What I think about my Gibson les paul Traditional
Let me start out by saying that I'm an experienced player and I own a few guitars from Gibson to fender to PRS...the les Paul traditional is probably the best sounding guitar for the price. The tone is amazing and the weight is just right. The 57 classic humbuckers are really quite awesome. I was skeptical at first, but I have been proven wrong. If you don't want to pay for a r8 or r9, but you want to play classic rock and get close to the classic 59 tone, then this is the guitar for you.
My only complaint is the fact that the guitar is so expensive, yet Gibson slacks a bit on some of the components. It comes with 300k pots instead of 500 (which will give you better volume and tone sweep). The capacitors are crap too. However, an experienced player willing to spend over 2k on a guitar can easily swap out those parts.
I've seen Gibson really rip people off over the years. I have an early 2000 LP custom that is crap compared to this guitar. LP traditional is a great buy!