Hey everybody, it's Will here again. Hope everybody is doing well and today I'm really excited to get to bring you a comparison between two 1970s or a Les Paul Customs, a 74 Kalamazoo made model which represents the kind of earlier 70s spec and a 79 Nashville made Les Paul Custom which is a good representation of the later era spec of 70s Les Paul's. So let's get into what makes these guitars similar and what makes them different. If you enjoy this 365 days of guitar content I would really encourage you to hit that subscribe button, hit the bell, leave a comment, share with your friends, whatever you can do to support the channel is greatly appreciated and I appreciate you all. I also appreciate my buddy Colin Baker for lending me this beautiful 79 Les Paul Customs. So let's start with the Kalamazoo made model. This particular one is a 1974. The Les Paul Custom was reintroduced in 1968 and by the early 70s they were very much they had sort of settled on this general spec. From 1969 they had a Mahogany body with the so-called Pancake body construction. I will try to capture the the seam. Hopefully it hopefully it appears there but basically there's a slip of maple in between the two strips of Mahogany. This is still a totally non-weight-relieved guitar. It's about 11 pounds so it's quite hefty. The next were three piece construction and in the Kalamazoo era they were Mahogany next. The tuners originally would have been closons. This particular model actually has showers on it and from about 1970 you do see the volute which is this piece here which is designed to help prevent headstock breakage. Interestingly this guitar has had a repaired headstock so there you go. The top curves got a lot flatter as the 70s went on as well compared to a 50s. The bridge and tailpiece are the ABR1 style and the lightweight stop bar tailpiece. It had the Gibson patent number or so-called T-top humbucking pickups notable because of the T inscribed on the bobbins there. I believe in this era Gibson was using 300K pots and the witch hat control knobs. Obviously this guitar has had the plastics changed and the pickup covers removed. Features an Ebony fingerboard with the fretless wonder frets which are incredibly small and we're a holdover from the spec of the 50s Les Paul customs. Not great for bending strings but wonderful for playing fast licks especially in Les Paul's case where he used heavier strings. Again one quick look there at the Kalamazoo made Les Paul custom. They were made in this configuration up till kind of into 1975 when the new Nashville plant opened and you start to see Les Paul's being made pretty much exclusively there. You can see models that appeared in the later 70s such as the Les Paul KM that were made in Kalamazoo. Now let's have a look at a Nashville made model. This is a 79 and let's just quickly run over the differences. So the pancake body construction lasted from 69 to 77 so the first couple of years of the Nashville Megatars did have the pancake body but this does not. It's a solid body there. You also start to see the shower made hardware the so-called Nashville bridge and tailpiece and this again it originally would have had shallower tuners but this particular example has been replaced with grovers. Still retained the Ebony fingerboard but the fret wire was changed from a fretless wonder style fret to a still a fairly low and wide fret but not nearly as tiny as the fretless wonders. Additionally the next still three piece but now made of maple and as I think about it to the knobs were changed to the speed knobs and the pickups were still the T-tops until mid to late 1980 when you start to see the Tim Shaw pickups appear. So both of these have fairly similar pickups although interestingly it's my opinion that they sound fairly differently and check out the sound samples to see what you think. One other quick little note if you look at these the actual kind of shape of the body is a little bit different on these particularly the shape of the cutaway there. This seems to extend out a little bit further maybe a little pointier I'm not sure but again it's just a very subtle little difference in the in the two types of guitars. You see this body shape come in more you know probably around 78 or so. May I just been a change in the fixtures and jigs or whatever that were used. Anyway thank you for taking the time to listen to some discussion portion of the differences between the Kalamazoo and Nashville made, Norell and Erolux Pell Customs. Now let's get to some sound samples.