I think a lot of us hate Gibson's business practices. Their lack of quality control as they crank out thousands terribly inconsistent guitars. Their shameless practice of charging ridiculous prices simply because beginners and inexperienced players will blindly spend too much money -- thinking that buying Gibson means they're automatically buying quality. With MOST guitar companies, if you pay MORE money, you will get a better made guitar. Not so with Gibson. Gibson cranks out just enough truly great guitars to keep their mystique alive. In reality, it's a spin of the roulette wheel at best. You may find a great one if you're lucky, but the odds are against you.

Fender has their problems too. But strats come at all price points and it always seemed to me that you could correlate the quality to the pricepoint better with strats. i.e. a $1500 strat was usually better than a $600 strat or a $300 Strat etc. Further, Strats are more utilitarian design to begin with. The top non custom shop models top out at around 2K.

With Gibson, you can spend over $10K on a Murphy aged 59 reissue, and it might not sound any better than a $400 LP studio off the used wall. If you want one of the (150 being made) NEW reissue Murphy-aged Jimmy Page models, it lists for $50K. At that price, you could start shopping for non-reisssue 50s Les Pauls.

If any other guitar company (except maybe Fender) tried to use similar tactics, they'd be out of business in a hurry.

Most of us LOVE a great Les Paul. We just resent what you have to do to find a great one, and what you might pay for a great one -- or even a shitty one.