The Finest PAF Les Paul Custom "Black Beauty" That We Have Ever Seen…

This medium weight Les Paul Custom weighs just 9.60 lbs. and has a solid mahogany body with a slightly arched top. One-piece mahogany neck with a nice medium profile, a comfortable nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Ebony fretboard with 22 original thin frets and inlaid pearl block position markers. The top of the guitar has seven-ply binding, the back of the guitar has five-ply binding, the headstock has five-ply binding, and the fretboard has single white binding. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo and five-piece pearl split-diamond inlay. Two-layer (black on white) truss-rod cover with "Les Paul Custom" engraved in white. Individual Grover Roto-Matic tuners with half-moon metal buttons. The serial number ("8 8409") is inked in yellow on the back of the headstock. Three original 'gold-plated' double-black PAF humbucking pickups with outputs of 7.37k, 7.43k, and 7.05k (each with a small rectangular black label "Patent Applied For" on the underside. The black pickup rings on the neck and middle are stamped on the underside "MR 491 / M-69 7". The black pickup ring on the treble pickup is stamped on the underside "MR 490 / M-69 8". Five-layer (black / white / black / white / black) plastic pickguard secured to body by two screws. Four controls (two volume, two tone) on lower treble bout plus three-way selector switch on upper bass bout. Black plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs. ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic non-retainer bridge with metal saddles and separate stud tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. The potentiometers are all stamped: "134 808" (Centralab, February1958). This totally original example is one of the lightest 'PAF' Les Paul Customs that we have seen. At just 9.60 pounds it is just eight ounces heavier than the lightest one we have had (9.10 pounds). We have had seven PAF Customs over the years ranging from 9.10 pounds to 10.70 pounds. This guitar is in near mint (9.25) condition with just a few very small surface marks on the back. There is hardly any finish checking and the original frets have plenty of life left. There is some very minor tarnishing to the gold hardware - but we can quite honestly say that this is the finest example of a PAF Custom that we have seen. Complete with the original folding "Les Paul Custom / Fretless Wonder" hang-tag; the original orange "Gibson handmade Sonomatic Strings hang-tag; the original "Humbucking Pickup Adjustments" folded sheet; the original "Instructions Tune-O-Matic Bridge" folding sheet and even an original (used) set (five of six) of used Gibson Mona-Steel flat-wound strings in the original orange box. Housed in its original Gibson black pebble-grain "black beauty" hardshell case with orange plush lining (9.25).

"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 Pauls 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.