The Guitar Magazine – July 2019

the arrival of wider fretwire and slightly slimmer
neck dimensions, while the most desirable period also
coincided with the serial-number range in which the
red pigment in the guitars’ sunburst finishes was most
susceptible to fading when exposed to UV light.
Although the more colour-fast ‘tomato soup’ Bursts
with thinner necks from later in 1960 are regarded
as less appealing by some hardcore Les Paul fanatics,
we’re still talking about some of the best electric
guitars ever made, with a monetary value way beyond
the reach of 95 per cent of the population. Yet for
the most part, it’s the ’59 – aided and abetted by the
adoration of a laundry list of rock luminaries – that
holds the most allure.

REWIND THE TAPE
Celebrating six decades of the most famous guitar
in its back catalogue, the newly reinvigorated
Gibson unveiled the 60th Anniversary 1959 Les Paul
Standard at Winter NAMM 2019. Despite the doom
and gloom surrounding the company’s finances, the
Custom division has been doing some stellar work in
recent years and our review guitar benefits directly
from the research and development that went into
True Historic and Collector’s Choice. With True
Historic now discontinued and the Collector’s Choice
concept having run its course, there’s still scope to
use the data, hardware and manufacturing techniques
to inform new reissue models.
This manifests itself here in a top and neck carve
taken from the Collector’s Choice #37 ‘Carmelita’
model, (created by 3D scanning the original Les Paul,
serial number 9 1953) and the presence of plastics
recreated for the True Historic programme unveiled
in 2015, such as the amber Catalin switch tip and
laminated cellulose acetate butyrate pickguard. For
some, these are steps down the rabbit hole too far,
but hardcore Les Paul aficionados inhabit a world
in which imperfections such as chatter marks are
desirable details on a reproduction scratchplate or
truss-rod cover. Don’t believe us? Check out the
prices people are willing to pay for original vintage
parts or high-quality aged repros on Reverb.
It’s Gibson Custom category product specialist
Mat Koehler’s job to sweat the small stuff and he
considers the use of hide glue for the top-to-back,
fingerboard-to-neck and neck-to-body joins to be
“a big part of the recipe” of the new 60th Anniversary
guitar. “It was developed in 2014 for the True Historic
models,” says Mat. “It really does make the guitars
more acoustically resonant and measurably louder,
on top of being historically accurate.
“A louder and more resonant solidbody guitar
produces better tone,” Koehler insists. “People
talk about the clarity of original PAF humbuckers
and forget that a lot of that is the sound of the
instruments themselves. The pickups capture the
essence of the instrument as much as the design
affects the tone shape.”

REVIEWS

GUITAR MAGAZINE 29