1995 Two Pickup Les Paul Custom "Black Beauty" '57 Historic Collection Reissue

This 1995 Gibson Custom Shop two pickup '57 Reissue Les Paul Custom "Black Beauty" weighs 9.60 lbs. and has a nut width of 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid mahogany body, one-piece mahogany neck with a medium to thick profile just like the ultra rare '57 two PAF Custom, and an ebony fretboard with 22 medium jumbo frets and inlaid pearl block position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo and pearl five-piece split-diamond inlay. Two-layer (black on white) plastic truss-rod cover with "Les Paul Custom" engraved in white. Serial number ("7 5348") stamped in yellow on the back of the headstock. The top of the guitar has seven-ply binding,the back has five-ply binding, the headstock has five-ply binding, and the fretboard is single-bound. Individual Grover Roto-Matic tuners with half-moon metal buttons. Two '57 Reissue PAF humbucker pickups with black plastic rings and with outputs of 7.99k and 8.30k. Each pickup has a small rectangular black "Patent Applied For" label on the underside. The potentiometers are stamped "137 9516" (CTS April 1995). Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) on lower treble bout plus three-way pickup selector switch on upper bass bout. Black plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs. Tune-O-Matic retainer bridge and separate stud tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. This guitar is in near mint (9.25) condition, with just a minuscule bit of tarnishing to the gold hardware on the bridge and stud tailpiece. Housed in the original Gibson brown hardshell case with purple plush lining (9.00).

"Alternatively nicknamed the 'Fretless Wonder' or the 'Black Beauty', the Custom was introduced in mid-1954 as the deluxe version of the Les Paul guitar...Between 1954 and 1965 four main variants of the Custom can be distinguished...In addition to a single-cutaway thick body with all-black finish, the first variant is primarily characterized by its mixed pickup outfit consisting of one Alnico pickup in the neck position and one P-90 in the bridge pickup...By mid-1957 the Custom was upgraded with three humbuckers and a distinctive circuitry. Instead of combining the front and back pickups, the centre position of the 3-way toggle switch was wired to activate the middle and back pickups together, albeit in an out-of-phase mode for a different tonal colour...Although they were not made in sizeable quantities, at least three other variants of the single cutaway Custom are known to exist: One as used by guitarist Johnny Gray features three P-90 pickups instead of hum buckers matched with an ES-5 type circuitry...Another equipped with 3 humbuckers has 3 controls set in a straight line, and a toggle switch or a master tone in the upper bout. Finally, a few Customs were factory-built with two humbuckers on a custom-order basis between 1957 and 1961. For example: #8-2778, #9-0144 or #0-0148. For the record, the July 1, 1958 price list mentions the Custom as a twin pickup electric" (A.R. Duchossoir, Gibson Electrics -- The Classic Years, p. 202).

"The more expensive model from the original line of Les Pauls, the black Custom, had been largely overlooked by Gibson in their 1980s reissues, apart from an early attempt as the Black Beauty 82. But the 35th Anniversary Les Paul of 1989…recalled the Custom's birth in '54 -- even if the model itself was based on the three-humbucker '57-style Custom" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, p. 90).

This somewhat uncommon "Historic Collection" re-issue was the first based on the rare two-humbucker 'Second Version'.