Are Gibson necks really THIS weak??

so basically the moral of this thread.

If you find a Les Paul Custom or something out there that looks awesome...and it's at what looks like a bargain price in the guitar store. check the neck out really carefully before you buy it, chances are... it's got a headstock repair.

I've got a hairline crack on my headstock. I have no idea where it came from and it's never given me any trouble (about an inch long inside of the G string Tuning machine but it is disconcerting. I almost never play the thing anymore though so it mostly just sits in the closet while I sweat the finish off my 62RI Strat.

Yup, let's not be listening to Ed Roman. That pic is not a typical neck break.

The old Gibson Les Pauls started with a 17 degree pitched back headstock. This left very little wood at the area around the nut where the neck meets the fingerboard, so they would fall off the stands, mostly on stage, and break.
Stages used to be cramped and full of wires and trip hazards with not as many guitar techs running back and forth taking care of guitars, so a lot of old Pauls and SG's fell and broke. :(

They changed the neck angle later and there was a little more wood to hold everything together, but Mahogany isn't structurally as strong as Maple, so you gotta take care of a Mahogany neck guitar.
A properly fixed neck IS stronger than new, though! If it's done right, the glue is stronger than the wood. I've fixed quite a few. You can put a couple of slips of wood called splines in to strengthen the joints when you fix them, too to beef up the joint.

I never broke a Gibson neck yet and well, I guess I have no plans to do it!