The Les Paul Custom has always been a supremely elegant instrument – a “black tie” guitar for the formal crowd, as Les originally conceived it – many have come off the line over the years considerably heavier than the typical Les Paul Standard. The Les Paul Custom Lite, new from Gibson USA, redresses that disparity: made with a considerably thinner body and traditional weight relief, it lightens the load for a superbly playable Custom that still packs all the elegant looks and dual-humbucker tone that has made this Les Paul legendary.

Gibson Les Paul Custom Lite

The Les Paul Custom Lite has two of Gibson’s most popular humbucking pickups from the Modern Classics series offer all the tone that made the Les Paul legendary in the first place, plus added single-coil sounds thanks to the coil-splitting mini-toggle switch added in place of the second tone control.

Gibson Les Paul Custom Lite features:

  • Genuine Mahogany body with carved maple top
  • Mahogany neck with rounded ’50s profile
  • Rosewood fingerboard with acrylic split-diamond inlays
  • Powerful 490R and 498T humbucking pickups in the neck and bridge positions
  • Gold plated Grover keystone tuners with 16:1 ratio

Could this be 2013 Guitar of the Year? You decide…

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Join the discussion One Comment

  • John Williams says:

    This guitar is superb. It looks like a Les Paul Custom from the front, yet costs less than half the price. The sound is very good indeed with plenty of unplugged sustain and a very pure sound when amped up. The bonus of the coil splitting gives you some very good sounds – and the single coil sound really is not bad at all. (the neck single coil setting sounds particularly good – certainly better than my Mexican Tele neck pickup) The real extra bonus of having proper weight relief and contouring on the back makes this quite a comfortable guitar to play. Don’t worry about the neck being a 50’s profile – unless you have very small hands you really won’t notice (all this rubbish about the 50’s neck being a treetrunk and the 60’s neck being a toothpick. My ES-137 is a halfway house neck and this Custom Lite just feels a bit different but very comfortable) – pick one up and you will be enthralled by playing it…. gorgeous looks, feels and sounds. I have a Yamaha AE500 fat bodied semi, a MIM Standard Telecaster, an ES-137 and a Gibson Songmaker DSM acoustic and this guitar feels, sounds and plays fantastic in comparison.You’re getting a lightweight, stunning looker for only £100 more than studio model…. and since they seem to be limited in production numbers I have a feeling they’ll go up in value.

     

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