One of Only Five or Six Two Pick-Up Original '59 Les Paul Customs

This holy grail of Les Paul Customs weighs 10.10 lbs. and has nice, fat nut width of 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid mahogany body with slightly arched top, one-piece mahogany neck, and ebony fretboard with 22 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 Kluson Super tuners with tulip-shaped single-ring Keystone plastic buttons. Two PAF humbucker double-black pickups with outputs of 7.44k and 7.51k. Rectangular labels on under side of pickups with "patent applied for." Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic pickguard. 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 and separate stud tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. The serial number ("9 0154") is inked in white on the back of the headstock. The potentiometers are all stamped: "134 844" ( Centralab November 1958). The guitar has been refretted with medium gauge round wire. Apart from a few tiny marks on the back, the edges, the back of the neck, and the lower edge of the headstock, this great rarity is truly in near mint (9.25) condition. This totally original '59 Two Pick-Up Custom -- with a neck and a sound to die for -- is the only one that we have ever seen. At just over ten pounds, it is a medium weight for a Custom. This "Holy Grail" of Les Paul Custom's has been in a private collection for the past five years and this is the first time that it is being offered for sale. Housed in its original Gibson black five latch pebble-grain "black beauty" hardshell case with light orange plush lining (9.00).

"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.

"Alternatively nicknamed the 'Fretless Wonder' or the 'Black Beauty', the Custom was introduced in mid-1954 as the deluxe version of the Les Paul guitar...Between 1954 and 1965 four main variants of the Custom can be distinguished...In addition to a single-cutaway thick body with all-black finish, the first variant is primarily characterized by its mixed pickup outfit consisting of one Alnico pickup in the neck position and one P-90 in the bridge pickup...By mid-1957 the Custom was upgraded with three humbuckers and a distinctive circuitry. Instead of combining the front and back pickups, the centre position of the 3-way toggle switch was wired to activate the middle and back pickups together, albeit in an out-of-phase mode for a different tonal colour...Although they were not made in sizeable quantities, at least three other variants of the single cutaway Custom are known to exist: One as used by guitarist Johnny Gray features three P-90 pickups instead of hum buckers matched with an ES-5 type circuitry...Another equipped with 3 humbuckers has 3 controls set in a straight line, and a toggle switch or a master tone in the upper bout. Finally, a few Customs were factory-built with two humbuckers on a custom-order basis between 1957 and 1961. For example: #8-2778, #9-0144 or #0-0148. For the record, the July 1, 1958 price list mentions the Custom as a twin pickup electric" (A.R. Duchossoir, Gibson Electrics -- The Classic Years, p. 202).

"Gibson humbuckers replaced the P90 single-coil types on the Les Paul gold-top and Custom during 1957. Indeed the Custom was promoted to a three-pickup guitar in its new humbucker-equipped guise. Players gradually came to appreciate that humbuckers and a Les Paul guitar made for a congenial mixture, and today many guitarists and collectors covet the earliest type of Gibson humbucking pickup. This is known as a 'PAF' because of the small 'patent applied for' label attached to the underside" (Tony Bacon and Paul Day, The Gibson Les Paul Book, pp. 21 and 24).