ES-Les Paul Standard Plaintop Spliced Electric Guitar

Marry the Gibson Les Paul to the Gibson ES-335 and what do you get? A perfect blend of two of the most played and recorded electric guitars in history. Ultra-lightweight, killer in feel, with a big bottom that you know that you love, the only question to be asked is, Gibson, what took you so long?

The Gibson ES Les Paul features classic Gibson ES construction including: maple/poplar/maple body supported with quarter sawn Adirondack spruce bracing attached to the top with tone-enhancing, old world hide glue, solid maple center block hand-selected for weight and tone, genuine mahogany neck glued in via close tolerance mortise and tenon joinery. This rare bird is the first-ever ES-Les Paul built in the rare and historically significant spliced top format.

Beginning in the late 1950s, Gibson would on occasion not have maple veneers wide enough to make an ES top or back. So they would splice two pieces together as in acoustic or archtop guitar construction to make the tops and/or backs. These guitars are now very rare and sought after in the Vintage market. So Gibson figured, why not build a very few of these, maybe rare birds on down the road.

The neck features a 1.681" bone nut for traditional feel, atop a 12" radius fingerboard sporting 22 Jumbo frets firmly anchored into the speed friendly rosewood fingerboard, perfectly spaced to .001 tolerances inside of a 24.75" easy chord scale length. The famous Gibson rounded C neck contour reminds one of the iconic Gibson guitars. The precision PLEK system setup finishes one of the most accurate and playable guitar necks in Gibson history.

Two Memphis Historic Spec Humbucker pickups wired through perfectly matched potentiometers, unbalanced Orange Drop capacitors, featuring the Memphis Tone Circuit provide for clarity of tone seldom matched by any guitar. Along with a clean sound that would make a statue cry, the ES Les Paul Custom Black Beauty can get down and dirty with the best of them. A Les Paul that can go from clean jazz, to bright country, to filthy rock and roll, will fill the holes in the most complete guitarists arsenal.

Add the rock-solid Tone Pro ABR-1 bridge, dependable and visually familiar Kluson-style Single Ring Tip tuning machines, with all hardware finished in nickel, and the ES-Les Paul Spliced not only screams "play me until your fingers bleed," but also looks fine on stage or in the boardroom.

This particular Gibson Memphis Limited run is offered for a short time in a lemon Burst nitrocellulose lacquer finish. Although lacquer is time consuming to apply and requires refined expertise to do it right, all Gibson instruments continue to come with hand applied lacquer finishes as the ultra-thin lacquer coating is considered by many luthiers to be the best finish available for tone. That it is stunning to the eye doesnt hurt either.