"Sunshine Of Your Love".

1958 Gibson Les Paul Custom "Black Beauty".

This light weight Les Paul Custom weighs just 9.20 lbs. and has a solid mahogany body with a slightly arched top.  One-piece mahogany neck with a nice thick 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 secured by two screws. Individual Grover Roto-Matic tuners with half-moon metal buttons. The serial number "8 6330" is inked in yellow on the back of the headstock. Three original 'gold-plated' double-black PAF humbucking pickups with outputs of 8.05k, 8.28k, and 7.86k (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: "134 838" (Centralab, September 1958). This totally original example is one of the lightest 'PAF' Les Paul Customs that we have seen. At just 9.20 pounds it is just one ounce heavier than the lightest one we have had (9.10 pounds). We have had eight PAF Customs over the years ranging from 9.10 pounds to 10.70 pounds. This guitar is in excellent plus (8.75) condition. The frets are original and have been dressed. The gold hardware is a little tarnished. There is an area of wear (approximately 4 1/2 x 4 inches) on the back of the body. There are a few other small areas of wear on the sides and a tiny chip on the treble face binding of the headstock. There are a few small marks on the back of the neck and some fine finish checking. This guitar has been lovingly played and is all original. The three PAF's have never had their covers removed and all of the solder joints are original. This is an opportunity to acquire an all original Les Paul Black Beauty at a much lower price than usual. The perfect weight, the perfect neck profile and the incredible bite of the PAF's make this a truly great guitar. Housed in its original Gibson black pebble-grain "black beauty" hardshell case with orange plush lining (8.50).

Eric Clapton owned an identical 1958 Les Paul Custom - most likely made the same day (serial #8 6320) with which he recorded "Sunshine of Your Love". On that recording you can hear the distinctively different tone achieved from an all-mahogany body in comparison to a maple-top Les Paul - even cranked through 100-watt Marshall stacks… He used the guitar on Disraeli Gears and also in sessions with Delaney & Bonnie. Eric gave the guitar to Albert Lee - aka Mr. Telecaster in 1979.

"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.