Warren Haynes has a brand, spanking-new signature Gibson Les Paul Standard out, and his message is clear: “This guitar, and with these pickups,” he tells Guitar Player, “instantly gives you a recognizable sound — but also a variety of sounds.”

The instantly recognizable, variety-inducing pickups in question are P90s, an interesting development, seeing as Haynes has long been a humbucker devotee. Then again, veteran players using P90s in the modern era have become a trend.

Joe Bonamassa’s signature Epiphone 1955 Les Paul Standard has them, and Phil X’s impending signature Gibson SG, which is still in the advanced prototype stage, has got them, too.

As for Haynes, he’s simply looking for a six-string voice from his electric guitar that matches his own.

“When I listen to B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, and people like that, their voice and guitar sound like the same thing,” Haynes says. “It was always important to me for that aspect to be the case.”

There are other enhancements beyond the P90s to help Haynes in his tonal quest. His last humbucker-equipped signature Les Paul Standard featured what Haynes calls a “buffer preamp,” which allowed him to reclaim the guitar’s top end when the volume was rolled down.

However, this new Les Paul Standard is different: It features a 15dB boost, which Haynes refers to as a “clean boost,” which mainly impacts Les Paul’s midrange. “I just like having these choices,” Haynes says.

“I haven’t really explored all the options yet,” he adds, “but the sky is the limit. I just want to keep using it more and more and more and utilize that feature as much as possible.”

His signature Les Paul is just one big new development for Haynes, who previous told us his valuable tips for blues and rock guitarists.

On Monday, March 17, at the Capitol Theater, Haynes is paying tribute to the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh, who died on October 24 2024, via Unbroken Chain: A Celebration of the Life and Music of Phil Lesh. “Myself, Jimmy Herring, Rob Barraco, and John Molo are bringing back the Phil Lesh quintet,” he says.

“That was the version of Phil Lesh and Friends that stayed together the longest,” he explains. “The chemistry in that band was fantastic from the very beginning. We all love that band immensely and are excited to get back together and pay tribute to Phil.”

As for how Lesh impacted Haynes specifically, he says: “We all consider ourselves to be brave souls who are willing to make changes, but when you start playing with Phil, you realize that his whole reason for being, musically speaking, is to explore the moment.”

After that, Haynes won’t have much time to reflect, as he’s hitting the stage with the Brothers, featuring Allman Brothers alumni Derek Trucks, Oteil Burbridge, and more, on April 15 and 16 at Madison Square Garden. “It’s fantastic,” Haynes says. “Our last Garden show was five years ago. Everybody is excited to do it again.”

Beyond the excitement, celebrating the Allman Brothers isn’t just about championing the band’s legacy but bringing it back to where Haynes started.

“I joined in 1989, and it was an opportunity I could never have envisioned,” says Haynes, who has previously shared with us the important role ABB guitarist Dickey Betts played in his life. “It just changed everything. It opened doors… it opened every door imaginable for me.”

“So, Derek and I have been playing together in the last six months or so,” he says. “It’s kind of just been an organic, natural progression leading up to this. We’re all really stoked.”

You’ve got a beautiful new signature Gibson Les Paul Standard out. Why did you choose the Standard?

We’ve [Haynes and Gibson] been talking for a few years now about a different signature model Les Paul, and I’ve been kind of digging P90s the last few years and thought it might be nice to switch it up, you know? It really is a beautiful instrument, and I’m very happy with it.

The Les Paul Standard typically comes with humbuckers. What led you down the P90 path?

They’re something different for me. I’ve been a humbucker guy most of my life, but everything I play a guitar with P90s, I’m like, “Wow, this sounds really good.” So a few years ago we started talking about making a Les Paul Standard with P90s. It’s just a nice combination.

How do P90s suit your tonal needs compared to humbuckers?

They’re a little brighter .They’re not quite as full range as the humbuckers. So it kind of started me wanting to find some tones that were different from my normal go-to sounds. And then, when I started experimenting more with the P90s, I was like, “Oh, this adds to my tonal range!”

How so?

With different sounds that inspire me to play differently. Because as much as we’re all happy with the sound that we work on through the years and get dialed in, I think most guitar players are also looking for other sounds to be equally inspirational.

When you say your “normal go-to sounds,” what does that mean exactly?

I always strive to get a really big, fat warm sound, you know — full range. It has more tonal bottom and low-to-midrange tone than some people are opting for. But to me, it’s always been important for my guitar sound to be similar to the sound of my voice.

P90s are interesting because if you crank them, you’ve got rock and roll; if you roll them back toward the middle, you get country; and if you roll them all the way back, you almost get clean, glassy Tele sounds. Do you feel like you’re getting a fuller spectrum of sounds and more versatility with the P90s?

Yeah, possibly. I mean, you definitely get options that aren’t there with humbuckers. Most of the sounds I enjoy come from the guitar anyway. I’m not depending on pedals for the majority of the sounds that I use. I like to change the volume knob on the guitar to get a lot of different sounds that way, and P90s are definitely great for that.

To that end, have the P90s led to any alterations to your rig as far as amps or with the minimal pedal setup you deploy?

So far I haven’t made any alterations. I’ve been doing a lot of dates with my band, promoting Million Voices Whisper, my new solo record, and I’m using different amps for that tour anyway. I’m using a Paul Reed Smith amp, a Homestead amp, and 2x12 cabinets instead of 4x12 cabinets. The translation is instant when I switch to the P90s, so I haven’t had to make any adjustments. But who knows what the future might bring?

Specifically, what does that “instant translation” sound like when you use the P90s with your current rig?

They’re not quite as hot, but the sound translates right off the bat. I’ll continue to experiment with them as time goes on. But when I switch back and forth from my first signature model guitar, which has humbuckers, and I then plug in the new guitar with the P90s, it instantly is the tonal change I’m looking for without turning knobs.

There’s a 15dB boost switch on this guitar. How did that come to be, and how do you utilize it?

That was Gibson’s idea. It was kind of in response to my last signature Les Paul that had that. I guess they called it a “buffer preamp,” a similar switch that engaged this circuitry that allowed all the top end to back when you turn the volume way down. So we wanted to do something similar but different with this modification.

How do you like it compared to your last signature guitar's “buffer preamp” option?

I really like it. I’m not exactly technically sure how it achieves what it does, but it’s a really nice tonal option. For me, just having that extra kind of tonal option is really important. With the other switch on my original Les Paul, I used it sometimes, but only in certain situations.

On a Gibson Les Paul, when you turn the volume way down, the top end kind of goes away. So the original switch on my first signature model brought all that top end back. This is different; mostly, the midrange is affected — but they’re calling it a “clean boost.”

Would you say a guitar like yours, with P90s, is best for a blues-rock-leaning player, or is it versatile enough for any genre?

It’s hard to say… they’re kind of more old-school-sounding. It’s hard to define what somebody might be looking for in the sound of their pickups, you know? To me, it’s always been kind of a “yes” or “no” kind of thing. You plug it in, and you like it, or you don’t. If you don’t, you look for something else.

There seems to be a trend happening. You, Joe Bonamassa and Phil X are working individually on Gibson/Epiphone guitars with P90s. Are we seeing a P90s renaissance?

Maybe in the way that we’re all looking for new inspiration, you know? Some of us have been playing humbuckers for a long, long time, but these P90 pickups work really well. The advent of the humbucker was based on how noisy single-coil pickups were in the old days. The task has always been to get that sound without the hum. These newer pickups really accomplish that in a surprising way.

What is old will eventually be new again…

Yeah… you know, I’m always in search of new inspiration. Sometimes, that’s an old idea, like, “Oh, I haven’t done this in a while.” You try it, and you go, “Yeah!” and it inspires you to play differently or write something, which is always welcome, too.

You’ve got two shows with the Brothers at Madison Square Garden on April 15th and 16th. Will you adjust your rig?

I’m not sure what I’m going to use yet. I may go back to an old Marshall, but Derek [Trucks] and I used a lot of Paul Reed Smith amps in the latter days of the Allman Brothers. I’m going to do some experimenting and probably won’t decide until the week of the show.

What’s your favorite Allman Brothers track to jam on?

Songs like “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” and “Whipping Post,” and the ones where we really stretch out and take into a new direction every night, are the most fun from an improvisational standpoint.

So, you know, “Mountain Jam,” and any of the ones where we take a different approach—but you never know because inspiration is coming from everywhere within that band. We’re all just kind of bouncing off each other.

What have the Allman Brothers meant for you as a guitarist?

I was always a huge fan and always utilized a lot of Allman Brothers influence, but once I became a member of the band, that aspect of my playing took on a whole ‘nother meaning. It was appropriate for me to utilize even more of that influence than I would have in any other situation, you know? Learning from those guys night after night, year after year, was just truly inspirational.

On March 17, you’re celebrating the life and career of Phil Lesh at the Capitol Theater.

Phil impacted all of us deeply. He was such an influence and inspiration not just as a musician and songwriter but from a philosophical standpoint. Musically speaking, his view of what music can be — and should be and could be — is kind of unparalleled.

Can you quantify Phil’s impact on you?

He was never afraid of where the moment might lead. It could go into dangerous territory, where the band is on the verge of falling apart, but I’ve often said that he had just as much fun in those moments as he did in the ones that were obviously coming together. That’s a beautiful thing. It’s something that we all learned from him, and he made a ton of amazing music in the process.

Through iconic gigs with Aerosmith, as a solo artist and with the Hollywood Vampires, Joe Perry has been known for playing his red 10-string B.C. Rich Bich, his oft-favored and ever-changing Frankensteined Burned Strat and his Gibson "Billie" semi-hollowbody guitars, to name a few.

However, one electric guitar from Perry's 600-plus-strong collection stands out: a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard 'Burst. While the guitar has meaning, if you've seen Perry perform live, you'll know he's not one to stagnate on one guitar for more than a song or two. "I always buy stuff that I know I'm going to use or that looks interesting," he says.

That checks out, as dozens of oddballs reside within his collection. "Some of those guitars might not be the hippest guitars in the world, or whatever, but it's always inspiring to pick up something that's got a different sound to it," he says. "You tend to play differently. That's where the ideas come from."

Returning to the 'Burst in question, Perry first came upon the guitar in the early ’70s after trading a '60s Guild Starfire, for it. The guitar stuck with him throughout the decade, during which time he wrote He was thick as thieves with the ’Burst until the early ‘80s, when he sold the beloved axe to a music shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

That's not surprising, as Perry admits to clearing proverbial decks when he left Aerosmith in '79 and after divorced his first wife in the early ’80s. The ’59 'Burst was just another casualty. What's more, Perry was searching for new sounds and wanted to avoid being chained to a guitar so closely related to his image onstage and in the studio with Aerosmith.

But it didn't take long for regret to set in. "There's a fair amount of guitars I don't have anymore that I wish I did," Perry says.

When looking back at the story of Joe Perry's '59 Les Paul, one has to understand that when Perry sold it, it wasn't an uncommon occurrence. Ace Frehley admits to doing the same thing around the same time, although the former Kiss six-stringer was funding a gambling trip, not rebuilding his life.

So there are stark differences. And who could blame Perry for wanting a change and some extra cash in his pocket as he embarked on a solo career?

Another point to consider is that while 'Bursts were going for decent dollars in the early ’80s, they sure weren't going for the six-figure numbers that late-1950s Les Paul Standards command these days, let alone one played by the guitarist of a legendary band.

As a result, Joe’s guitar was long gone by the time regret set in. When Aerosmith regrouped and rolled into the '90s on a wave of success via Permanent Vacation, Pump and Get a Grip, he had no idea where his favored 'Burst was.

Little could did he imagine that his guitar had made an appearance on MTV in a music video for Guns N' Roses' "November Rain.”

By then, Perry was deep into his search for the guitar. "We were starting to make some money after the band got rolling again," Perry says. "I thought It would be great to track down a couple of guitars that I'm missing. I started making phone calls around Boston and looking around.”

Remarkably, it was his bandmate Brad Whitford who hipped Perry to the news that his ’Burst had landed with another famous owner.

"I remember being in the studio, telling my guitar tech, 'I'm trying to track down my Les Paul,’ when Brad walked over,” Perry explains. “Brad said, ’Your Les Paul? I know where it is.’ He pulled out a guitar magazine with Slash's collection.

“And there it was. That's when I found out Slash had it."

Ironically, Aerosmith had shared the stage with Guns N' Roses in '92. In fact, Perry and Slash were pals. As a result, the guitarist felt emboldened to ask his friend for his guitar back. "I called him," Perry says. "I told him, 'Hey, I'll pay whatever you paid for it.'"

Slash wasn't having it. "He begged me not to ask. He said, 'Please don't ask me that.' But I'd call him every once in a while, just to see how he was, and I'd ask him, just as a joke.” Perry says, "I understood. If I had one of Jeff [Beck]'s guitars, I wouldn't wanna give it up. I definitely understood how he felt about it."

While most of Perry's pleas were joking in nature, the pressure of owning the iconic ’Burst was too much for Slash and had caused an unspoken rift between the two guitarists. "He wasn't around," Perry says. "I tried getting in touch with him, and I realized he didn't want to be asked anymore. It was getting in the way of our friendship."

So Perry mended things with Slash. "I said, 'I'm not going to ask you anymore — not even in kidding,’” he explains.

The 'Burst remained with Slash into 2000. By then, the guitarist was four years out of Guns N’ Roses and deep into his solo career, with his ’59 ’Burst in hand.

But while Perry had stopped asking Slash about the guitar, little did he know his wife, Billie, had taken up the cause. Slash and Perry shared the same lawyer, and she’d been communicating through him to Slash, trying to get the ’59 ’Burst back in Joe’s hands.

By then, after years of owning the guitar and building a collection, Slash was ready to part with the guitar. Joe’s 50th birthday bash was coming up and it seemed the perfect time to reunite him with his instrument.

And Slash had a plan.

Perry had hired Cheap Trick to perform at the bash. “They asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said, 'I want to play a set with you guys. I want to play your songs,’” Joe recalls. “I love those guys.

“So I got up to play a short set with Cheap Trick. And that's when they handed me the guitar."

Just like that, for the first time in nearly two decades, Perry was reunited with his long-lost '59 Les Paul ‘Burst. "I played the set with that guitar," he says. "It was an amazing night, I'll tell you. But I mean… I got my guitar back. I couldn't thank Slash enough. And I got to play with Cheap Trick!"

In the years since, Perry hasn't let the infamous ‘Burst go. The odds are that the guitar will be with him until the end, which is fair. Even though it's not his main guitar, the ‘Burst’s legend will be forever tied to Perry's towering legacy, and vice versa.

At 74, Perry remains a guitar junkie. His collection continues to grow, ebb and flow, and it is always functional. But no matter the space between plug and plays, the iconic ’59 Aerosmith 'Burst remains. Over the years, its legend has grown, with Gibson's Custom Shop even producing faithful recreations of Perry's prized Les Paul.

Though nothing compares to the original, which reminds Perry that there are other guitars he let get away. "I wish I had a few of the pieces I lost at the end of the '70s," he admits. "But I still have some stuff, like custom Aerosmith amps and a lot of old foot pedals.

"There's a fair amount of guitars that were sold or stolen. I don't have the guitar, the [early-70s Fender] Strat, that I played 'Walk This Way' on; I wish I did. But I've got my Les Paul back, thanks to my wife, Billie, and thanks to Slash."

Kirk Hammett isn’t just the lead guitarist for the world’s biggest metal band. The long-running Metallica member is also the owner of some extremely rare and coveted Gibson guitars, including a 1957 Korina Flying V prototype and the 1959 Les Paul Standard known as Greeny, once owned by Peter Green and Gary Moore.

In a newly released video from Gibson TV, Hammett talks about 17 of his favorite vintage electric guitars. In addition to the two models mentioned above, he presents a 1952 Les Paul goldtop, 1960 Les Paul TV Special, 1956 Les Paul Custom, 1958 Les Paul Standard, 1958 Les Paul Custom, his “Sunny” 1960 Les Paul Standard, a 1963 Korina Explorer, vintage ES models and more.

To top it off, Hammett discusses his lifetime love of guitars in the roughly 90-minute documentary, from his first discovery of the instrument to his thrill of collecting them.

As he reveals in the film, he first became aware of the guitar’s power through the Beatles’ “Drive My Car,” when he was about five.

“I remember, I was playing with my cousin,” he explains. “At one point he jumped on top of a table and started playing air guitar to ‘Drive My Car.’ And I remember looking at him and laughing, thinking, Wow, you look so cool! And I I jumped up on the table and joined him!”

Kirk also explains his attitude about collecting vintage and rare models and stresses the importance of not getting too precious about a guitar’s condition.

“I’ve come to realize you could be screwing yourself if you pass on something just because the condition's not right,” he says. “If it's rare, it's rare.”

He is especially fond of player guitars and understands they are usually the most beat-up among vintage collectibles. He refers to Greeny as an example.

“Greenie is the ultimate player guitar,” he enthuses. “Two headstock repairs, two knobs are switched out… the pickup selector top is always coming off. There's so many nicks, so many dents. The finish is almost completely worn off. I can sweat, bleed, snot all over that guitar, and the value's never going to diminish.”

Once an ESP player, Hammett joined the Gibson family in 2021. The Gibson Custom Shop honored him in 2023 with the Kirk Hammett 1979 Flying V, a re-creation of the guitarist’s first-ever Gibson axe. Hammett also made news in March 2023 when he purchased an ultra-rare black 1959 Les Paul Standard, which had been custom-ordered by a jazz guitarist to match his tuxedo.

The video is a prelude to the forthcoming book The Collection: Kirk Hammett, a deluxe coffee table book in hardcover featuring the stories behind Kirk’s rare and highly collectible instruments used in the studio and onstage. The Collection: Kirk Hammett will be out November 29. It is the second book release from Gibson Publishing. The first was last year’s The Collection: Slash. Visit Gibson.com for more information and updates.

You can explore the Kirk Hammett Collection at Gibson and Epiphone.

Gibson has released a new 1959 Les Paul replica to commemorate the late Jeff Beck’s time in The Yardbirds, but only 130 will be made. 

Today, Jeff Beck is remembered as a formidable and highly influential electric guitar player, predominantly as a solo artist, but it was his time in The Yardbirds that helped launch his career. 

The band had a matchless production line of next-best-thing musicians, with Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page also cutting their teeth in the band.   

As such, the company's latest history-honoring release focuses on those early days of Beck’s career, with the ‘59 ‘Yardburst’ a faithful recreation of the guitar he plied his trade with in the Yardbirds. 

Mirroring the specs of its progenitor, it offers a one-piece lightweight mahogany body with its Murphy Lab-aged tops and Dark Cherry Sunburst finish aiming to replicate the appearance of the original as closely as possible.  

There’s also a '50s rounded C-profile mahogany neck, 22-fret Indian Rosewood fingerboard, Custombucker pickups complete with white bobbins – a key feature of Beck's guitar – and a black three-ply pickguard. 

Each of the 130 models in this limited run are handcrafted by the artisans at the Gibson Custom Shop in Nashville, Tennessee, offering a unique way for fans to celebrate Beck’s potent legacy.  

Though its release comes 18 months after Beck’s passing at 78, his wife Sandra Beck has explained that he was involved with the project’s early steps. 

“Jeff was enormously proud to have owned the original of this guitar,” she says. “He was aware and fully supportive of the amazing job and love that Gibson Custom provided to create this instrument and would have hoped that this guitar would give hours of pleasure to those who play it.”

Each instrument ships in a specially aged Lifton hardshell case, with memorabilia celebrating Beck’s Yardbirds legacy and illustrious solo career.  

Beck would continue to play his beloved ‘59 Les Paul after parting ways with The Yardbirds in 1966. It played a key role in the early Jeff Beck Group albums before he transitioned to an Olympic White Fender Stratocaster. 

His 2014 Custom Shop Strat has recently been seen in the hands of John Mayer, playing it during Dead & Company’s ongoing Las Vegas residency at The Sphere. 

The Gibson Custom Jeff Beck ‘YardBurst’ 1959 Les Paul Standard is available now for $9,999.

Head to Gibson for more information. 

“Do you remember when you got your magic Les Paul?”

So asked Andy Ellis of Peter Green in the November 2000 issue of Guitar Player. The guitar in question was none other than Green’s 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, a legendary instrument that the Fleetwood Mac founder used to write and record many of the group’s seminal blues cuts, including “Black Magic Woman,” “Oh Well” and “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Prong Crown).”

Green’s Les Paul was considered “magic” for its out-of-phase sound, a nasal tonality missing from the typical Les Paul repertoire. 

Oddly, Green didn’t think much of the assessment.

“I never had a magic one,” he replied to Ellis. “Mine wasn’t magical... It might have looked similar to others from a distance, but it was an old-fashioned one with a funny-shaped neck – a kind of semicircle neck. It just barely worked. The pickups were strong, but I took one of them off. I copied Eric [Clapton]. 

"I heard him play one night, and he was on the treble pickup all night long. It sounded so good, I thought I’d take my bass pickup off altogether. Try and wait for the same luck. As if it was luck! It takes a lot of genuine practice and worry to get a sound like that.” 

ELLIS: But judging from all the Fleetwood Mac photographs, you must have put the pickup back on your Les Paul.

GREEN: I put it back on the wrong way around so that the poles – the pickup screws – were facing in the opposite direction. People would say to me, “You got that special out-of-phase sound.” I don’t know what out-of-phase is. Phase for what? Phase – it sounds like a good name for a group. 

Mind you, it didn’t make any difference to me. People would say that I got a special sound and try to force me to agree, but I don’t think so.

As it happened, Ellis already knew the “secret” behind the sound of Green’s Les Paul. In 1994, he’d approached Jol Dantzig, then with Hamer Guitars, to have him build a custom dual-humbucker guitar inspired by Green’s Les Paul. Ellis told the story in the same issue in which his Peter Green interview appeared. 

By the time of his visit to Dantzig, Green’s Les Paul had long been the main instrument of Gary Moore, who had befriended Green in the late '60s and purchased the guitar from him a few years later, in the early '70s. 

“As we discussed the wiring possibilities,” Ellis wrote, “Dantzig recalled that Gary Moore stopped by the Hamer factory in the early '80s with Green’s Les Paul.

“I asked if I could check out the wiring," remembered Dantzig, "and I carefully examined the pickups and their controls. Everything looked totally stock – the pickups were wired in phase – but I knew they didn’t sound stock when played together. 

“I used a compass to measure the pickups’ magnetic polarity. I discovered that one magnet was oriented north-to-south while the other was oriented south-to-north. The pickups were magnetically out of phase – this was the secret we’d all been searching for!"

“Dantzig agreed to incorporate magnetically out-of-phase pickups and reverse the neck pickup in the custom Hamer,” Ellis continued. “I sent a pair of Antiquity humbuckers to Seymour Duncan, requesting that he flip the magnet on one. Before I could explain why, Duncan said, ‘Ahh – you want the Peter Green mod.’”

So did the wiring replicate Green’s nasal tone? The answer, Ellis said, was an unequivocal yes. 

“In a dual-pickup setting where each humbucker has its own volume pot, you can bleed the relative phase shift to create timbres ranging from a piercing howl to a subtle treble boost.”

But as Ellis points out, the resulting tone isn’t the same that you get from wiring humbuckers out of phase. It seems that magnetically out-of-phase pickups are responsive to pitch, creating an entirely different sort of sound. 

“Oddly, the resulting sound is sweeter and more musical than what you get from wiring humbuckers out of phase,” Ellis writes. “Magnetically generated phase shift seems to respond to pitch changes – the higher the note, the more pronounced the effect. Chords and bass notes don’t have the thin, shrill sound of out-of-phase wiring, yet high notes played on the top strings have a pronounced hollow cry.”

In the years since Ellis wrote his story, Green’s guitar changed hands several times. Moore sold the guitar in 2006 for financial reasons. It eventually ended up in the hands of Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, who purchased it in 2014. 

The following article originally appeared in Guitar Aficionado in 2012. 

Although he was born in 1977, Joe Bonamassa is already a seasoned blues veteran. Having traded licks onstage with B.B. King at the tender age of 12 he made his solo debut a decade later with the album A New Day Yesterday.

He was destined to be a guitar aficionado, growing up as he did behind the counter of his parents’ music shop in upstate New York, Bank Place Guitars. At 14, he received a $5,500 inheritance from his great-grandmother and used the windfall to acquire his first vintage instrument, a 1954 hard-tail Stratocaster, from a local seller.

“It had a few issues as a collector’s piece but certainly wasn’t a bad beginner guitar,” said Bonamassa. “But I wasn’t satisfied with just one old guitar. By my late teens I had vintage examples of all the classics: a 335, a Telecaster, and others.”

Bonamassa reflected on a period in the mid 2000s when his guitar buying became so frenetic that he often found himself purchasing an instrument, only to remember later that he already had one – or three – almost identical examples. “It got to be so gluttonous,” he recalled. “I’d be on tour in a place like Japan, jet-lagged and ready to start my day at four in the morning. No Starbucks would be open, so I’d just go to the website Gbase and throw something on the credit card.

“I ended up with all these guitars I didn’t even play – a bunch of old [ES-5] Switchmasters and ES-350s and even four Trini Lopezes – guitars that were killer to look at but not useful to me on the stage or in the studio. Finally, I just said, ‘Garage sale!’ and got rid of a ton of stuff.”

By 2012, Bonamassa had pruned his collection to a mere 90 guitars, half vintage instruments and half recent models, mostly Gibson Custom Shop guitars that “sound and play killer and look just like the originals, if you saw them from row G.”

At the heart of the collection was a trio of that most desirable of solidbodies, the sunburst Les Paul Standard, comprising two 1959s and a 1960 with a 1959 neck profile. But the stable also included less coveted pieces, such as a 1969 Grammer Johnny Cash flat-top acoustic.

“You’ve got to see this special guitar,” Bonamassa said as he bolted from the couch and disappeared into a laundry room. He returned with an old, heavily stickered case. “This one is so rare I just had to have it, even though I’m not much of an acoustic guy,” he said, nimbly fingerpicking a series of ninth and 13th chords. “Now everyone who plays it wants it. It sounds incredible and just seems to have a lot of songs in it.”

Another unobvious collector’s piece was Bonamassa’s 1972 Gibson ES-355TDC, its twin humbuckers bearing the embossed Gibson logo on their covers. The guitar hails from what many consider to be a dark period in the company’s design and quality control, but Bonamassa sought it out because of its similarity to the ax played by blues legend Freddie King.

“This was my first and only eBay purchase,” he said. “I ended up in a pitched battle to win it for $2,900 – a steal considering that these are harder to find than a ’59 Les Paul or even an original korina Flying V.”

Bonamassa directed us out of the courtyard and upstairs to a small room where he displayed a nice cross-section of his collection: the ES-355, along with a 1961 ES-335, a 1963 Gibson Firebird I, 1953 and 1954 blackguard Fender Telecasters, a 1955 hardtail Stratocaster, a 1932 Martin 0-17, and a 1970 Martin D-41.

A trio of brown cases – two Liftons and a Stone – were placed on the floor, each holding one of Bonamassa’s three ‘Bursts. The guitarist tenderly unlatched each case and revealed the guitars. Their gorgeous maple tops appeared faded into varying shades of scarlet and amber, and they glowed, as did their owner as he gazed upon them.

“I could’ve bought a house or these three-quarter-million-dollar guitars. I chose the guitars in a heartbeat. I love them. They’re like my children,” he said, with emotion.

His ‘Bursts at his feet, Bonamassa held forth on the subject of originality and his overall philosophy as a collector. “Refrets don’t bother me, but the pickup rings have gotta be right, the pickguard has gotta be right, and I’ve gotta open up that electronics cavity and see some vibrant original solder. I’ve seen some really good fakes out there, and it really bothers me. People are getting scammed for real money by guys who steal original parts to put on fake guitars. 

“I’m not a spiritual guy,” he continued, “but if you buy a guitar with a scratched-out serial number, chances are it was stolen at some point, and therefore it’s not good karma to play it. I find, on the other hand, that guitars with good histories don’t fight you. Somehow, they tend to stay in tune and play better. So all my guitars have got to be clean and honest. Playing wear is just fine, though.

“Check out the worming on the back of Principal Skinner,” he said, lifting his favorite ‘Burst from its case to show where the finish has succumbed to an oversized Seventies-era belt buckle. “Honest playing wear.” 

The ‘Burst triplets make an appearance on Driving Towards the Daylight, along with a handful of Bonamassa’s other vintage guitars. A collector in the best possible sense, he viewed his axes not as investments but as musical tools.

“I really pared things down for the recording sessions [for Driving Towards the Daylight]. I only used about 20 guitars, but they were the best guitars in the world – all the best examples for sure. At one point, I looked at them and thought, If I can’t get the job done with this, then I really need to stop buying guitars and just go home and practice.”

1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard (Serial: 9 0829)

“This one’s called Magellan, because it’s been around the globe with me – at least where it’s safe to travel with such an expensive instrument.

“Airline rule has it that if you want to carry onboard an expensive guitar, you must buy a seat for it. The good news is that they will serve both a ‘Burst and its owner a gin and tonic.”

1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard (Serial: 0 0137)

“I’m the third owner of this truly special ‘Burst, which was ordered in June of 1959 and delivered in August of that year. Although the stamp indicates that it was made in 1960, it’s obviously got all 1959 features.

“I sometimes call it Batman because of the weird winged bridge, a one-off. And I’m honored that Gibson Custom recreated the guitar in exacting detail as Collector’s Choice #3.” 

1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard (Serial: 9 1951)

“This guitar was originally known to the general public as the Skinner ‘Burst [after the auction house that sold it in 2006], but I have renamed it Principal Skinner.

“Killer in every way. This is the most rock Les Paul I own. Big flame equals big tone.”

1969 Grammer Johnny Cash

“This guitar has an unusual look – a grey-‘burst finish – which was apparently designed to look good with Johnny Cash’s black attire.

“It’s a rare bird with an incredible tone. Everyone who plays this guitar is surprised by the sound and wants to take it home.” 

1972 Gibson ES-355TDC

“This isn’t much of a collector’s piece, but Freddie King played one, and so I had to have one too.

“It’s all original, down to the embossed covers on the pickups, and extremely rare. Just try to find another from the same year.”

1932 Martin 0-17

“This 0-17 came from my repair guy in L.A. Someone who had inherited it from her grandmother had left it in the shop and forgotten about it, so I offered to give it a second life.

“It’s a really sweet-sounding little guitar.” 

Gibson has announced the next rare guitar on offer via their Certified Vintage program is a ‘Burst called 'Sunny.'

This “immaculate” 1960 Les Paul Standard was previously owned by Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett who gave the guitar its nickname on account of its tone.

“'Sunny' is special because not only is she in immaculate condition, but her tone is so present and bright,” said Hammett. “It’s like the sun cutting through clouds on an overcast day. Hence the name ‘Sunny.’ That’s the truth. The name came because she was so full and bright sounding.

Appearing on electric guitars in 1957, Gibson PAF humbuckers are generally prized for their open, articulate sound, though each pickup is unique (the bridge pickup in ‘Sunny’ measures 8.2k ohms while the neck pickup reads 7.6k).

This, along with the natural variation in wood, gives each ‘Burst a unique personality.

And with its highly figured maple top and rich Cherry Sunburst finish, this example stands out as among the most desirable of its type.

Originality is also a crucial factor when it comes to determining the value of vintage guitars and ‘Sunny’ appears with no major mods. However, like so many Les Pauls from this era the original tuning keys appear to have perished, though Gibson says the guitar has now been restored with “correct 1950s Kluson single-line/single-ring” tuners.

Such repairs are essential in order for the instrument to remain playable. As Mark Agnesi told us in a recent interview: “If you’re talking about value, what’s it really worth to you if you can’t play it?”

Fully authenticated by its maker, this 1960 Les Paul Standard, serial number 0 1490, is covered by Gibson’s new limited lifetime warranty and ships with its original case along with a modern Gibson Deluxe Protector Case.

“The reason I chose Gibson Certified Vintage for the worldwide offering is because having a mint vintage Gibson guitar can sometimes feel like having a brand-new Gibson guitar,” continues Hammett. 

“They’re made that well. And this is what’s really special; the fact Gibson recognizes this and is willing and ready to re-warranty these beautiful instruments.

 “I think this is just a great reflection of Gibson’s integrity towards the past, present, and future.”

All Gibson Certified Vintage guitars are offered via the Gibson Garage in Nashville, TN.

Select models will be available for purchase here.

'Sunny' is available now for shipping or pickup at the Gibson Garage.

Call (615)933-6000 for more information.

Carter Vintage Guitars recently had an example of the holy grail of vintage electric guitars, the 1959 Les Paul Standard, come through its doors. And this wasn't just any regular '59 Les Paul, either.

This particular '59 sported a Factory Black finish and a Bigsby, to boot.

The shop didn't have the guitar for very long, though, before none other than Metallica's Kirk Hammett – already the owner of "Greeny," the legendary Peter Green- and Gary Moore-owned '59 Les Paul that possesses a unique, "out-of-phase" tone – snapped it up.

"This is one unique, amazing sounding guitar," Hammett said of his latest six-string acquisition in an Instagram post. "Greeny is a little jealous!"

According to Carter, the Les Paul was custom-ordered by a jazz guitar player by the name of Joseph Arena.

Arena reportedly wanted a black guitar to match his tuxedo, but, ironically (given how much this guitar was likely just sold for) he couldn't afford the then-pricier Les Paul Custom.

Ordered through Sam Ash in Hempstead, New York, the gorgeous guitar has – Carter Vintage says – stayed with the buyer's family until now. 

Interestingly, this black '59 Les Paul has a very similar story to a black Gibson Les Paul Standard that has pride of place in Joe Bonamassa's collection.

Just like Arena, the original buyer of Bonamassa's "Black Burst" wanted the Les Paul Custom for its black finish, but couldn't afford it, and instead asked for a black Standard. 

As Bonamassa's tech, Mike Hickey, points out in his demo of the vintage beauty above, the "Black Burst" – though it's treated with care – does get taken out on the road by Bonamassa and played onstage. 

Hammett, in turn, loves to use "Greeny" at Metallica shows, once telling Total Guitar, “This guitar needs to be out there. It’s a gift to the music world and I should just keep giving that gift.” 

With that in mind, we'll be eager to see if the black '59 Les Paul Standard makes any onstage appearances during Metallica's upcoming world tour. 

For tickets and more info on the thrash titans' upcoming shows, visit metallica.com.

Eric Clapton (or “God” as he was sometimes referred to in the ‘60s) took blues guitar to another level when he exploded onto the scene in 1966 with John Mayall’s Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton.

Dubbed the Beano album, this blues-rock masterpiece showcased a 21-year-old Clapton turning guitar tone on its head with a cranked Marshall tube amp and Gibson Les Paul Standard.

In the pre-Hendrix era of the mid-’60s, Clapton’s revolutionary sound introduced the electric guitar world to what is now considered an industry standard in tone.

There is beauty in the simplicity of this rig. But his approach to playing guitar solos was perhaps a little less straightforward.

In this 1987 film clip, interviewer Melvyn Bragg of the U.K. arts series The South Bank Show asks Clapton to provide us with some insight.

“What goes through your mind when you're about to start a solo?” he asks.

Clapton’s answer implies things aren’t as calm as they might appear.

“You go through 100 different changes in your head about what approach you're gonna take,” he replies.

“And usually by the time you’ve gone through those changes it's time. It’s just like someone’s shoved you through a door and you’ve suddenly got to do an act.

“For me, I just start singing.”

Clapton’s explosive guitar sound rippled across the decades and has inspired some of the best blues-rock maestros of our time.

In a recent Musicians Hall of Fame interview, Joe Bonamassa told Joe Chambers how it felt to be standing on stage next to the man himself.

“It was insane,” he recalls. “I was shocked to find out that he knew who I was.”

Recounting the story of his Royal Albert Hall appearance in 2009, Bonamassa reveals how Clapton’s simple rig allowed his talent to shine through, much like it did in the mid-'60s.

“He showed up with a brand-new Custom Shop Strat – it was an Eric Clapton model. Daphne Blue. And he had a brand-new ‘57 reissue tweed [Fender] Twin… And a Monster cable.

“It sounded like Eric Clapton. It sounded like the Blues Breakers.”

Browse the Joe Bonamassa catalog here.
Browse the Eric Clapton catalog here.

Chicago Music Exchange has long been a Mecca for guitar players seeking out their perfect Gibson.

With a huge array of Gibsons on offer, it's always a good idea for those on the lookout to keep tabs on what they have in stock.

From the newest Standard and Artist models to Murphy Labs aged instruments, they’ve got it all.

Some of the coolest Gibson electric guitars to be found at Chicago Music Exchange are the CME Exclusive instruments.

Working with the Gibson Custom Shop directly, these "CME spec" guitars cannot be found anywhere else.

The CME Exclusive Gibson Les Paul Standard '50s and CME Exclusive Gibson Les Paul Standard '60s have been thoughtfully put together with specialist knowledge, expertise and passion.

Recently introduced as “love letters to one of rock’s most fundamental brands,” this fine pair of ‘Bursts can be seen and heard in action here…

Making the most of what the Gibson Custom Shop has to offer, these special order Les Pauls have been tastefully designed with looks, sound and feel in mind.

Of particular merit are the instruments' CME T-Type pickups – a collaborative design originally developed for a run of CME Exclusive SG Standards back in 2019.

Delivering classic hard rock tone, these unique humbuckers are replicas of the vintage Gibson ‘T-top’ design, as found in Jimmy Page’s “number one” Les Paul.

Here’s a brief rundown of the specs…

Gibson USA Les Paul Standard '60s Tomato Soup Burst

Body:

• Solid mahogany with AA figured maple cap
• 1960-style Tomato Soup Burst gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finish

Neck:

• Solid mahogany with Slim Taper profile
• 22-fret rosewood fingerboard with medium jumbo frets and 12” radius

Pickups & Electronics:

• Dual CME T-Type humbuckers
• 3-way pickup selector switch
• Independent pickup volume and tone controls
• Hand-wired Orange Drop capacitors

Hardware:

• Nickel-plated ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge and aluminum stop bar
• Grover Rotomatic tuners with kidney buttons

Plastics:

• Cream pickguard, switch washer and jack plate
• Gold ‘top hat’ knobs and amber switch tip

Gibson USA Les Paul Standard '50s Dirty Lemon Burst

Body:

• Solid mahogany with AA figured maple cap
• Late ‘50s-style Dirty Lemon Burst gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finish

Neck:

• Solid mahogany with Vintage '50s profile
• 22-fret rosewood fingerboard with medium jumbo frets and 12” radius

Pickups & Electronics:

• Dual CME T-Type humbuckers
• 3-way pickup selector switch
• Independent pickup volume and tone controls
• Hand-wired Orange Drop capacitors

Hardware:

• Nickel-plated ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge and aluminum stop bar
• Vintage Deluxe tuners with plastic keystone buttons

Plastics:

• Cream pickguard, switch washer and jack plate
• Gold ‘top hat’ knobs and amber switch tip

Visit Chicago Music Exchange for more information.

Great blues tone isn't rocket science – you just need to get a happening sound in your head, and then use the right tools to replicate the magic.

All great players have specific guitars, amps, and effects that are essential to their sound.

Some, like B.B. King, used the same setup for decades – in his case, a Gibson ES-355 through a Lab Series combo or a Fender Twin Reverb – while others tweak their systems incessantly in the pursuit of groovier tone.

Stevie Ray Vaughan favored one guitar – a Stratocaster – and a few key effects throughout his career, but he experimented a great deal with amps and speakers.

No matter which player you choose to emulate, it's important to understand that merely replicating every detail of their gear is no guarantee that you're going to sound exactly like them.

Tone is, after all, 90% touch and 10% hardware.

Buddy Guy would sound like himself no matter what equipment he used, and the same holds true for most great players.

Still, some guitars and amps can inspire you to play a certain way, and using rigs similar to the ones used by players you respect may help you zone in on a killer sound that can later be morphed into something uniquely yours.

ERIC CLAPTON

"Clapton Is God" graced many a structure in the late '60s, and for good reason – he practically wrote the book on how to play blues-rock electric guitar.

Attaining a credible Clapton sound requires that you first determine which period in his long career you like best.

During his time with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Clapton famously used a late-'50s Gibson Les Paul Standard through a model 1962 Marshall 2x12 combo.

Part of the secret here is that Clapton's amp was equipped with KT66 output tubes, which have a more refined midrange and clearer top end than either EL34s or 6L6s.

With Cream, Clapton went to high-volume heaven with 100-watt Marshall heads and 4x12 cabs.

He also used a Vox wah-wah and, occasionally, a fuzz.

After his Les Paul was stolen, Clapton played a '61 SG-style Les Paul, and then a Gibson ES-335 for Cream's farewell concert.

With Blind Faith, Clapton used a Gibson Firebird through a Fender Showman.

He then switched to maple-fretboard Strats through Fender tweed Champs during his Derek & The Dominos/"Layla" period.

Both setups yielded tones that rate among Clapton's best.

ALBERT COLLINS

The "Iceman" had one of the most original tones around – just listen to his fabulous sting on such classic cuts as "Frosty," "Too Many Dirty Dishes," "Iceman," and "Put the Shoe on the Other Foot."

Collins certainly did things his own way.

He played a beat-up Fender Telecaster, with a Gibson humbucker in the neck position, that he tuned to open Fm.

He used a capo – often at the fifth or seventh position – and he snapped and popped his strings with his thumb and forefinger.

Collins also favored '70s-era Fender Quad Reverb amps (100 watts into four 12s), and he used a 100' cord.

This latter detail allowed him to get friendly with the audience, while the added cable capacitance helped defrost his icy highs.

ALBERT KING

Almost every blues guitar player "borrows" something from Albert King – even Stevie Ray Vaughan based his blistering style on King's mammoth bends and lightning-bolt stabs.

Almost no one tries to duplicate the left-handed bluesman's gear, however, which isn't too surprising, considering that King played a flipped-over Gibson Flying V with the low-E string closest to the floor.

According to repair ace Dan Erlewine (who built King's replica V, "Lucy"), Albert strung his guitar .009, .012, .024W, .028, .038, .050, and tuned it C, F, C, F, A, D (low to high.)

Steve Cropper, who produced a number of King's albums, offers a different tuning – C, B, E, F#, B, E (low to high) – which he says allowed King to create a one-finger Em chord by raising F# to G. (Another important aspect of King's tone was that he played exclusively with his fingers.)

Onstage, King often plugged into an Acoustic 370 solid-state guitar amp driving a 2x15 enclosure with a built-in high-frequency horn – a real pawnshop prize!

While a Flying V is the way to go here, just about any quality, dual-humbucker guitar can be coaxed into the Albert zone.

Consider, however, that Otis Rush gets a chillingly similar sound with a Fender Strat!

Amps? That's a good question, as almost nothing available sounds anything like an old Acoustic 370.

Our advice is choose an amp (or amp channel) with enough clean headroom to preserve your note attack. Crank the volume, but go easy on the distortion – King's tone was big and bold, not squashed and compressed.

B.B. KING

The King of the Blues' sweet, singing tone stands out as one of the great guitar sounds of all time.

King's original tone recipe was a Gibson ES-355 through a long-discontinued Gibson Lab Series 2x12 combo amp.

From the '80s, he played a Gibson Lucille model stereo guitar, which features a TP-6 fine-tune tailpiece and no f-holes.

King used both pickups simultaneously and strung his guitar with light-gauge Gibsons (.009-.042).

Though he favored vintage Lab Series amps, he often ran through a Fender Twin Reverb onstage.

Replicating B.B. King's sound requires running your amp's output stage fairly hard, while avoiding the fuzzier distortion produced by high-gain channels or stompboxes.

T-BONE WALKER

Often called the father of electric blues, T-Bone Walker helped establish the guitar as a featured lead instrument in the 1940s.

Guitarists inspired by Walker's playing (or his flashy stage moves) include Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Wes Montgomery, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Billy Gibbons, Albert King, Otis Rush, Michael Bloomfield, and Duane Allman.

Walker cut his teeth on primitive acoustic-electrics, but his signature ax was a blonde, maple-bodied Gibson ES-5 that he bought at the peak of his career in the early 1950s.

Walker held the guitar perpendicular to his body (when he wasn't playing it behind his head or between his legs), and it's likely that he plugged into a Gibson tube amp.

T-Bone Walker forged the basic vocabulary of rock and roll using double-stops, half- and quarter-step bends, and his patented, third-to-second-string unison bends.

His unorthodox playing style probably created a little extra string lift and snap, and he preferred his tone dry, clean, and relatively bright compared to jazz guitar players of the time.

A deep-bodied guitar – preferably with P-90-style, single-coil pickups – running through a reasonably clean-sounding tube amplifier are essential ingredients for T-Bone tone.

STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN

Stevie Ray Vaughan forged a sound that defines big blues tone.

Five basic ingredients are required here:

• Rosewood fretboard Fender Strat strung with heavy-gauge strings (Vaughan used GHS sets as heavy as .013-.060)
• Ibanez Tube Screamer overdrive (either a TS-9 or an older TS-808)
• Rotating speaker (he favored vintage Fender Vibratones, but you may wish to substitute a stompbox-sized simulator here)
• Vox wah wah pedal
• Fender tube amp with four 10" speakers

Vaughan often combined amps – Fender Super Reverbs with 1x15 Fender Vibroverbs, Marshall and Dumble rigs with Fender combos, and so on.

Heavy electric guitar strings are an important part of the Vaughan recipe, but remember that Stevie tuned down a half-step – you'll want to do the same if you plan on performing his gargantuan bends on girthy gauges.

Choose your Strat carefully for lightness and resonance, and set your amp's controls to produce a clear, beefy clang from the neck pickup. (Fender Super Reverbs do this naturally.)

It’s a story we hear less and less these days: a dusty, old guitar gets pulled out of the closet where it’s been sitting untouched for decades, only for the owner to discover it's worth a fortune.

But that’s exactly what happened when U.K. vintage guitar dealer Mike Long of ATB Guitars received a call from the daughter of an elderly gentleman regarding his long-discarded 21st birthday present – a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard.

Prized by guitar heroes since the ‘60s and with only around 1,500 having been made between 1958 and 1960, these instruments are among the most valuable of their type. Referred to as ‘Bursts on account of their sunburst finishes, Gibson Les Paul Standards are notoriously scarce.

As the old joke goes: Gibson made around 1,500 ‘Bursts but only 2,000 have been accounted for. And with new and old replicas aplenty, professionally authenticating a guitar can make all the difference. Indeed, a newly discovered 'Burst is big news among collectors.

Guitar Player spoke to Long last night while he was en route to Joe Bonamassa’s Royal Albert Hall concert in London, 'Burst in hand. Bonamassa, a prominent electric guitar collector, was apparently keen to inspect the recently unearthed find.

“It’s not every day a ‘Burst walks through the door with someone who has no idea what it is or how much it’s worth,” Long told us. “I’m amazed this still happens. They had no idea what they had at all.”

Stumbling across ATB Guitars during a search for nearby guitar stores, the owner’s daughter – a local teacher – initially contacted the vintage specialists to grab a simple quotation for insurance purposes.

“She said her dad was moving house and that she’d been entrusted with his guitar,” recalls Long. “She wanted us to do a basic evaluation so she could adjust her insurance if need be. 

"She’d searched online for ‘Gibson Les Paul’ and had come up with values of around five thousand pounds and was expecting to adjust her household premium accordingly.”

Having viewed some quick snaps, Long's initial thought was that the guitar may indeed be a replica. But that idea soon changed when it was brought in for inspection. 

Almost immediately they knew they were looking at something truly special.

“A couple of weeks later, she popped into the shop with a five-latch ‘Cali girl’ case,” continues Long. “I thought, ‘This looks interesting!’ When I opened the case, it was the filthiest guitar I’d ever seen. It had been stored in a closet, unplayed, since the ‘70s!"

After examining the guitar inside and out from top to bottom the ATB team were able to confirm its originality.

“The finish is all original, and there are no major breaks or repairs,” notes Long, “but it’s had a Bigsby added, the PAF humbuckers have been in and out, and the original pickguard has had a switch added.”

Originality and condition are of prime importance to vintage guitar collectors and such modifications tend to impact the value of instruments. However, when it comes to ‘Bursts, they don’t need to be in mint condition in order to command six figure sums.

“I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news,” Long informed the owner. “The bad news is it’s totally unplayable and is in terrible condition. The good news is that once it’s been refurbished it’ll be worth about £175,000.”

The room went silent.

“You could hear a pin drop,” remembers Long. “She couldn’t quite believe it. Her dad couldn’t quite believe it either. They literally had no idea what they had!”

Visit ATB Guitars for more information.

Often cited as the best blues guitar player to emerge from England, Peter Green began his brief career with the unenviable task of replacing Eric Clapton in John Mayall's band. Recorded in '66, A Hard Road – the second Bluesbreakers studio album – proved Green and his '59 Les Paul were up to the task.

While sharing Clapton's respect for American bluesmen, the 21-year-old Green had his own take on Les Paul tone.

His quick, stinging vibrato; penchant for clean, cutting timbres (often drenched with reverb); acute sense of dynamics; and unmatched melodic subtlety set him apart from all English blues players before or since.

Green's haunting, 10-second-long sustained notes in the instrumental "The Super-Natural" established him as England's new tone god.

After a short stay in the Bluesbreakers, Green left to form Fleetwood Mac, which played its first gig at the '67 Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival.

Green wrote prolifically for the band, penning "Albatross" (rumored to have inspired the Beatles' "Sun King"), "Black Magic Woman," "Rattlesnake Shake," and "Oh Well."

In early '68, the group's debut album, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, reached #4 on the British charts. Soon Green added the 18-year-old Danny Kirwan – whose beautiful playing bore an uncanny resemblance to Green's own – to create a twin Les Paul lineup.

In '70, Green abruptly left Mac and the music biz. He sold his magic Paul – with its unique, snarky honk and mysteriously wired pickups – to Gary Moore, who used it to record Blues for Greeny, a 1995 collection of 11 Green originals rendered with tone and heart.

During his brief career, Green played through a variety of tube amps – including a Marshall head and 4x12 cab (A Hard Road) and Orange half-stacks (early Mac).

Most often, however, he wailed through silverface Fender Twin Reverb and Deluxe combos.

Peter Green’s famous '59 Les Paul – now dubbed ‘Greeny’ – currently belongs to Kirk Hammett who acquired the iconic electric guitar from U.K. guitar dealer Richard Henry.

“I rolled into London and I called him up and said, ‘Hey, Rich. What have you got for me? Anything interesting?’” recalled Hammett.

“I plugged it in and I checked the bridge pickup. It sounded nice, bright, full. Great tone. The tonal spectrum was very, very smooth from low to high. I checked the neck pickup. I thought, ‘Oh my God. This is so nice.’ It has that full-on Still Got The Blues sound; I recognised it instantly.

“Then, you know, I put it in the middle position and started playing and all of a sudden, I was like, ‘Holy… Lord!’ I looked up at Richard and I said, ‘I’m not giving this guitar back to you guys.’”

Hammett, who regularly plays Greeny live and in the studio, wowed the audience at an all-star Peter Green tribute performance hosted by Mick Fleetwood at the London Palladium in 2020.

“It was amazing,” said Hammett. “It was a full circle thing for me having Peter Green’s guitar and playing “The Green Manalishi.” That song has been with me for a very, very long time. And to be able to play it with Mick Fleetwood and a bunch of other players who just understand that era of Fleetwood Mac was an amazing thing.

“Greeny was so at home with that song, and all the tones were just sitting there waiting to be used inside of her. It was a transcendental experience. When it came time to do the solo, I dug deep. I didn’t know what I was going to play, but having Greeny in my hands and with that Marshall Bluesbreaker and with that band, I knew I was going to be okay.”

For years, the Beck-Strat marriage has been fruitful and faithful – can you imagine Jeff Beck's groundbreaking '70s and '80s records without his alternately refined/skunky Strat tones and lithesome whammy bar wizardry? 

But you don't have to rewrite history to put a Paul in his hands.

In the wake of Beck's mid-'60s stint in the Yardbirds, he formed the Jeff Beck Group, whose 1968 album, Truth, is a showcase for his brief love affair with the Les Paul electric guitar.

Beck's fuzzed-out fills behind Rod Stewart's vocals on "Shapes of Things" whet our appetite for the main course, which Beck delivers in his subsequent solo. Here, his wailing tone is somewhere between Janis Joplin's boozy alto and an air-raid siren dipped in honey.

A Fender man while with the Yardbirds, Beck turned to the Paul after being impressed by Clapton's stellar Les Paul work with John Mayall.

In the December '73 issue of Guitar Player, Beck said that one of the things he dug about the Les Paul was its robust feel. "Fenders are cheap in feel," he remarked. "You pick up a Les Paul and it's heavy and it really means something – it means business.

“The Fender was nice because you could grip it like a weapon and really chunk out the chords, but when you came to the more subtle stuff it wasn't there. After a while I got so used to the Les Paul, there was no turning back. I picked up my Fender and thought, 'How the hell did I ever play this?'"

Beck eventually found the answer to that one and became disenchanted with Pauls, contending, "I think I can sound more like myself with a Strat." (Blow by Blow, in '75, marked the end of his Paul fling.)

Ah, we'll always have Truth.

Order Truth here.

Les Paul was working as a professional guitarist in the 1930s when he turned his highly inventive mind to building a solidbody electric guitar in order to overcome feedback and other issues that plagued amplified hollowbody instruments.

In 1939, his solution took shape in the form of what he dubbed the “Log,” basically a four-by-four piece of pine upon which he bolted a Gibson neck, a pair of pickups that he built, and his own bridge and vibrato tailpiece.

To make the thing look like a guitar, he sawed an Epiphone archtop body in half and glued the “wings” to the pine block.

Les proved the viability of his concept by using the Log on recordings that he and his trio made with the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby and others, but the hallowed guitar company, Gibson, was unimpressed when Les brought it to Kalamazoo to show to the company chiefs in 1941.

“I took the Log to Gibson and I spent 10 years trying to convince them that this was the way to go,” he famously said. “But it wasn’t easy. If it wasn’t for Leo Fender I don’t think that ever would have come off. Leo saw more in it than Gibson did.”

Besides, Gibson already had the ES-150 electric-archtop (and a matching amp), introduced in 1936 and popularized by Charlie Christian and other jazz guitar players. Who needed a solidbody?

But when the Fender Telecaster detonated on the Southern California scene in the early ’50s, Gibson realized they needed to get in the solidbody game, pronto.

Enter Ted McCarty, who joined Gibson in 1948 and became its president just two years later. Armed with a sharp eye for style, he wanted to make an alternative to the slab-sided Telecaster by designing his single-cutaway guitar with an arched, carved-maple top.

In 1950, he showed the guitar to Les, who approved the design and felt that it was sufficiently close to what he was going after to let Gibson put his name on it.

The Les Paul model would have a rockier start than Fender’s “plank” – and, for a time, even went out of production entirely – but that all changed once players like Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor started slinging Les Pauls.

What Les started with the Log became a success story for Gibson.

While it’s true Rickenbacker’s solidbody Model A-22 Electro “Frying Pan” predated Les’s Log, it was a lap steel, not a Spanish-style guitar.

Les owns the solidbody concept for his vision and tenacity.

There’s irony aplenty that Gibson’s big hit after the Les Paul Model was the thinline ES-335, a highly popular reimagining of what Les started with his crude Log.

While Fender seemed to hit it out of the park with the Esquire on its first run, it took Gibson several tries to get to its best guitar. The fact is the first Les Pauls with the trapeze tailpiece had several problems. The neck angle was bad and there was no way to palm[-mute] the strings. In other words, there was no way to play the guitar the way we like to play it.

The way Les liked to play was different, however; he was a jazz guitar picker and he didn’t really palm the strings. It didn’t matter much to him.

Consequently, the guitars from ’52 [when the Les Paul Model/Goldtop was released] to early ’53 are tougher to sell, and many people have used them for conversions to ’Bursts if they happen to have some nice maple underneath [the gold finish].

One of the first things Gibson did as an attempt to improve the design was to incorporate a stud tailpiece in ’53. But even though the stud tailpiece was much more operable than the trapeze, the company hadn’t yet engineered a new [deeper] neck angle. So the guitars that were made through ’53 and up to the early part of ’54 are affected by that. The shallow angle makes the guitars more difficult to play.

Gibson eventually worked out this problem with the neck angle and, by the first quarter of 1954, it started to make what became the first really usable solidbody electric Les Paul. It has a significantly deeper neck angle, and this means that the guitar can play all the way up the fretboard without choking. But Gibson was still addressing certain other things like weight and balance. It took a little while to iron it all out.

The biggest change came in mid-’55 with the introduction of the ABR-1 [Tune-o-matic] bridge. It meant you could now intonate the guitar properly. The guitars were originally sent out with 0.013-gauge strings with a wound G string, but the ABR-1 bridge accommodated a set of 12s with a plain G string. And that made a big difference to players as they could now bend the strings more easily, even though the frets were still a little on the small side.

By ’56, Gibson was nearly there with the Les Paul design. And, in the back room, Seth Lover was working on the humbucking pickup. He’d already made it by ’56, but he wasn’t able to get it into a guitar [until ’57] because the pickup routs would need to be re-engineered to accommodate the different size. But the PAF humbucker was the big game-changer.

The two Goldtops seen here are incredibly rare; they’re the only Les Paul Models I’ve ever seen with gold hardware.

The dual P-90 1956 guitar has original gold parts, including a factory-fitted Bigsby. The guitar player for the 1950s doo-wop band The Four Aces custom-ordered this guitar and found a playing card appliqué to put on the pickguard. Its sibling guitar is a PAF humbucker-loaded ’57 model. It’s a factory Bigsby guitar and it has the original sales receipt that is marked “gold hw/gold Bigs”.

They’re both really neat guitars for those reasons, but the point is they also play amazingly well.

The PAF was the shot heard round the world, but these Les Paul guitars also sound phenomenally good with P-90s. Some people are humbucking people, and some people are single-coil people. And Les Pauls can do it all. They work well with either type of pickup.

When it comes to Gibson, it had enough money to make a few attempts and survive any fails, whereas Fender was a smaller company and needed to nail it right away. It didn’t have the time to revisit the designs, make changes and retool. You have to think about the amount of engineering that goes into making these kinds of changes – all the processes involved in changing from a stud tailpiece to an ABR-1, for example.

These people were a lot smarter than me! When your kids are in school and they’re pissed off about having to do calculus and trigonometry, remind them that that kind of knowledge helped build things as cool as these two guitars. Engineering is hard work. But there’s good, strong thinking behind these designs. I’m not one of those people, but there are those who can think this far out of the box.

I mean, a lot of people can dream up guitars because all that stuff is already there. It’s easy to take for granted. But I think it’s worth remembering that it didn’t always exist. Somebody invented all of this. And I think that’s pretty remarkable.

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York.
info@wellstrungguitars.com / 001 (516) 221-0563

Rock was rapidly shedding its roll in the mid-1960s, but if we had to name the first electric guitar player to prominently define rock-guitar tone, it would have to be Eric Clapton.

Slowhand was a devotee of the blues and had left the Yardbirds in early 1965 when they adopted a poppier sound.

He hitched up with John Mayall’s Blues Breakers for some live dates before heading across Europe in a pickup band, but the best part of a year later, he was ready to put some real hair on that blues guitar tone, enforcing new demands on standard studio practices in the process.

In May 1966, Clapton, Mayall, bassist John McVie (later of Fleetwood Mac) and drummer Hughie Flint entered Decca Studios in West Hampstead, London to record their first studio album, Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton.

The featured guitarist brought with him a Marshall model 1962 2x12 tube amp combo and a sunburst Gibson Les Paul Standard, and declared that he was “going to play loud.”

One of the best accounts of the session has Clapton quoting the engineer’s recollection, rather than probing his own. As Clapton told Dan Forte for Guitar Player in 1985, “I remember reading an interview with [engineer] Gus Dudgeon where he said that I put my amp in a certain place, and he went over and put a mic in front of it, and I said, ‘No, put the microphone over there on the other side of the room because I’m going to play loud.’ I think that sounds like it would be true.”

And Clapton did play loud, pushing his 45-watt Marshall combo – forever after known as a Bluesbreaker – into juicy, trenchant overdrive, made all the thicker and creamier by his PAF-loaded Les Paul.

Almost overnight, this became the sound burgeoning rockers were chasing the world over. For more than 50 years since, “that tone” has never looked back.

Buy the Beano album here.

• Start recording with the best acoustic guitar mics

On this day, 50 years ago, Led Zeppelin released the “Rock and Roll” single with “Four Sticks” as its B-side. Both songs appeared on the band’s best-selling untitled 1971 album widely known as Led Zeppelin IV (also dubbed ‘the four symbols album’.)

Featuring a guest performance by Rolling Stones pianist Ian Stewart, “Rock and Roll” initially came together during a spontaneous jam while recording “Four Sticks.”

“We’d just finished a take and John Bonham did the drum intro [from Little Richard’s ‘Keep A-Knockin' (But You Can't Come In)'] and we just followed on,” Jimmy Page told an interviewer back in 2010. 

“I started doing pretty much half of that riff you hear on ‘Rock and Roll’ and it was just so exciting that we thought, ‘let’s just work on this’… It was just so spur-of-the-moment the way that it just came together more or less out of nowhere.”

Renowned for their spontaneity both on stage and in the studio, all four members of Led Zeppelin are credited as songwriters on “Rock and Roll.” The only other song on the album to receive a four-way split is the band's interpretation of Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie’s “When the Levee Breaks.”

This recording features one of the most sampled drum tracks in music history. Indeed, drummer John Bonham’s standout sound inspired the band to explore the song further.   

“I heard the drum sound in the hallway, that iconic drum sound,” Page told the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show. “The minute I heard that sound on these reflective surfaces, I said, ‘We’re gonna revisit that number.’”

In this 1995 clip from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions, Led Zeppelin can be seen and heard keeping the jams alive with a characteristically "tight but loose” rendition of “When the Levee Breaks.”

With Neil Young toting his faithful Old Black modified Goldtop, this rare moment captures Robert Plant also strapping on an electric guitar, creating a rough and ready trio of Les Pauls.

Visit the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for more information.

Keith Richards wasn’t the only one rocking a Les Paul Standard in 1964. Though the Rolling Stone did much to popularize the ‘Burst following its discontinuation in 1960, at the time it was George Benson who was seen to be really putting Gibson’s iconic solidbody through its paces.

While synonymous with players such as Mike Bloomfield, Paul Kossoff, Jimmy Page, Billy Gibbons, Eric Clapton, Gary Moore et cetera it’s easy to think of the sunburst Les Paul solely as a blues-rock machine. But it certainly wasn’t designed with that later style of music in mind.

During the pre-rock ‘n’ roll years of the early 1950s the fledgling Les Pauls were naturally aimed at the guitarist whose style was more akin to that of the instrument’s namesake. Though Les Pauls later became more strongly associated with electric blues and rock they are dynamic instruments that can easily produce the kind of rich, warm tone favored by jazz guitar players, whether sporting P-90s or (from ’57) humbuckers.

The overwhelming popularity of Gibson’s electric archtops meant their Les Paul instruments were never fully embraced by the jazz community (Fender also tried, and failed, to break into the jazz world with a solidbody during the ‘50s with the Jazzmaster.) However, as leaders of the electric guitar market the company was able to successfully apply several tried and tested concepts to their debut solidbody released in 1952.

In many ways the original Les Paul Model/Goldtop was an amalgamation of specifications inherited from Gibson electric models released earlier in 1951. For example, the glued-in mahogany neck – including the headstock logo and crown inlays, trapezoid fretboard inlays, and single-bound rosewood fretboard – is virtually identical to that of the CF-100E. Meanwhile, plastic pickup covers notwithstanding, the same dual P-90 configuration and electronics/controls feature on the first incarnation of the L-5CES and Super 400CES flagship guitars.

That leaves us with the Les Paul’s body, which was its USP by virtue of a solid construction. While Gibson guitar bodies had already featured single-cutaways, carved tops, maple tops and mahogany years prior, the Les Paul body was unique in its essential blueprint.

Patently, the Les Paul is a quintessential Gibson design (with the exception of the Les Paul-designed combination bar bridge/tailpiece which was swiftly replaced by a simplified stud tailpiece in '53.)

All that said, the Les Paul remains far greater than the sum of its parts. And had it not been for Les Paul’s dogged determination to succeed with his earlier solidbody electric guitar inventions (notably the ‘Log’) – not to mention his groundbreaking playing technique and pioneering recording studio innovations – the guitar world and its pantheon of heroes might appear very different today.

Ultimately, how the design was interpreted by future artists and put to good use making music is what really matters. Speaking of which…

We recently asked some of the guitar world’s best-known players to name their favorite lesser-known guitar solos. Here are Billy Idol guitarist Steve Stevens’ top five choices…

1) George Benson with the Brother Jack McDuff Quartet | 1964 live performance

GUITARIST: George Benson

“Just Google ‘1964 – Brother Jack McDuff Quartet (live video).’ A 21-year-old George Benson playing a Gibson Les Paul has to be seen to be believed. He’s trading solos at breakneck speed. At one turn, George starts imitating a chicken, never forgetting to be entertaining as well as virtuosic.”

2) Yes | “Yours Is No Disgrace” (live) from the ‘Sounding Out’ TV special (1971)

GUITARIST: Steve Howe

“It’s on YouTube. This live version is the best I’ve ever heard. No one was soloing like this in a rock band context in 1971. Blinding alternate picking. It’s as if he were channeling Joe Pass and Chet Atkins.”

3) Guthrie Govan | “Fives” from ‘Erotic Cakes’ (2006)

GUITARIST: Guthrie Govan

“He’s the best guitar soloist I’ve heard in 20 years. Even if this piece didn’t include a solo, I’d put it on this list. It’s a killer composition. Like Eddie Van Halen before him, he’s damn good fun to listen to.”

4) The New Tony Williams Lifetime | “Red Alert” from ‘Believe It’ (1975)

GUITARIST: Allan Holdsworth

“Allan Holdsworth gets such tone. A masterwork in how to build tension and melody to finally stun you with fury and speed. It’s like Coltrane on electric guitar.”

5) Scorpions | “Catch Your Train” from ‘Virgin Killer’ (1976)

GUITARIST: Uli Jon Roth

“Uli Jon Roth is the forerunner to neoclassical metal guitar. Beautifully recorded. The use of reverb to complement the solo is artful in the way it enhances the long, sustained notes.”

Pick up a copy of Billy Idol’s latest release – The Roadside – here.

On this day, in 1966, the psychedelic supergroup known as Cream – comprising Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker – released their debut album, Fresh Cream.

Bolstered by the pioneering pop-rock single I Feel Free the album hit the U.K. top ten in January 1967 – the same month it was launched in the U.S.

Although many people associate Cream-era Clapton with an SG Standard, in this 1966 promotional TV clip of the band miming to “Wrapping Paper and “Sweet Wine” the young guitarist can be seen playing a Gibson Les Paul Standard.

Famously using a ‘Burst paired with a Marshall in the 1966 Bluesbreakers sessions, a 21-year-old Clapton established a touchstone of blues-rock guitar tone.

However, by the time the Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton album was released in July ’66, Clapton was already rehearsing with Cream – during which time his beloved ‘Beano’ ‘Burst was stolen.

While Clapton never got a chance to record or perform in public with Cream using the Beano ‘Burst he did manage to borrow a few guitars in the meantime, notably Keith Richards’ Bigsby-fitted 'Burst (as used on the Rolling Stones 1964 The Ed Sullivan Show appearance.)

Before the summer was out, Clapton would score another ‘Burst – this time from Andy Summers – using it to record Fresh Cream with. Unfortunately, the precious instrument would suffer a headstock break within months, prompting Clapton’s move towards a Gibson SG Standard.

Though the guitarist acquired a third ‘Burst towards the end of Cream’s short two-year lifespan that guitar did not hang around for long. It’s fair to say Clapton had a run of bad luck with ‘Bursts in the early days. Nonetheless, he did much to popularize the now iconic electric guitar during the ‘60s. Indeed, the single-cutaway Les Paul has since become Gibson’s most successful electric guitar design.

Buy Fresh Cream here.

The introduction of the Epiphone Alex Lifeson Les Paul Axcess Standard is big news for Rush fans because it makes their hero’s signature model much more accessible than its premium Gibson predecessor, introduced a decade ago.

In the spirit of Epiphone and Gibson’s modern hand-in-glove coordination and the mother company’s longstanding relationship with one of rock’s premier players, this Epiphone represents a career’s worth of considerations and innovations.

Primary among them is the instrument’s tonal versatility. In addition to the coil-splitting capabilities of both magnetic pickups, it features a piezo bridge pickup that can either be accessed by means of a dedicated second output jack or summed with the magnetic pickups into the primary output.

As Lifeson explains to Guitar Player, this unique pickup configuration developed from his desire for an elegant solution to using an acoustic guitar onstage. “Switching from electric to acoustic was always cumbersome, and an acoustic on a stand became a beacon for uncontrollable feedback, particularly in acoustic parts repeated throughout the song,” he says.

“I really needed to have a more stable platform. Incorporating the piezo pickup on an electric guitar did that, as well as allow me to blend in the piezo, adding another dimension to the live guitar character.”

Visually, this guitar is a badass. The flame maple veneer on its carved Viceroy Brown-finished maple top conjures the vibe of a vintage Gibson Les Paul, albeit not quite as fancy. Appointments include four golden top-hat control knobs, trapezoid fretboard inlays, keystone tuners, cream binding all around, a set-neck glued into a solid mahogany body, and Lifeson’s signature etched in the truss-rod cover.

Beyond the pickup configuration, Lifeson-specific features include a Floyd Rose locking vibrato system and a neck profile built to his personal specs – “moderate, not too thick and not too thin.”

Sling it over your shoulder and, yeah, it’s heavy, but not particularly so for a Les Paul. A slight scarf cutaway on the top back makes it feel cozy against one’s belly, while a sculpted cutaway at the base of the neck allows for more comfortable playing in the upper registers.

The neck is full without being too plump, and the fretboard feels nice and smooth all the way up and down. The factory setup was spot-on as well, and while the action seemed almost too easy at first, there was no buzz or splat to be found.

Shred away in the short rows and every note on each string is actually usable. Power chords and barre chords in the middle range come readily, and cowboy chords in open position have fantastic jangle.

The Floyd Rose-style double-locking vibrato keeps everything in tune while facilitating the deep dives and sky-high lifts of Lifeson’s playing that can only be achieved with such a serious system. All that extra metal brings some brightness, sure, but that’s part of the signature sound too.

Speaking of which, the tonal diversity on tap is astounding. The Axcess Standard has Epiphone’s Ceramic Pro humbucker in the neck position and a ProBucker 3 near the bridge, and both can be split into single-coil mode with a lift of the corresponding push/pull volume knob.

In humbucker mode, the neck pickup is girthy and the lead pickup is edgy. In combination, they complement each other to create a copacetic middle ground.

The coil splitting proved to be versatile. When playing in the lower register with the neck pickup, and using a bit of gain from a Blackstone Mosfet Overdrive into a 1966 Fender Super Pro, we found the sound a bit fizzy, but splitting the coil cleared it up.

Doing the same with the lead pickup took the tone into funky treble territory. When combined, the two pickups coil-tapped all the way to slinky town. These units don’t sound as crystal clear and powerful as the Gibson Burstbuckers included on Epiphone’s Limited Edition 1959 Les Paul Standard, but they do deliver a fine PAF vibe and sound that’s similar to the Burstbuckers with the volume knobs dialed back a bit.

The most unique feature is the piezo acoustic sound that comes courtesy of the Graph Tech Ghost Tremolo Bridge. The Ghost is engaged or disengaged by pulling or pushing what would have been the second tone knob. Here it acts as a blend control for bringing in or out the desired amount of acoustic sound.

Isolating the signal via the second output jack and feeding it to an Orange Acoustic Pedal through an L.R.Baggs Synapse Personal P.A., we found it delivered a decent acoustic rock tone that sounded believable when “Closer to the Heart” was played.

It possesses the full low end and top articulation that piezos do best. Blend that with the magnetics’ fantastic middle range, and it’s the best of both worlds. And the controls are easier to manage than one might suspect.

The trickiest aspect of mastering the Epiphone Alex Lifeson Axcess is working the vibrato bar while having the piezo pickup engaged. There’s a reason these features aren’t often offered together. Those piezos are located right in the individual bridge saddles, so they pick up every rattle of a shaking vibrato arm.

The bridge piezos convey the rattle much more than the magnetic pickups in the body do, so the workaround is to be judicious with the whammy when the acoustic sound is prominent, and then dial that back when you want to go wild.

The Epiphone Alex Lifeson Axcess delivers a whole lotta bang for the buck, with tons of features packed into the Les Paul platform. We can’t think of another guitar that delivers such a diverse tonal range, easy playability, comfort, impressive looks and quality craftsmanship for under a grand.

Specifications

• NUT: Floyd Rose R4 locking nut, 1 11/16” wide
• NECK: Set mahogany, Axcess contour heel, 24.72” scale, Lifeson profile
• FRETBOARD: Bound Indian laurel, 12” radius, large dot inlays, trapezoid inlays
• FRETS: 22 medium-jumbo
• TUNERS: Epiphone Deluxe with keystone buttons
• BODY: Solid mahogany back with comfortcarve belly scarf plus carved maple top with AAA flame maple veneer
• BRIDGE: Graph Tech Ghost Tremolo
• PICKUPS: Epiphone Ceramic Pro (neck), Epiphone ProBucker 3 (bridge) Graph Tech Ghost Piezo (bridge saddles)
• FACTORY: STRINGS Epiphone .010–.046
• CONTROLS: Three-way switch, neck and bridge volume knobs each with push/pull coil split; piezo volume knob with push/pull on/off; master tone
• WEIGHT: 9 lbs
• BUILT: China

Head over to Epiphone for more info.

Mark Knopfler’s incredible collection of studio guitars – comprising go-to vintage instruments as well as some lesser-used models for more specific sounds – is hard to beat. 

Here we take a look at six of the Dire Straits man’s favorites…

1. 1937 National Style O Resonator

The guitar that graced the cover of Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms is still used extensively today for studio and live work. It dates to around 1936 or ’37 and has a few details that might not be obvious at first glance, such as the right-hand f-hole, which hides a jack socket for an instrument cable so the guitar’s internal pickup can be used. Due to its position, only right-angle jacks can be used, for obvious reasons.

National’s Style O resonator debuted in 1930 and continued in production until 1942, when demand for resonators was waning during the war years. The Style O came in several cosmetically different variations. Knopfler’s is a Variation 7 model, most of which were issued with a tortoiseshell-style Lucite pickguard, which, as here, was often removed.

2. 1958 Gibson Les Paul Standard

Knopfler has two ’Bursts that get used frequently on recordings and live dates: a 1959 example and this beautiful ’58 that he says is remarkable not only for its tone but also for its rock-solid tuning stability. This ’58 formed the basis for a Gibson Custom replica model that was issued with a long neck tenon, PAF-style custom humbuckers and hide-glue neck construction. Knopfler has recorded using examples from the original run of 100 hand-aged and 150 VOS (Vintage Original Spec) replicas along with the original ’58.

3. 1937 D’Angelico Excel

John D’Angelico, one of history’s most influential archtop guitar makers, built only 1,164 guitars in his lifetime, starting out in a Kenmare Street, New York City, workshop. Earlier pre-war examples of the Excel tend to have less ornamentation than the ones that followed later, so this example does not feature the stair-step tailpiece that became a D’Angelico hallmark from around 1940, nor other art deco–style appointments. The body measures 17 inches across the lower bout. The headstock is topped by classic “pineapple and pediment” D’Angelico ornamentation and sits atop a seriously chunky neck.

4. 2008 Monteleone Isabella

This stunning example of the luthier’s art was custom-built for Knopfler by John Monteleone in 2008 and was subsequently used on a song in tribute to the maker’s skills titled “Monteleone,” from Knopfler’s 2009 album, Get Lucky. The body is built from dramatically quilted, big-leaf Oregon maple, while the top is Adirondack red spruce.

5. 1935 Martin D-18

This vintage Martin is one of Knopfler’s most often used acoustic guitars and was built just three years after the company began making the D-18. An earlier version of this classic mahogany-bodied model had been built as the D-1 beginning in 1931.

6. 2011 “Blue” Pensa Custom

Rudy Pensa has been building custom electric guitars for Knopfler for many years, and this P-90-equipped model with a carved double-cut body is the latest in an evolving series. Knopfler says a thinline double-cut electric by Pensa is on its way to him next.

Browse Mark Knopfler albums here.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, ZZ Top's First Album – the band’s 1971 debut long-player – opens with the track "(Somebody Else Been) Shakin' Your Tree.” It would be the album’s only single and although it did not make it into the Billboard charts the song kicked off a legendary recording career that certainly has its fair share of entertaining stories.

We caught up with the one and only Billy F. Gibbons to talk ‘Bursts, pedal steels, and how Jeff Beck managed to hook ZZ Top up with America's first 110-volt Marshalls…

"(Somebody Else Been) Shakin' Your Tree" was the only single released from your debut album. How did it come together?

That was an interesting song in that it was actually the first track that we tackled for the album. We wrote the music for that one down in Houston. We had a nifty little rehearsal space, which was right next to a cantina. [laughs]

So yeah, a good start. And I remember we drove up to Robin Hood Studios [in Tyler, Texas], and we got there late at night and hunkered down, because we realized we had polished the music track but we had not completed the lyrics.

We only had the title, which was kind of a bluesy, colloquial slogan: “You better watch out! Somebody’s messing around with your girl.” It was an entertaining twist of words. I remember staying up until the wee hours completing the verses.

What was your main electric guitar and amp on the song?

I was playing Pearly Gates, that ’59 [Gibson Les Paul] sunburst. That was the standby in the studio and still is. And we had the very first wave of Marshall hundred-watts. It was a Super Lead 100, and those had been arranged for delivery through Jeff Beck.

I’d actually met Jeff in 1968. The Moving Sidewalks had played a few dates with him, and we got to be quite friendly. We were using Vox amps at the time, and I was eyeballing these big tall structures – Marshalls. Because the sound was fierce.

I said, “Jeff, what is this?” And Jeff said, “Well, if you really have an interest, I can call Jim Marshall and see if we can make arrangements for delivery here to the States.” So we actually got the first 110-volt Marshalls. They landed in New York, and then they came to California, where we were living at the time. And, brother, plugging in that thing for the first time and cranking it to 10? Talk about having a blast!

This song is unique for its use of a pedal-steel guitar in the main melody. How did that come about?

I had been fooling around with the pedal steel, and we came to an interesting discussion within the studio. We were in the lounge, and I said, “Is this too country for a rock and roll song?” We tossed a coin in the air and it came out heads. So we headed in with this pedal steel, casting caution to the wind.

Were you an accomplished pedal-steel player at the time?

Not in the least! It was a four-pedal Emmons eight-string, and I had only gotten as far as learning the first two pedals, which took it from a C to an F. It was basically a one-and-four pedal combination. But I’d been toying around with the bottleneck so long that, you know, the steel in hand felt quite natural, so it wasn’t a big challenge.

The big challenge was to learn how to get the one-and-four change and make sure I was hitting the proper three strings out of eight. But I think it came out okay!  

Buy ZZ Top's First Album here.

“We got some uh… The guitar keeps cutting off, you’ve probably noticed. Just gonna put that right,” says Free vocalist Paul Rodgers as the vast crowd attending 1970’s Isle of Wight Festival politely gaze on. Buzz… Crackle… “Oh shit! Sorry about this...”

Managing to keep his cool, guitarist Paul Kossoff is suddenly back and after a quick tune up the band count in to “Be My Friend,” a track Free would go on to record the following month for their fourth studio album, Highway.

In this rough and ready film of Free’s performance at the legendary Isle of Wight Festival, Kossoff is seen playing his stripped-top 1959 Les Paul Standard (prior to it being refinished in 1975 by renowned UK luthier Dick Knight at the behest of a later owner.)

One of classic rock’s quintessential ‘Burst players, Kossoff owned several of these iconic axes, although the Les Paul seen here is believed to be his favorite.

Kossoff used the same electric guitar during Free’s Top of the Pops appearance earlier in June 1970 when they performed their biggest hit “All Right Now” in the BBC studio. It is thought Kossoff used this ‘Burst to track the top ten hit. Check out this clip to get a closer look at the legendary instrument in action.

Kossoff began gigging with Free in 1968 aged just 17. Their debut album, Tons of Sobs, appeared in Spring 1969, followed by the eponymously titled long-player that Fall. But it was to be the 1970 studio album Fire and Water along with its closing track “All Right Now” that would really help the band break through.

It’s been 43 years since Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Cheap Trick released their self-titled debut, and on the eve of unveiling their 20th studio offering, In Another World, guitarist Rick Nielsen is all too happy to share the band’s enduring formula for success. 

“We’ve never progressed and never tried to be something we weren’t,” he says from his home in Rockford, Illinois. New tracks like the chugging, riff-driven “Light up the Fire” and overdriven power-pop number “Here’s Looking at You” indicate that Cheap Trick are wise to stay the musical course. It’s a point of view shared by their longtime collaborator, Nashville-based producer Julian Raymond. 

“Julian happens to be a big Cheap Trick fan, so he’s heard our records more than we have,” Nielsen says. “We might be working on a song and he’ll say, ‘Well this reminds me of this cool thing you did back on such-and-such album. Can you think of something like that?’ He inspires us by reminding us.” 

But In Another World is more than a rehashing of past glories or a self-satisfied stroll down memory lane. Nielsen, 72, and his bandmates — singer/guitarist Robin Zander, 12-string bassist Tom Petersson and drummer Daxx Nielsen (Rick’s son) — sound like they’re fully engaged in the creative process and thoroughly enjoying themselves.

“We still have fun making records, still have fun writing songs, still have fun experimenting,” Nielsen says. “Some stuff is good. Some stuff is not so good. But we’re always trying to make whatever we’ve got better.”    

Guitar sales, both new and vintage, have skyrocketed during the pandemic. You’ve already got a legendary collection, but have you been doing any shopping? 

Me? Noooo! [laughs] Of course I have! I think I probably bought 10 or 12 guitars this year. I bought a 1965 Lake Placid Blue Strat, I’ve got three 1959 TV Model Les Paul Juniors now, and just last week I got a lawsuit-era Greco copy of a ’59 double-cut TV Junior as well. It’s worth less than half of what a real one is, and it’s not as good, but it’s still kind of pretty good! I also found one of maybe two sunburst 1959 Les Pauls with a single-piece maple top. And back in January 2020, I actually won Geddy Lee’s former 1959 Les Paul Standard at a Mecum auction in Florida. 

I’d known about the guitar for a long time and I was semi-chasing it, because the 1959 Les Paul that my Rick Nielsen “Collector’s Choice” Gibson Custom Historic model was based on was also a guitar I got in Canada, around 1980. I sort of forgot all about this particular guitar until it resurfaced with Geddy. The auction was January 10, and right as the gavel went up, the same day and same hour — the same minute basically — was when Neal Peart died. 

I didn’t want to seem like a ghoul, so I didn’t tell anyone immediately that I had the guitar. Eventually word got out, and the guitar dealer Drew Berlin offered me twice what I paid for it. And when Steven Tyler saw that I had the guitar, he offered me even more money for it.

Did you take Steven’s offer? 

Nope!

In Another World is chock-full of aggressive, super chunky guitar tones. What were the main instruments you used? 

There’s a 1965 Gibson SG Standard, a Fender Custom Shop recreation of Jeff Beck’s Esquire with the body contour, my Gibson Custom Shop Rick Nielsen Model ’59 Les Paul reissue, a real 1959 Les Paul, an Epiphone Wilshire, a 1962 Dwight Epiphone Coronet, a 1959 double-cutaway TV Model Les Paul Junior, a 1963 Gibson Firebird I, my checkerboard “Dream Police” Hamer Standard, Julian Raymond’s 1972 Les Paul Deluxe with mini-humbuckers, and a 1951 Telecaster… that I thought was a 1952 until I recently had the neck off and saw the “Tadeo Gomez 1951” pencil mark!

There’s also a completely mean-sounding distorted 12-string on “Here Comes the Summer” that is freakishly focused and in tune for such an instrument. 

The way to get a 12-string to be that in tune is to use two guitars. You’re actually hearing a regular six string and then a Nashville tuned guitar, which is like all the octave strings on a 12-string. Both are playing the same part.

What were your go-to amps on the record? 

I mixed and matched a 50-watt Marshall “Plexi” into a WEM 4x12 cabinet, a Vox AC30, an Ebo Customs Del Rio 1x12 combo and one of my blackface Fender Deluxe Reverbs that was modified by Paul Rivera. I had him build six of those in 1977–’78, and I’ve been using them almost exclusively for all these years. I have them in the studio and on the road. 

The solos on In Another World sound very spontaneous and are really loud in the mix. 

When I go in, I always play live. I sometimes have an idea of what I’m going to do, and usually the song dictates what I’m going to play. As far as the mixing. I want it to be like, [yells] “Here’s the solo!” I don’t want to finesse it. I want the listener to have his ass kicked.

Is Jeff Beck still your all-time favorite in the lead guitar department?

Absolutely. Our new single, “Light Up the Fire” wasn’t written to sound anything like it, but when I went in to cut the solo, I realized that it was in the same key and had a similar feel to the Yardbirds’ “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.” So I tried to play Jeff Beck’s line from that for my lead. You know, not the whole thing but just like the attitude of the thing.

The story goes that in 1968, you sold Jeff Beck a 1959 Les Paul after his main guitar was damaged on tour. 

I did. And a couple of years ago, we played together in Tokyo. He and Jimmy Page and Cheap Trick were all there, and I was talking to Jeff and he said, “Oh, God, I don’t even have a backup guitar.” Our equipment truck was already on its way to the hotel, but we called the guys and they brought back the Jeff Beck Esquire I mentioned earlier. I handed it to him and said, “Here, Jeff. Now you got a backup guitar.” And he said, “History repeats itself.”

In Another World closes with a cover of John Lennon’s “Gimme Some Truth,” which features a guest appearance by former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones. Cheap Trick’s debut came out in 1977, the same year as Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols and shares some sonic DNA with it. Were you fans of theirs? 

One of the biggest disagreements we had with Tom Werman, who produced several of our albums beginning with our second, In Color, was that he didn’t like the Sex Pistols. That was a bone of contention. We loved the Sex Pistols. We were the same in a lot of ways, but we didn’t have a queen we could yell at. I could even sneer like Johnny Rotten. 

In fact, in 1978, when the Pistols were doing their only American tour, we had a day off in Texas and we all tried to go see their show in Dallas. We were driving hellbent to get there, and our roadie, Kirk “Wheel” Dyer — who is the guy you hear saying “All right Tokyo!!!” at the beginning of the At Budokan album — went the wrong way, so we were heading toward Houston instead. That was our one chance to go see those guys… and we blew it!

• In Another World is out now via BMG.

This week marks the passing of virtuoso and inventor Lester William Polsfuss aka Les Paul (1915-2009). A true pioneer of the solidbody electric guitar, Les Paul walked an equally trailblazing path as a recording studio innovator while exploring various techniques using tape such as multitracking, sound-on-sound, phasing, pitch manipulation, and delay.

Achieving great popularity in the 1940s and ‘50s alongside his partner Iris Colleen Summers aka Mary Ford, Les Paul’s perseverance with his ‘Log’ electric solidbody prototype helped steer Gibson into producing ultimately their most successful guitar, the Les Paul Standard.

Released in 1952, the Les Paul Model/'Goldtop' features dual ‘soapbar’ P-90s with white plastic covers and a striking gold finish. Throughout the remainder of the 1950s, the model's design gradually changed. In 1953, a 'wrapover' stud bridge/tailpiece replaced the original combination trapeze bridge/tailpiece, which was in turn replaced with the intonation-friendly ABR-1 Tune-o-matic bridge and 'stop' tailpiece in 1955.

In 1957, the Les Paul Model was upgraded with Gibson’s new PAF humbucker pickups, while the following year saw the original gold finish replaced by a cherry sunburst. At this point, the guitar’s name changed to Les Paul Standard. Known as the ‘Burst, these guitars eventually became the most iconic axes in hard rock alongside the Fender Stratocaster.

While Les Paul was arguably the most prominent electric guitarist of America’s post-war years (hence Gibson’s enthusiasm to get him on board) his popularity and fame naturally waned as a new generation of guitarists emerged during the rock ‘n’ roll era. As George Gruhn, vintage guitar expert and proprietor of Nashville's Gruhn Guitars, once told Guitarist magazine: “By the time [Gibson] reintroduced the Les Paul in ’68, most of the kids who wanted a Les Paul barely knew who Les Paul was. They wanted one because people like Mike Bloomfield wanted one… I even had one guy call me and ask if I could get him a “lay Paul” model!”

Nevertheless, Les Paul’s legacy will always be remembered – his name writ large on the headstocks of electric guitars played by millions… As the great man himself rightly points out in this ‘90s Coors beer commercial.

Cheers to that, Les!

This live performance of "Don't Believe a Word" is probably one of the best clips of Gary Moore playing 'Greeny' you could hope to see. Filmed in the late ‘70s for the BBC TV show The Old Grey Whistle Test an unbeatable line-up of classic rock luminaries includes Moore's Thin Lizzy bandmates, guitarist Scott Gorham and bassist/vocalist Phil Lynott; Deep Purple keys player Don Airey; and Jeff Beck/Rainbow drummer Cozy Powell.

Released in 1978, Back on the Streets was Moore’s first solo album following 1973’s Grinding Stone by The Gary Moore Band, and features the top-ten UK hit co-penned with Lynott, “Parisienne Walkways”. "Don't Believe a Word" (written by Lynott) is the second track from Back on the Streets and also appears on Thin Lizzy’s 1976 long-player Johnny the Fox.

Of equal star appeal in this incredible rendition is one of the most famous electric guitars in the world – the now legendary 'Greeny' Les Paul Standard that once belonged to Fleetwood Mac blues guitar hero Peter Green. In the early ‘70s, Moore and Green became good friends, and after accepting Green’s offer to borrow his ‘Burst, Moore promptly fell in love with it, taking the guitar everywhere he went. Happy that his guitar had found a good home Green later insisted on taking around £100 in exchange. 

Suffice to say, Moore soon put 'Greeny' to good use.

The current custodian of 'Greeny' – Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett – is also known to take the guitar everywhere with him. A big fan of both Peter Green and Gary Moore, Hammett says he sees 'Greeny' as “the people’s guitar”. Known to enjoy using the ‘Burst for its intended purpose of being played he says, “This guitar wants to be heard. I’m doing all I can to make sure it’s still being heard by playing it live, recording with it, and having people see it and hear it in real-time… I want to share the magic of this guitar, because it gives so much. It gives more than any other guitar I’ve ever played in my life.”

Last week, Gibson announced they will be collaborating with Hammett on a new line of signature Gibson and Epiphone models. “It’s a really great and exciting time for me to be joining forces with Gibson,” said the guitarist. “I look forward to achieving great things together in the future.”

Rumours abound as to whether or not this will include a Greeny model. Watch this space for more news!

Get the The Old Grey Whistle Test, Volumes 1-3: The Definitive Collection here.

With the release of Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction in 1987, the band’s guitarist, Slash, emerged as one of the most influential guitarists of the 1980s and ’90s, with a style – and a guitar – that harkened back to the classic blues-based rockers of the 1960s.

Ironically, this vintage-looking Les Paul – the one Slash used on Appetite for Destruction – is not a Gibson. 

It is a replica made by Kris Derrig of MusicWorks, a guitar store located in Redondo Beach, California. The top, like those of the most sought-after original Les Pauls, features highly figured book-matched maple, but with no cherry tint around the edges of the top. 

The serial number is ink-stamped in the style of a 1959 Gibson, but the neck profile is actually that of a ’58. The special sound of this guitar comes from a pair of Seymour Duncan Alnico II humbuckers with black-and-white “zebra” coils and some vintage electronics that the maker had in his shop.

Despite the fact that Slash’s favorite Les Paul was a replica, his influence on sales of real Gibson Les Pauls was so great that Gibson welcomed him as an endorser and in 2010 intro­duced a replica of this replica as the Slash Appetite for Destruction Les Paul.

The relationship between two of our most storied American guitar makers goes back to 1957, when Gibson purchased the New York–based Epiphone company and applied the brand name to new guitars built alongside its own in the Kalamazoo factory. 

Come 1970, Epiphone was shifted into more of a downmarket option, with production moved overseas and prices aimed at entry-level players. The new Epiphone Limited Edition 1959 Les Paul Standard, however, represents a return home of sorts.  

Although manufactured in China, it’s the first Epiphone guitar made in collaboration with the Gibson Custom Shop in Nashville, and as a result, it displays a wealth of enticing vintage-inspired details for a Les Paul, with a price tag well under $1,000.  

“Our relationship with Gibson Custom Shop has always been great,” Epiphone product manager Aljon Go says. “In this new era for Epiphone and Gibson, our product-development team’s synergy takes full advantage of everyone’s combined experience, contributing to the success of all of our brands. 

"For this ‘Inspired by Gibson Custom’ guitar specifically, we wanted to bring that authenticity and quality that people associate with our Custom Shop, but make it accessible with this ‘Vintage for All’ mentality.” 

While we have to expect that some corners were cut to boil a $5,000 Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul down to a sub-$1k price tag, Mat Koehler, head of product development at Gibson Brands, insists, “There is no quality gap, just a detail gap, in my opinion. “And therein is the main benefit of the Custom Shop team oversight. 

• Our pick of the best Epiphone Les Pauls available today

"For decades, the Gibson Custom Shop has been pushing the limits of historical accuracy to 1959 in both construction and the minute aesthetic details. So this is really a chance to apply as many of those meaningful ‘geek specs’ as possible to the Epiphone platform, from the long neck tenons to the vintage-style wiring harnesses to the unbeveled pickguards.”

Other noteworthy specs include a AAA maple top, full-weight mahogany back, genuine Switchcraft toggle and jack, CTS 500k potentiometers, Mallory tone caps, Gibson Burstbucker 2 and 3 humbuckers, tall pickup rings, 1950s-style wiring, a rubbed VOS-style finish, custom switch-plate medallion, and a historic-style brown case with pink lining.

The hand-rolled fingerboard edges that enhance the rounded ’59 neck profile are worth a mention, and to my mind – or left hand, at least – certainly take the playing-feel factor upmarket on this guitar.

“It’s a tremendous value and an undeniable set of features for a Les Paul,” Koehler says, “Epiphone or otherwise.” 

It’s worth clarifying that the top is made from carved hard maple with a AAA-figured veneer to add the flames (you wouldn’t know one way or the other just from looking at it). And while a vintage-correct, non-beveled pickguard is specified, the one included on the review guitar was, inexplicably, beveled.

Acknowledged in the spec sheet, the fingerboard is of Indian laurel rather than rosewood, but it captures the same general look and feel, with perhaps marginally less richness in the hue and with the benefit of not being an endangered species. And while the guitar lacks a period-correct bridge, the larger insets and format of the Epiphone ToneLock ABR-1 bridge and stop-bar tailpiece represent an upgrade in a guitar at this price point.

The finish on this guitar feels more matte than the lightly aged VOS of most Custom Shop guitars, but it’s appealingly tactile to the touch and has a nicely played-in look. Likewise, the neck feels great – chunky and rounded in the style of a late-’50s Gibson carve that I really adore, but not so clubby that it’s likely to put off many players.

The fret crowns are well dressed, and the guitar plays well in all positions, although the fret ends are themselves a little sharp and can hitch slightly as you run your hand the length of the neck. Likewise, the two forward corners of the Graph Tech NuBone nut can dig in if you back into them too hard. All in all, though, at this price and given the wealth of bonus features, it’s a job very well done.

So what does it sound like? A Les Paul! Tested through a Friedman Small Box head and 2x12 cab and with several presets on the Fractal Axe-FX III into my studio monitors, the Epiphone Limited Edition 1959 Les Paul Standard does everything you’d expect of a good Les Paul – which is to say it exudes a range of tones that need no introduction.

The Burstbucker 2 and 3 in the neck and bridge, respectively, are tried and tested, used in many Gibson U.S.A. models, and they deliver a broadly successful rendition of “that Les Paul thing” into both clean and overdriven amps. 

From raucous, crunchy power-chord rhythm to barking, screaming bridge-position leads to warm, throaty blues excursions on the neck pickup – the seminal sounds are all there and entirely stage-ready.

The core voice of this guitar might not be quite as Burst-precise as, say, the Gibson Custom Shop 1958 Les Paul Reissue I have sitting next to it (currently rotating through sets of high-end reproduction PAFs for an upcoming roundup in these pages), but of course that’s a much more significant investment.

Sling the Epiphone over your shoulder, fire up your amp of choice, and go at it down at the local rock dive on a Saturday night when such pursuits are once again an option, and likely no one in the crowd will know the difference. That and your smile will give away how much fun you’re having.

Specifications

• PRICE: $799 street
• NUT: Graph Tech NuBone, 1 11/16” wide
• NECK: Mahogany, 24.75” scale length, rounded “C” profile
• FRETBOARD: Indian laurel, 12” radius
• FRETS: 22 medium-jumbo
• TUNERS: Epiphone Deluxe with tulip keys
• BODY: Solid mahogany back with carved maple top and AAA flamed maple veneer
• BRIDGE: Epiphone LockTone ABR-1 and stop-bar tailpiece
• PICKUPS: Gibson Burstbucker 2 & 3
• CONTROLS: Two Volume and two tone controls, three-way switch
• FACTORY STRINGS: Epiphone .010–.046
• WEIGHT: 9.3 lbs
• BUILT: China
• CONTACT: Epiphone 

A couple of days ago, Gibson announced an expansion of its Slash Collection in the form of its new “Victoria” Les Paul Standard Goldtop.

While the guitar's specs were clear enough, one unknown about the guitar was the source of its name. Now, Slash has revealed the unusual, and somewhat amusing, reason why he dubbed his new signature Goldtop "Victoria." 

“Back in the late ’90s, I had a bunch of guitars stolen out of my studio in my house,” the top-hatted Guns N' Roses guitarist told Consequence of Sound.

“I’ve actually managed to get [just about] all the guitars back, but I never knew exactly who was behind the theft. And one of the guitars I didn’t get back was a Goldtop that was stolen.

“So, I’ve been trying to find another Goldtop to replace it over the years. Then at some point I found out who was responsible for the theft, not long ago, and her name was Victoria, so I decided to name the guitar after her!”

The fifth Les Paul in the Slash collection, the “Victoria” features a maple top, a solid mahogany body with a dark finish on the back, a C-shape neck profile, and a rosewood fretboard with 22 medium jumbo frets.

It's outfitted with a pair of Gibson Custom BurstBucker Alnico 2 pickups – controlled by two sets of volume and tone knobs and a three-way toggle – and hand-wired electronics with Orange Drop capacitors.

Elsewhere, the guitar features an ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge, color-coordinated hardware, Vintage Keystone tuners, and acrylic trapezoid fingerboard inlays.

Like its Slash Collection brethren, the "Victoria" also comes with Slash’s “Skully” signature drawing on the back of the headstock, Slash’s signature on the truss rod cover, Slash’s signature Ernie Ball strings, and four Slash Jim Dunlop Tortex picks.

The Gibson Slash Collection “Victoria” Les Paul Standard Goldtop is available now – with a vintage-style hardshell case that includes a blank truss rod cover, if buyers don't like the Slash-signed truss rod cover – for $2,999.

For more info on the guitar, stop by gibson.com.

Gibson has expanded its Slash Collection with the new “Victoria” Les Paul Standard Goldtop.

The fifth Les Paul in the collection, the “Victoria” features a maple top, a solid mahogany body with a dark finish on the back, a C-shape neck profile, and a rosewood fretboard with 22 medium jumbo frets.

Sonically, the guitar is outfitted with a pair of Gibson Custom BurstBucker Alnico 2 pickups – controlled by two sets of volume and tone knobs and a three-way toggle – and hand-wired electronics with Orange Drop capacitors.

Elsewhere, the guitar features an ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge, color-coordinated hardware, Vintage Keystone tuners, and acrylic trapezoid fingerboard inlays.

Like its Slash Collection brethren, the "Victoria" also comes with Slash’s “Skully” signature drawing on the back of the headstock, Slash’s signature on the truss rod cover, Slash’s signature Ernie Ball strings, and four Slash Jim Dunlop Tortex picks.

The Gibson Slash Collection “Victoria” Les Paul Standard Goldtop is available now – with a vintage-style hardshell case that includes a blank truss rod cover, if buyers don't like the Slash-signed truss rod cover – for $2,999.

For more info on the guitar, stop by gibson.com.

A 1971-72 Les Paul Standard 58/54 Reissue once owned and played by Roy Buchanan is headed to auction.

A highlight of RR's upcoming Marvels of Modern Music auction, the stage-used, tobacco sunburst-finished guitar features two P-90 pickups, a one-piece neck, one-piece mahogany body with thin binding, a headstock with no volute and a wraparound bridge.

The Les Paul Standard is accompanied by an Atlantic Records publicity photo (see below) of Buchanan holding the guitar, a 1992 bill of sale proving the guitar was owned by Buchanan, and its Gibson hardshell case. 

Also accompanied by a copy of Buchanan's 1978 album, You're Not Alone, the guitar's value is estimated at $10,000 - $12,000.

Additionally, it comes with a letter of provenance from his wife, Judy Buchanan, which reads: "Gibson Les Paul-serial number 678450 belonged to Roy Buchanan. He owned this guitar for many years & played it often."

Online bidding for The Marvels of Modern Music Auction has begun and will conclude Thursday, November 19. The current bid is $1,183.

For more info on the auction, stop by rrauction.com.

All the way back in January (and how many lifetimes ago does that feel like now?), Epiphone announced that it had teamed up with the Gibson Custom Shop to create the Epiphone 1959 Les Paul Standard.

Now, the much-buzzed-about guitar – promising to bring an ultra-close approximation of the look and sounds of the world's most coveted vintage axe to the masses – is finally available for preorder.

The first-ever collaboration between Epiphone and the Gibson Custom Shop, the guitar features a mahogany body, an Indian Laurel fretboard, a maple top with a AAA figured maple veneer, a 1959 hand-rolled neck profile with a long neck tenon, and an aged finish.

Sonically, it's outfitted with Gibson USA BurstBucker 2 and 3 humbucker pickups, Switchcraft CTS pots, '50s era wiring and Mallory capacitors.

Other appointments on the instrument include new Epiphone Deluxe vintage tuners, a Switchcraft selector switch and output jack, a non-beveled pickguard and an Epiphone Limited Edition metal medallion toggle switchplate.

The Epiphone 1959 Les Paul Standard is available for preorder now from Sweetwater – in Aged Dark Burst and Aged Dark Cherry Burst finishes – for $799. It comes with a vintage-style brown hard case.

For more info on the guitar, stop by epiphone.com.

• Our pick of the best Epiphone Les Pauls available today