Originally Posted to a Guitar Forum on Quora
The possible reasons may not be as tidy as summing them up in the belief that a new, high-end guitar is the root reason as to why many players sense an immediate increase in their abilities. But this is more likely due to that new “high quality” guitar having had a good setup and a guitar that is well setup will invariably feel, play, and sound better, play better. For one thing, a new, well-setup Les Paul is likely to have a lower, more playable action because the string height has been adjusted to meet that objective.
An additional reason this dynamic occurs so often is because a Gibson Les Paul is aesthetically beautiful and made from high quality materials (virtually any player at any level will feel a magnetic-like pull to pickup that new Les Paul and play it for hours more each week than they were on their “old guitar”. Put differently, it is almost guaranteed that the “Power of Suggestion” has more than a little to do with why the player “feels” as if they’re “playing better than ever”, when it could just be that he or she “believes” they’re playing has improved dramatically. Since the dawn of the Gibson Les Paul in the early 1950’s, and possibly more than any other guitar, the LP has been known to have this incredible effect on guitarists everywhere!
Last, but certainly not least, and for any combination of reasons, the guitarists in question do, in fact, experience a pronounced “lift” in their playing. The Les Paul is arguably an incredibly good guitar and, though, like any long-standing and storied manufacturer of high-quality guitars, Gibson has had its ups and downs in product quality, the “ups” have far exceeded the “downs”.
My “Cardinal Red” 2024 Gibson Les Paul 50’s model from the “Custom Colors” series, which was released for that year only.
Who wouldn’t be “drawn-in” and return time and again to play such an extraordinary piece of “Eye Candy”?!! It didn’t make me a better player but it does compel me to pull it out of its case and play it – a lot!
