Gibson Custom 1954 Les Paul Custom Black Beauty VOS, Ebony

Gibson Custom 1954 Les Paul Custom Black Beauty VOS, Ebony Overview

The 1954 Les Paul Custom Black Beauty VOS in Ebony has been expertly handcrafted by Gibson’s Custom Shop luthiers with special attention paid to historical accuracy to create an heirloom-worthy guitar.

VOS stands for ‘Vintage Original Spec’, which means they were designed to faithfully re-create the experience of playing a Golden-era Gibson.

The Gibson Custom 1954 Les Paul Custom Black Beauty VOS in Ebony has a solid non-weight relieved 1-piece mahogany body and a carved mahogany top, which delivers warmth and midrange that’s unlike the Les Pauls that have maple tops.

The 1-piece mahogany neck has a medium chunky profile and a 12” radius. It’s topped with a smooth ebony fingerboard that makes for a balanced, stable fingerboard, as well as making it easier to play faster. It has an ABR-1 bridge with a lightweight aluminium stopbar tailpiece.

For pickups, it has a pair of high-output P-90 pickups that deliver everything from biting leads and articulate rhythm tones to rich sustain, and let you slice through the mix. The neck position has a rare “Staple” P-90 pickup which works well in tandem with the standard P-90 in the bridge position.

In the standard P-90, the steel pole pieces contact an internal magnet and coil. In the Staple P-90, the pole pieces are extended rectangular magnets that connect to the coil, which means you get a brighter, more articulate P-90.

These are an extremely versatile set of pickups - when you plug into a high-gain tube amp, you’ll get a sound that’s impossible with other pickups, whether humbuckers or single-coils.

The 1954 Les Paul Custom Black Beauty VOS has a nitro lacquer finish which was often used back when this guitar was first released and is a lot thinner than the typical finishes today (polyurethane), which lets the wood breathe.

To complete the Les Paul Custom Black Beauty, there’s gold hardware to complement the ebony finish, pearl block inlays, and Kluson Waffleback tuners which offer great performance and reliability. It comes with a Gibson Custom Historic Brown Lifton Hardshell case and a Certificate of Authenticity.