Postby MKB » 27 Aug 2013, 13:37
The best guitar I have ever played in my life was a R9 VOS Standard in the Gibson booth at a guitar show a few years ago. This was unplugged BTW. Just unbelievable. I went to the show with my coworker, who is a Strat freak and hates Gibsons, and even he said it was the best guitar he's ever played.
Ed King, the ex-guitarist for Lynyrd Skynyrd (he co-wrote Sweet Home Alabama and Free Bird), has two original '59 bursts. One was stolen and featured in The Burst Book. He eventually tracked that one down and got it back. Ed said recently that he played a R9 Cloud straight off the wall at the Gibson factory, and it was a better guitar than either of his original bursts.
Maybe it's time to take a moment and be thankful that Gibson has well remembered what they did right in the late fifties, and we can get a new instrument that is reasonably close to the utterly unaffordable originals. The R8 and R9 VOS's certainly are outstanding instruments.