One of the Last of the Alnico/P-90 Les Paul Customs
An Exceptionally Fine 1957 "Black Beauty" - Signed by Les Paul

1957. Gibson. Les Paul Custom "Black Beauty". Black (9.00).

Single cutaway solid body. This incredible guitar weighs just 9.20 lbs., which is the perfect weight for a fifties 'Custom'. Multi-bound solid mahogany body. One-piece mahogany neck with a nice, fat nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches, a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches, and a wonderful thick profile. Ebony fretboard with 22 original small 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. Serial number "7 2154" inked-on in yellow on the back of the headstock. 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 pickup in the neck position with a huge output of 8.47k and one P-90 pickup in the bridge position, also with a very strong output of 8.28k. Each pickup with a black plastic cover, the Alnico with "UC-452-F / 1" and the P-90 with "UC-452-B / 2" stamped on the underside. Five-layer (black over white) plastic pickguard secured to body with a single bracket and a top screw. 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 with metal saddles and separate stud tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. The potentiometers are stamped "134 701" (Centralab January 1957). This totally original "Black Beauty" is one of the very last of the Alnico/P-90 Customs and is in exceptionally fine (9.00)condition. There is some very minor belt-buckle scarring on the back, a few small surface marks / indentations on the top, and some small areas on the back of the neck (behind the first three frets only) where the black finish is worn away due to good honest playing wear. Nearly thirty years ago, the previous owner had Les Paul himself inscribe the back of the guitar in gold marker "To Clay / Keep Pickin' / Les Paul / 87". Housed in a later Gibson four-latch black hardshell case with purple-yellow plush lining (8.50).

"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.