Gibson: Les Paul Standard - 50's Neck (Heritage Cherry Sunburst Finish)

The all-time favorite Gibson model, the Les Paul Standard is recognized the world over as an icon for rock and roll. As Gibson’s first solid body electric guitar, the Les Paul Model made a lasting impression when it debuted in 1952, and it continues to shape the sounds of popular music today. This model has all the features and quality that you would expect from an all-American guitar. All the hardware is chrome, the bridge is tune-o-matic for excellent tuning and intonation stability. The sunburst finishes are modern variations of the original cherry sunburst, and the AA-grade figured maple top is more highly flamed than many of the originals. The Standard sports a smaller, vintage style headstock and plastic keystone tuner buttons and is available with a fat '50s style neck or a fast '60s style neck. Also new to the revamped Standard are its pickups. Specifically voiced Burstbuckers have been designed to recreate more of a classic vintage tone than the 490R and 498T used in the model previously. Les Paul Standards never did have the most powerful humbuckers around, but what’s so great about that is that they retain their fatness and crisp warmth, yet allow you to crank the amp up an extra notch or two. And that’s how those great vintage sounds were created - think Allman Brothers, Blues breakers and Free. Less outright power also makes for a more versatile instrument, because the pickups inherent sweetness adds beauty to clean tones and clarity to just-breaking bluesy ones. A good clean sound - and this is a great clean sound - makes for a fantastic overdriven tone. Cranked into a Mesa Recto-Verb combo it’s huge, with warmth and overtones in abundance and everything from woman tone to Gary Moore’s spitting Parisienne Walkways solo and both-pickups-on quack. Once you get into using the guitars volume controls to govern the amount of gain in your system, the tonal options are almost infinite - within the Gibson palette, of course. This is pure, distilled Les Paul and we adore it.