You have to remember that although the quality of some vintage instruments has always been popular with musicians, in the 70's, modding was the done thing. Many guitarists didn't like the way that the vintage wiring worked, and so Gibson started messing with it. Other factors were controlled by suppliers, such as the type of winding wire, quality of magnets, types of capacitors etc... or just to cut production costs. Mostly though, Gibson just thought that they were keeping up with what guitarists wanted, although in reality, the management were behind the trends and/or seemed to miss the point completely. Remember when Bloomfield was playing a Goldtop, and everyone thought they were the guitar to have? Then he switched to a sunburst Flametop but by then Gibson had already stopped making them. When Gibson started making Les Pauls again in '68, rather than just resuming production where they left off a few years before, they chose to make the P90 Goldtop! Maybe Gibson needs more working musicians on it's management team?
