The sunburst finish was created when LLoyd Loar, the acoustics genius at Gibson in the early '20s, who came in drunk one morning, and puked all over a mandolin he was building. This was the famous F-5 that was to wind up belonging to Bill Monroe, a teetotaler, who scraped the "sunburst" finish off, after he found out how it got there. Now it’s a religion. Playing a vintage sunburst Les Paul is much superior to just looking at them, and endlessly talking about them.