Gibson Custom Shop - Zakk Wylde Camo Les Paul

This is really just a standard Les Paul with a few slight tweaks to make it Zakk Wylde's own personal signature guitar. The guitar has a mahogany body with a maple top, a maple neck that is unfinished, a maple fretboard, trapezoid inlays, 22 frets, a tune-o-matic bridge, a unique paintjob, two humbuckers, two volumes, two tones and a three way switch.

UTILIZATION

The neck is easily the #1 thing about this guitar. It's a maple neck with an ebony fretboard, so it gives that old school 70s Les Paul kinda vibe. They're a bit snappier, and they cut through better. It's also unfinished which is a huge plus. The finishes on a lot of Gibson guitars tend to be sticky, and this guitar doesn't have that problem. The guitar itself was put together nicely, and the finish didn't have any drips or runs. It's definitely a love or hate finish, though. Can't say I'm a huge fan of the way it looks.

SOUNDS

This guitar sounded phenomenal. The EMG 81 in the bridge is perfect for this. It was super tight, aggressive, saturated and completely balls to the wall. It had bite, but it was never too harsh. It works awesome for any type of metal, but it starts to lack when it comes to rock and anything with lower gain. The EMG 85 in the neck is super fat and smooth sounding. It's kinda like playing on easy mode. Legato comes scary easily, and you can do all kinds of signature pinch harmonics with this guitar.

OVERALL OPINION

This guitar is really a metal machine. It sounds awesome, was built nicely and felt killer. I honestly think that if this didn't have the obnoxious finish, it would be one of Gibson's best selling signature models out there. That's the #1 problem with this guitar. The finish is just awful. That, and it's not really meant for classic rock.

Gibson recently started to expand the Zakk Wylde Signature line to cash in on his popularity. They have come out with different colored designs but this guitar most importantly has a maple fretboard. Maple fretboards are pretty rare on Les Pauls and even rarer on Camo Les Pauls with EMG's. This Les Paul Custom is a signature model of Zakk Wyldes 70s Les Paul that he has been playing for years. Zakks guitar has some personal touches. Many 70s Les Pauls had maple necks like this one and on Zakk's guitar the paint on the back of the neck is removed for a raw finish. The pickups are a set of EMG's. There is an 81 in the bridge and an 85 in the neck. This is now a classic configuration for EMG's. On the face of the guitar you can see Zakk's classic bullseye motif changed up with a camo design. The neck has an maple fretboard with block inlays and 22 jumbo frets. After these mods the guitar is pretty much a typical Les Paul Custom. It has a tone and volume control for each pickup and a 3 way switch. The guitar is 1 piece mahogany with a maple top.

UTILIZATION

The guitar plays slightly better than your typical Les Paul. The raw finish on the back of the neck means the neck is faster to play. The finish on the back of a neck can cause the neck to become sticky when you are playing and cause you to snag on the neck. The frets are larger than on a normal Les Paul so you can get a better action on the neck for easy bends. The upper fret access is typical of a Les Paul beacause of the design the upper frets are not that easy to reach. The maple fretboard has creme inlays and they do not really stand out against the light colored wood. They can be hard to see sometimes if you are looking down at the fretboard. You have to reach around the whole body to get to the upper frets on the guitar. All the hardware is gold so it may tarnish on you or rub off. Gibson still does not use locking tune-o-matic bridges so when you are changing strings the bridge may fall off. Gibson did not put a separate compartment for the EMG's battery so whenever you need to change batteries you have to take the whole electronics compartment cavity off. This means you cannot really change batteries on the fly. If you do the 18v mod to the pickups you will pretty much need a separate compartment for the batteries since there will be two.

SOUNDS

This guitar is as heavy as a Les Paul can get. With EMG's from the factory the guitar rips faces. The extra brightness from the maple fretboard means this guitar has even more clarity and can handle even lower tunings. The 81 in the bridge has been an iconic metal pickup for decades. It has a high end crunch and distortion that gives it clarity no matter how much gain you are using or how low you tune. The 85 in the neck is a great pickup too. It has a more fuller sound than the 81 so in the neck position you can get fat lead tones. The 85 is also good too in the bridge. With EMG's quick connect system you can easily swap these pickups position without soldering anything. The 85 in the bridge produces a super thick tone and cleans up better than the 81. Speaking of cleans if you do the 18v mod on the EMG's. With the 18v mod you run the pickups on two batteries instead of one. This provides a more organic tone with more headroom. This tone produces better cleans than stock EMG's and clean tones are usually the weakest part of the EMG sound.

OVERALL OPINION

If you are looking for a Les Paul with a maple fretboard and EMG pickups with a camo bullseye finish you do not have many options. It is too bad Zakk decided to put the bullseye on his guitar when he got it. I think a plain Les Paul with the Zakk Wylde mods would be an even better seller. The Zakk motif puts off a lot of people and it is a shame because this is a great metal guitar. So as I said, if you are looking for a Les Paul Custom with a maple fretboard with EMG pickups and a Bullseye camo finish this really is your only choice.

I DO NOT HAVE THIS GUITAR (or not yet anyway ^^): Go to the section "Sonorits" is a test found in a magazine.

Manufactured by the Custom Shop.
The base is a Les Paul Custom.
Mahogany body, maple table.
Maple neck, ebony button (for Bulls'eyes finish) or maple (for Camo finish)
2 EMG pickups, a bridge 81 and 85 in neck: active pickups. There is therefore a stack the inside of the guitar.
2 volumes, 2 tonalities, slecteur 3 positions, classic Les Paul what.

The finishes doing well of the ordinary, this is the least we can say! Air guitar well finished I can dvelopper.
The look does not leave indifferent anyway.

USE

It kills

SONORITS

Branch in a 2 bodies Marshall, this guitar sounds will power. The knobs background, saturated between the amp. The attack is sharp, even on the neck pickup that sounds a bit straighter than her boyfriend. The bridge pickup gives the feeling that a booster is already installed in the guitar and trendy "crunchiser" the clean channel of the amp lamps. The sound is not "roots". The Zakk Wylde laughs heat and current grasseyantes saturations. His warmth she mane of his strike force. The sound is optimized density, and wood quality, outstanding, gives color to particulire EMG pickups. By increasing the gain of the amplifier, the craft roared with pleasure!
It can reduce the knobs of the guitar up to half of their race, keeping a good and frank attack. Thus we unspoilt the rest of the stroke of the guitar volume to increase the grain saturation. The result is effective and seems hard pounding volume! The perfect balance of Zakk Wylde tends to forget its weight. I bet that in any multi-effects, it is quickly propelled.

NOTICE GLOBAL

It kills

U.S. customshop guitar with a fixed bridge (no floyd), the EMG 81 and 85 signatures with Zakk Wylde tone and volume.

UTILIZATION

The handle is very nice, the first time I played it, I felt like winning a year guitar ...
The sound is fabulous.
I had a Lespaul studio equipped with EMG 81 and 85 before buying the real ...
I loved the studio, but when I bought it, I forgot the other immediately.

SOUNDS

Frankly, it's hard to do better than this guitar.
Within or Lespaul we love ...
She can do everything, it is a war machine.

OVERALL OPINION

This is about 1 year I have.
I think it is until death do us part.
I've never seen a guitar like this.
I think we should try it once in their life.