New Gibson USA Les Pauls maple tops?

Newer Gibsons have a bigger arc than old. If you're talking vintage that is.
Historics have a smaller belly than the USA models.

Or are you saying that your dads traditional is a little flatter than your friends standard?

The first post says nothing about the flames. Just about the arch on the top.
The flames have nothing to do with carve on the top either.

Then look harder, Gibson sends out multitudes of subpar guitars, it takes some searching to find the diamond in the rough!

I have a brand new Traditional Plus and the flame top is really nice. Most of the Plus tops I have seen have been really nice.

All I know is I have a les paul classic and my dads new les paul looks much flatter compaired to my classic.  I was just wondering if that was how they were cutting out some of the weight on new les pauls because the maple cap doesn't seem as big.  As far as the flames your right AA tops suck compaired to historics AAA tops.  my friends standard doesn't look that flamey under lights but out sided it in natural light it looks like a AAAA or better.  All we could figure is gibson lays on the coating on these guitar and you see through it better with natural light rather then a light bulb.  Either way a Les paul is still a Les paul and even though these new guitars might not look as good older models they sure do feel much better on the back.  Plus they sound awesome.  Burstbuckers and 57 Classics are way better then the 500T I had in my classic, or worse yet they 490 and 498.... can you say mud?  Also they play amazing right out of the box with this new PLEK system they are using.   You might go though a 100 to find that perfect guitar with not one thing to complain about but now days even the soso guitars are better then what I bought 10 years ago!