All user reviews of 5/5 for the Gibson Custom Shop - Historic 1956 Les Paul Standard Reissue Darkburst

The Gibson Les Paul guitar is a fat sounding thick and aggressive sounding guitar. The voicing of it is very rich and smooth but they're extremely thick and almost misguided. What I mean misguided I mean it as an aggressive tone that is great for hard rock and metal music. There's nothing about this instrument that is built to the guided but it is just that angry raunchy tone that is perfect for aggressive style guitar playing.


UTILIZATION


This guitar features two P90 pick ups two volume control knobs and two tone control knobs. It also has a three way pick up selector that allows you to pick up pick each pick up individually and in the space in between each to humbucker pick ups. It doesn't have a whole lot of features compared to some of the new modern builds with different push pull activation on different pickups and different boosts but it's a pretty basic guitar and it doesn't tear off of the beaten path too much.


SOUNDS


The tone of this is very thick and warm. It is great for distortion sound so if you have a high gain amplifier or even a moderately high gain amplifier you to get some great thick hard rock and metal tones. If you use a classic sounding cleaning up such as a fender twin reverb or something like that. Can you give me get a beefy clean tone that's not a sound very bright but could be really warm and round and nature. Overall this guitar is an exceptional guitar with resounding tone. It has a great feel and if you like warm tones then you're going to be in business with this guitar.

OVERALL OPINION


I highly recommend a Les Paul guitar to anyone is looking to get a really beefy guitar for recording or any type of digging. It's a fantastic sounding guitar but they are kind of expensive in this price range you can certainly find these guitars in the used market pretty easily so I suggest trying that out before buying one new because it Gibson Les Paul guitars tend to be hit or miss sometimes from guitar to guitar. See you can play one and I feel good and play another one that is the exact same build and not feel quite right. I was recommend playing a Gibson Les Paul first before buy.

During this time, it was pretty much solidified that Gibson would start using the tune-o-matic bridge/stop tail piece on their guitars from here on out. The guitars still had some P90s around this time, but they were slowly being phased out for humbuckers. The guitar features a mahogany body with a maple top, mahogany neck with a rosewood fretboard, 22 frets, trapezoid inlays, pickguard, binding, hard tail bridge, two P90s, two volumes, two tones and a three way switch.

UTILIZATION

This particular guitar didn't weigh a ton, and I found that to be a good thing. To me, heavy Les Pauls can be more dead weight than anything else. Instead, I listen for overall resonance and how clear they sound. This one had that in spades. The nut was cut pretty good, so no problems there. The overall fretwork was great, but I couldn't slam to action to really test how level they were. I also didn't have any of my fretwork tools with me at the time. Regardless, Gibsons at this high level tend to be top notch, so there shouldn't be too many problems.

SOUNDS

The P90s in this were awesome. The bridge P90 was totally killer for that blues tone. I put it through both a Fender and a Marshall. In the Fender, the clean was to die for. Once I hit the tubescreamer, it gave this killer blues solo sound that just sang for days. Through the Marshall, I was able to get an awesome hard rock tone going on. Through the right amp, you can even play metal with this, but it's not something I'd exactly recommend. The middle position was pretty useless, but I find that to be standard affair for these guitars.

OVERALL OPINION

The P90s in this guitar were to die for. They had some of the craziest tone that I've experienced in quite awhile. If you've never tried a P90 before, definitely check this guitar out. They can even be used for leads. Hell, Kirk Hammett of Metallica is known to use P90s on certain lead sounds, so if he can use it for metal, I'm sure you can find a way to use it.