An Exceptionally Fine 1956 "Black Beauty" - And it Weighs Just 8 1/2 Pounds!!!

1956 Gbson Les Paul Custom "Black Beauty".

This incredible guitar weighs in at an extremely light 8.50 lbs. and has nice, fat nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid mahogany body, one-piece mahogany neck with a wonderful fat profile. Ebony fretboard with 22 original small frets and inlaid pearl block position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo and five-piece pearl split-diamond inlay. "Les Paul Custom" on truss-rod cover. The body has seven-ply binding on the top and five-ply binding on the back, the headstock has five-ply binding, and the fretboard is single bound. Individual Kluson Super tuners with single-ring Keystone plastic buttons. One Alnico pickup in the neck position with a huge output of 8.68k and one P-90 pickup in the bridge position with a very strong output of 7.49k. Each pickup with a black plastic cover, the Alnico with "UC-452-F / 1" and the P-90 with "UC-452-B / 2" stamped on the underside. Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch. Black plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs. ABR-1 non-retainer Tune-O-Matic bridge with metal saddles and separate stud tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. The serial number stamped in yellow on the back of the headstock is "614639" The potentiometers are stamped "134 621" and "134 626" (Centralab May and June 1956). This totally original "Black Beauty" is in exceptionally fine condition (9.00). Some very light finish checking, some minor belt-buckle scarring on the back, a few small surface marks / indentations on the top, some loss of the black finish on the back of the neck due to good honest playing wear and some minor tarnishing to the gold hardware are all that prevent this fifty-four year old 'Black Beauty' from being near mint. At just 8.50 pounds, this is certainly the lightest 'Fifties' Les Paul Custom that we have ever seen or played. Housed in the original Gibson four-latch black hardshell case with orange-yellow plush lining (8.75).

"In a move designed to widen the market still further for solidbody guitars, Gibson issued two new Les Paul models in 1954, the Custom and the Junior...The two-pickup Custom looked classy with its all-black finish, multiple binding, block-shaped position markers in an ebony fingerboard, and gold-plated hardware, and was indeed more expensive than the gold-top. Paul said that he chose the black colour for the Custom. 'When you're on stage with a black tuxedo and a black guitar, the people can see your hands move with a spotlight on them. They'll see your hands flying.' The Custom had an all-mahogany body, as favoured by Les Paul himself, rather than the maple/mahogany mix of the gold-top, giving the new guitar a rather mellower tone...The Les Paul Custom was promoted in Gibson catalogues as 'the fretless wonder' because of its use of very low, flat fretwire, different to the wire used on other Les Paul at the time and favoured by some players for the way it helped them play more speedily...The September 1954 pricelist showed the Les Paul Custom at $325 and the Les Paul Junior at $99.50. The gold-top meanwhile had sneaked up to $225" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, p. 25). The Custom was the first Les Paul model to receive the company's Tune-O-Matic bridge, used in conjunction with a separate bar-shaped tailpiece, which offered for the first on Gibsons the opportunity to individually adjust the length of each string, thus improving tuning accuracy.