagram of how Gibson makes their necks: 1.Take a big piece of cheap mahogany 2. Remove all the wood that doesn t look like a neck 3. Use remaining wood as neck This method creates a cross-grain profile at the headstock, and it will, with 10000% certainty, break here: Gibson absolutely knows this, but like Big Tobacco executives, they have built a fantasy world of lies propped up by yes-men and makers that swear that no machine can do what they do. Thus they are complacent in their design and way behind the curve in their use of technology. And scarf-joints.

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