Anxiously Awaiting On Everything Eternal…

2006 Gibson Les Paul 58 Reissue

Ah the ubiquitous Gibson Les Paul. In my opinion, this is the most beautiful guitar on the face of the planet. I could only afford a 58 reissue when I was shopping for my dream Les Paul, and that's okay with me. Anything prettier and I might feel paranoid playing it on stage. Yes, I actually gig with this guitar! An instrument should be played in my opinion. This one's a looker though. It has a nicely grained top in Iced-T finish.

I have owned a cherry red Les Paul studio in the past and it sounded absolutely terrible. I don't think any amount of tinkering and modifying could have saved the poor thing. I sold it the next week. A year later this beautiful guitar turns up on The Gear Page for an absolute steal of a price. It is in a word: divine. It took me a couple of weeks, but I have since warmed up to the baseball bat 50's profile neck. I can't move quite as fast on it as I can on my Firebird or my Telecaster, but tones that scream for days and days make up for the slower neck speeds. Also, it forces me to be a little more poignant when playing--which in turn improves my songwriting.

Pickups

My Iced Tea R8 sports a set of Jason Lollar's standard Imperial pickups. These pickups are much smoother than the stock Gibson PAF clones, and they sound miles upon miles better. Just like all the other pickups in my guitars, Jason does not disappoint with the quality of craftsmanship and sound. They are legendary.

Hardware

After all the hardware tweaking on my Firebird I had to get my Les Paul in on the action too. Along with a newly installed (as of 2010) bone nut, this beauty sports a Callaham guitars ABR-1 bridge. I wouldn't leave home without it! Simply installing this bridge greatly enhanced tone on the instrument and allows for the guitar to transfer sound and vibrations in a more elegant way. It sounds tight, airy and fat. There are so many Les Pauls out there that simply need one of these to completely reengineer it's sound in an amazingly good way. For the price this is the single more useful upgrade I have ever performed on a Gibson guitar.

Electronics

I upgraded the wiring to a standard, modern schema with volume kits installed to keep things from getting too muddy as the treble is rolled off. Amazingly, on this particular guitar the volume kits bleed tone in such a subtle way that rolling back the volumes produce the exact same sounds just with less gain. I'm very impressed, and it makes the guitar that much more consistent for getting great tone across multiple gain spectrums.

Sounds

Coming soon!