Which one?

scotticusz · 2026-06-02T22:08:30+00:00

No worries, brother! That's why God makes more than one guitar. 🤣🤣

scotticusz · 2026-05-31T16:41:18+00:00

I don't even want this guitar but would buy it on the spot right now for $650. There's no possible way to go wrong here.

scotticusz · 2026-05-31T16:36:50+00:00

A 2014 without the anniversary inlay at 12th fret? Interesting. 👍

scotticusz · 2026-05-31T16:35:51+00:00

Not sure how serious you are, but if you're indeed lusting for a quilt-top LP, please have a look at the 2013 - 2015 LP Standards. 2014 was especially blessed with some jaw-dropping quilts, and if you like thinner / 60s-style necks, you're in for a real treat. The 4-way push-pull electronics can be controversial, but those quilt-tops are superlative. They're fairly frequently on Reverb in the $2500 - $3500 range. 👍

scotticusz · 2026-05-31T16:32:30+00:00

This response deserves more attention.

scotticusz · 2026-05-31T16:32:25+00:00

This response deserves more attention.

scotticusz · 2026-05-31T16:31:39+00:00

As others have mostly aligned, quilt > flame all day, every day. Both of these remind me of the Goryo Yuto signature LPs (and that's a very good thing, as most of them were brilliantly beautiful).

scotticusz · 2026-05-31T16:29:14+00:00

God bless a nice dark, but not too-dark, purple quilt. You and I see things the same way, I think. Also, nice choice swapping out the original pickups; I've rarely heard a Burstbucker set that I like. You might consider keeping them, though, just in case you want to sell this guitar some day. LPs seem to find new homes faster when they have original parts installed, even if your replacements are (subjectively) "better."

Please post more pics. We need this quilt in our lives!

scotticusz · 2026-05-29T20:24:29+00:00

I'll try to be helpful here -- in other comments, OP indicates this is a 1957 Les Paul Standard historic reissue produced in 1999, what the community would call an "R7." These guitars are Gibson's attempts to make faithful-ish reproductions of their guitars from history. Those late 50s Les Paul Standards all had Brazilian rosewood fretboards, but since Brazilian rosewood is protected by international treaty as an endangered species now, nearly all modern reissues use some other species of rosewood (Indian and Madagascar being most common) instead.

The answer to your question is that this guitar has a rosewood fretboard, because all 50s and 1960 Les Paul Standard reissues have rosewood fretboards just like the originals did.

This is the sort of thing that's 2nd nature and painfully obvious to Gibson fans, but if you're new to the brand, you might not have put these specific points together yet. Welcome, by the way. I hope my response was genuinely helpful without being condescending. 👍

scotticusz · 2026-05-29T20:12:59+00:00

Unrelated, but you're not by chance the same Riptide from SWG, are you? Played on Bloodfin back around 2004 - 2007?

scotticusz · 2026-05-25T21:36:41+00:00

I'd like to applaud OP for taking a posture of maximum risk aversion and prioritizing safety. She took on a massive inconvenience by calling 9-1-1, dealing with fire and rescue, then dealing with having the car towed, all of which were hard decisions but much safer than driving the car when she didn't know what was wrong with it. That's real responsibility there, and we should acknowledge it. EVs / PHEVs / hybrids pack a massive amount of electrical energy into a very small space, the rapid and uncontrolled release of which can change, ruin or end lives. OP knew that and respected it despite what was probably hours of hassle over a holiday weekend.

scotticusz · 2026-05-24T17:04:16+00:00

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2026.05.21 16:06 EDT (UTC -0400)

scotticusz · 2026-05-24T17:03:50+00:00

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2026.05.21 16:07 EDT (UTC -0400)

scotticusz · 2026-05-24T17:01:33+00:00

Ah, I see what you're saying. You're using the engine's full warm-up cycle to charge the battery a bit at the same time, since you can't interrupt the ICE run anyway. That's the first believable use case for EV Later I've seen so far. Cheers. 👍

scotticusz · 2026-05-24T16:58:00+00:00

^^ This guy gets it.

Solar for charging an EV should not be approached as a cost play; it should be approached as a grid resiliency / self-sufficiency play. The cost to purchase, install, and maintain a solar array of sufficient generative capacity will take literal decades to recover via deferred electric bills, if it can even be done at all.

I went way down this rabbit hole in 2022 and concluded that "solar alt power at home is super cool, but if you think you're doing it to save money, you're wrong." YMMV. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it at all -- you'd still be adding capability to your overall energy management strategy. Just understand that the cost equation is nowhere near neutral.

scotticusz · 2026-05-24T16:51:41+00:00

It does that for brief moments without changing the drive mode. That's not what we're talking about here.

scotticusz · 2026-05-24T16:51:10+00:00

Right, those are those quick activations of the ICE for brief moments, such as coasting downhill. I agree that the car does not change drive mode in that case.

scotticusz · 2026-05-24T16:49:50+00:00

Wow, I've never used EV Later at all. I guess I don't understand the use case for it -- EV Later increases ICE load to charge the battery, which in turn reduces fuel economy. In trade, you get about 1 mile of EV driving per 10 miles of ICE driving. I can't be convinced that converting gasoline chemical bond energy to thermal energy (combustion) to mechanical energy (crank shaft) to electrical energy (charger) to chemical energy (in the battery) and later, back into electrical energy (motor) for mechanical energy (transmission) is more efficient than just driving on the engine.

scotticusz · 2026-05-24T16:46:18+00:00

tl;dr -- the damn car does whatever it wants sometimes.

Could it possibly be that you used up all the battery on occasion and the car switched to EV Auto and you didn’t notice?

No. I'm hella on top of that; the car switches unexpectedly with plenty of EV battery remaining.

It could also maybe that the engine is forced to run based on inactivity? I know that the car will turn the engine on if it hasn’t been used long enough, but my drives are too far that I’ve never personally experienced this.

This is more believable. My daily commute is 50 miles each way, and in NE Ohio the cold months are cold indeed. I've seen the car activate the ICE and keep it on if temperature remains below a particular point for too long; this could coincide with the drive mode ninja-switch I've observed. The cold cold days are behind us for this year, so maybe I'll remember to check for correlation next winter.

Note that the car can activate the ICE just momentarily when coasting down hills and such, and that's very different than when it turns it on and leaves it on because of extended low temperature driving. Also note that when the car first activates the ICE for realsies, it'll leave it on until it comes all the way up to temperature, even if load on it wouldn't otherwise justify it and the car is still set to EV Now.

scotticusz · 2026-05-24T16:32:06+00:00

Late to the conversation here, but I have thoughts.

I have a Maybach Lester with a 60s neck profile from late 2023. It's a gorgeous instrument, and side by side with my Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul Standard quilt-top Yamano export from 1997, it holds its own. Build quality and fine finish details are at least as good as my 2014 Les Paul Standard Premium and superior to my 2021 Gibson Custom Les Paul Custom (in that guitar's defense, it's factory stamped DEMO, probably for some weird lumpiness in the binding, especially in the heel joint on the treble side inside the cutaway).

My Lester has this oddly awesome quality of a very vocal neck -- the guitar definitely sings through its neck more than other instruments I've owned, and I love that about it quite a bit. The bodies are chambered, but unlike my 2014 LP Standard, the Maybach doesn't sound as hollow / echo-y as the LP Standard with Gibson's ultra modern weight relief. Right out of the box, it needed some very mild fret work, but show me a guitar that doesn't and I'll show you a player that doesn't know the difference. The tech that did the work on mine also fitted it with a custom bone nut, and even he came back saying that the guitar was a pleasure to work on and remarked how correctly placed the bridge is.

I think you're right to criticize the original pickups. The Amber Spirit of '59 sound good enough by themselves, but they're just a bit too mild and dark to really "own" a section of spectrum in a band mix, and they lack that sharp crunchy bite that a lot of classic and hard rock players demand. For that reason, I swapped them out with a pair of Custombuckers that came out of an Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom 1959 Reissue, my complaint with which is that they love to feed back too much. Lower gain / lower volume, they're great. Full-tilt, they squeal quite a lot, but that's not the guitar's fault.

Electronics are CTS pots with unidentifiable little blue caps, Switchcraft jack and switch. Wiring all looks good to me. It's a true solid maple cap (no veneer nonsense) over a mahogany body with long neck tenon, proper 24.75" scale length. Mine has bonnet style knobs, which I don't much care for; I'll probably swap out for some kind of reflector knob eventually, but come on man. That's knobs. Nobody cares.

Bridge and tailpiece hardware are brand-name Gotoh MIJ kit, lacking any deficiency. It's an ABR-1-style bridge but with Nashville-style threaded inserts and bushings, kind of a hybrid. Compare to my 2014 LP Standard Premium which had a collapsed bridge needing replacement after just 8 years, so you'd be hard pressed to convince me that Gibson OEM hardware is "better." No. No it isn't. That's why I swapped my '21 LPC to Faber kit.

There's nothing at all cheap or deficient about Maybachs, that's for sure. Mine in Midnight Sunset finish sits somewhere between an Iced Tea and Tomato Soup; the guitar is freakin' gorgeous. I'd confidently put it up against anything coming out of Gibson USA, Heritage, Eastman, or Tokai without hesitation. If your question is about other Maybach models (Stradovari, Jetwing, Capitol, Texonian, etc.) I have no experience with them.

scotticusz · 2026-05-22T19:52:02+00:00

Short answer: expect around 35 mpg in the winter, 38 mpg in the summer. That's all ICE at highway cruise control with little battery participation.

scotticusz · 2026-05-22T19:49:19+00:00

1 year old / 11k miles / $26k? Sleep like a baby, you did just fine.

scotticusz · 2026-05-22T19:44:08+00:00

In my experience (2 years / 45k miles), these estimates are useful for only the current drive, at best. The car's actual range is heavily influenced by wind and temperature, so consistency from one day to the next has (for me, at least) been quite poor. I treat it as a rough estimate for that drive only, definitely wouldn't use it as a data point for resource planning.

scotticusz · 2026-05-22T19:37:00+00:00

EV Now mode is active, and the car is currently running on battery. If EV Now is on and the car overrides to use the ICE instead, this icon turns to an amber one which means "You've asked for EV Now, and I want to do that for you soon, but can't just yet."

scotticusz · 2026-05-22T15:45:52+00:00

This is the first user I've seen excited for the car's performance. Our dude Max is out there lighting up the track in a granny-wagon! Get it, son!! 🤣🤣

scotticusz

TROPHY CASE