A Near Mint Les Paul Personal.

1970 Gibson Les Paul Personal.

This Les Paul Personal, is one of only 370 guitars produced between 1969 and 1973. This rare guitar weighs 11.30 lbs. and has a nice, fat nut width of 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Two-piece  mahogany 'sandwich' body with carved top. Three-piece mahogany neck with a wonderful medium profile, and bound ebony fretboard with 22 frets and inlaid pearl block position markers. Inlaid pearl "Gibson" headstock logo and pearl five-piece split-diamond inlay. "Les Paul Personal" on truss-rod cover. Individual Grover Roto-Matic tuners with half-moon metal buttons. Serial number "912945" stamped in blind on back of headstock. No "Made in USA" stamp, very small and unobtrusive 'volute'. Two oblong low-impedance humbucker pickups mounted at an angle with "Gibson" embossed on the plastic pickup covers. Black laminated plastic pickguard. Four controls (volume, bass, treble, decade) on lower treble bout. Phase slide switch and three-way tone selector on small panel on lower treble bout. Microphone volume control knob and one selector switch on upper bass bout. The potentiometers are stamped "137 7010" & "137 7030" (CTS, March and July 1970). Black plastic knobs with white markings and metal tops. Microphone input jack on side of upper bass bout. Guitar input jack on side of lower treble bout. Tune-O-Matic retainer bridge with metal saddles and separate stud tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. This guitar is in near mint (9.25) condition with just the tiniest amount of belt-buckle indentations on the back and a few very small surface marks/indentations on the top and the sides. Overall a spectacular example of a quite rare Les paul. Housed in the original five-latch black shaped hardshell case with orange plush lining (9.00).

One of 222 Les Paul Personals made in 1970 out of a total run of 370 guitars produced between 1969 and 1973.

The Julien's Auction (june 9th & 10th, 2012) of the estate of Les Paul contained just one Les Paul Personal: lot # 593. 1970 Les Paul Personal serial # 966898 - that guitar fetched $11,785…

"Most Les Paul low-impedance models have different body dimensions than other Les Paul models" (Gruhn's Guide to Vintage Guitars, p. 218). The Les Paul Personal is 14 inches wide, 18 1/4 inches long, and 2 inches deep.

"In 1969 along came the first wave of Les Paul models with low-impedance pickups -- the Les Paul Professional, the Les Paul Personal, and the Les Paul Bass. The Personal was, as the name implied, in keeping with one of Paul's own modified Les Paul guitars, even copying the odd feature of a microphone socket on the top edge of the guitar. The Personal and Professional had a complex array of controls, and Gibson's instruction leaflet reinforced the impression that they were built with recording engineers rather than guitarists in mind. Familiar volume, bass, treble and pickup selector were augmented by an 11-position Decade control, 'to tune high frequencies', a three-position tone selector to create various in and out-of-circuit mixes, and a pickup phase in/out switch. The Personal also provided a volume control for that handy on-board microphone input. Both guitars required connection using the special cord (lead) supplied, which had a built-in transformer to boost the output from the low-impedance stacked-coil humbucking pickups up to a level suitable for use with normal high-impedance amplifiers." (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, p. 60).