An Exceptionally Fine 1956 "Black Beauty"

This wonderful guitar weighs just 9.30 lbs. and has nice, fat nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid mahogany body, one-piece mahogany neck with a medium-to-thick profile, ebony fretboard with 22 low "fretless wonder" frets and inlaid pearl block position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo and five-piece pearl split-diamond inlay. "Les Paul Custom" on truss-rod cover. The body has seven-ply binding on the top and five-ply binding on the back, the headstock has five-ply binding, and the fretboard is single bound. Individual Kluson Super tuners with single-ring Keystone plastic buttons. One Alnico V pickup in the neck position with an output of 8.68k and one P-90 pickup in the bridge position with a similar output of 7.39k. Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch. Black plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs. ABR-1 non-retainer Tune-O-Matic bridge and separate stud tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. The serial number inked-on in yellow on the back of the headstock is "6 9531" The potentiometers are stamped "6154190 514" and "134 522" (IRC April 1955 and Centralab May 1955), and the two tone capacitors are still the original Sprague brown waxy tubular "grey tiger" type. This totally original "Black Beauty" is in exceptionally fine condition (9.00). There are a few really tiny surface marks on the top of the guitar just behind the stud tailpiece, one small surface chip on the back of the neck just behind the first fret, one small indentation/scratch on the back measuring approximately 3/4 x less than 1/8 inch (not through to the wood) and also some very minor belt-buckle scarring on the back. A few other miniscule marks or indentations on the top and sides and some very minor tarnishing to the gold on the stud tailpiece are all that prevent this fifty-one year old 'Black Beauty' from being near mint. Housed in the original Gibson four-latch black hardshell case with yellow plush lining (9.25), complete with two of the original hang-tags, the folding tan "Gibson Les Paul Model" tag and the orange guitar-shaped " Gibson hand made Sonomatic Strings" tag.


"In a move designed to widen the market still further for solidbody guitars, Gibson issued two new Les Paul models in 1954, the Custom and the Junior...The two-pickup Custom looked classy with its all-black finish, multiple binding, block-shaped position markers in an ebony fingerboard, and gold-plated hardware, and was indeed more expensive than the gold-top. Paul said that he chose the black colour for the Custom. 'When you're on stage with a black tuxedo and a black guitar, the people can see your hands move with a spotlight on them. They'll see your hands flying.' The Custom had an all-mahogany body, as favoured by Les Paul himself, rather than the maple/mahogany mix of the gold-top, giving the new guitar a rather mellower tone...The Les Paul Custom was promoted in Gibson catalogues as 'the fretless wonder' because of its use of very low, flat fretwire, different to the wire used on other Les Paul at the time and favoured by some players for the way it helped them play more speedily...The September 1954 pricelist showed the Les Paul Custom at $325 and the Les Paul Junior at $99.50. The gold-top meanwhile had sneaked up to $225" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, p. 25). The Custom was the first Les Paul model to receive the company's Tune-O-Matic bridge, used in conjunction with a separate bar-shaped tailpiece, which offered for the first on Gibsons the opportunity to individually adjust the length of each string, thus improving tuning accuracy.