My only personal experience with Gibson quality was with an ES-135, one of the reissued ones that were made from '91-02 I think. I got what I thought was a great deal on one that had been sitting in my local guitar shop for a while at a time when I was looking for a "student" guitar to play jazz on. It sounded ok, but the frets were really rough and made it uncomfortable to play. The bindings were rough, the inner edges of the f-holes would cut you, and there was a ton of sawdust inside the guitar. Not to mention buffing compound in a lot of the hidden areas. I've heard a lot of stuff about the guitars coming out of the Memphis shop (mostly archtops) having a lot of quality control issues, and this guitar definitely seemed to fit the bill. Granted, I know it's a mass-produced guitar, and I'm not neurotic; I expect things to have flaws, but this just had a half-assed quality to it. I sold it and got an older Ibanez Artstar for much less $$$ that was absolutely breathtaking to play, look at and hold, and decided if I ever got another Gibson jazzbox again it'd probably be an old one.

I recently purchased a Gibson Les Paul Studio with p90 pickups (the reason i bought it), and it isnt what one would expect from gibson, that being said, a big issue i had with the thing is the jumbo frets, if you really dig into the thing the intonation is out of whack, kind of like a scalloped board. Once i got used to the fact it is a great guitar (after i set it up to suit myself) and the sound of the p90's completely kick $@!, but to be honest my Epiphone Les paul standard is a far better guitar