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Joe Bonamassa Forum → Joe's Guitars, Amps and Gear → Pearly Gates
She's here! And it'll only cost you your soul!
http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Electri … ndard.aspx
$18,000 for the Murphy aged, $8,000 for the regular VOS
But damn she sure is pretty...
http://img3.musiciansfriend.com/dbase/p … 604363.jpg
pretty big waist of money. For that price I could buy 10 Traditionals. or better yet 2 bonamassa singatures models. I really hate how they make good looking guitars for the people that can afford them. The David Gillmoure strat was done just as well as any other singature model but the told fender it had to be in a price range that all his fans could enjoy one not just the wealthy. So hats off to David, and as for Pearly Gates and Billy Gibbons, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and all the stars that get these custom guitar built and then jack the price up 100 times what they are worth shame on you for taking advantage of your fans!
Does this mean that Billy will be going back to Les Pauls after using Gretsch's for so long? 
It's just a stupid R9. Buy a regular R9.
The wood was picked because of resemblance to the real Pearly and the finish shot for a similar look, so unless you get lucky with the wood and paint job you can't just buy an R9. I agree, it's stupid expensive, but I won't be buying a new guitar anytime soon, so what does price matter!
I have a les paul classic that almost has that same type of grain, minus the flames. Billy himself even said its a bone stock 59' Les Paul that he bought because Clapton played one with the BluesBreakers. I'd so buy a 59' Reissue before I bought that guitar. And why seymour duncan pearly gates pickups those things sound awful! 57' Classics or Burstbuckers would have been way better of a choice for that guitar. I'm still in shock people would pay the prices Gibson is just pulling out of thin air. Any carpenter could do a relic or wood work that you need to get the "EXACT COPY" of Pearly Gates. Just another way Gibson and Fender have SCREWED thier fans out of money. Top it off you say Billy Gibbons just like jimmy page played 25 of these guitars and hand signed them along with tom murphy. all he might have done was strum it to see if it was in tune and thats it! its not like he went up on stage with that guitar and played a gig with it. Still yet people will pay $25,000 for a guitar that might have cost Gibson $1600 to make. What ever!
I see your point. Alas, the limited run of these 300? and the predicted demand for such a guitar as Pearly Gates justifies the cost. Very low supply & very high demand. IMO they should have made 20,000 of them and sell them for $2500 a piece. I think they'd make more money. But it takes away from the "rare collectible" of the '59 LP... and they want this guitar to be a rarity. If the '59 Les Paul will be the first $1 million dollar guitar, and this is the 'closest' anybody will ever get to one, you're still looking at a dramatic fraction of the price of Billy Gibbon's actual '59. That was probably their mentality.
I've said it before and I'll say it many times before I die, to those who are upset about the price, you could easily take $3,000 to a talented luthier and they will build you the best damn replica of Pearly Gates you've ever seen. You could say that about any model Les Paul, Strat, Tele, anything.
There comes a time when someone has to ask them self "Is this the best thing I could do with $8,000 or worse yet 25,000?" I don't care if it going to be worth 100,000,000,000 Dollars in the next 50 years in the end its still just one guitar, and whats the point if your afraid to even touch it?
There are plenty of people out there who will actually play their PG. I think as a community we guitarists tend to polarized and overestimate how many people out there buy a guitar to let it sit behind glass or under a bed.
Granted there are thousands of unheard voices in the argument, but I'm tired of hearing complaints about how people spend all this money on a guitar for it not to be played.
"Is this the best thing I could do with $8,000 or worse yet 25,000?"
I recently made the mistake of holding this opinion to the fire light at the Les Paul Forum when I saw this picture.
http://images.lilypix.com/albums/userpi … le_023.jpg
All ten of those Les Pauls are 1959 50th Anniversary models, which run for about $6,000 a pop. I jokingly stated that $60,000 is a lot of money and that the money must be coming in illegally to justify that kind of spending, and I got this response.
Some people buy boats, some people buy cars, and some buy 50th Anniversary R9's... :bike
I'm not sure what the point of this is...
I guess I'm just saying people will spend what they will with their own justifications to go with the check.
Joe Bonamassa Forum → Joe's Guitars, Amps and Gear → Pearly Gates
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