Gibson Les Paul Traditional Electric Guitar, Ebony - Chrome Hardware Left Handed

Gibson Les Paul Traditional Electric Guitar, Ebony - Chrome Hardware Left Handed Review

Gibson Les Paul Traditional Electric Guitar, Ebony - Chrome Hardware Left Handed Feature

• Mahogany neck with bound rosewood fingerboard and figured acrylic trapezoid inlays
• Gibson '57 Classic and '57 Classic Pro humbuckers with three-way toggle, separate tone/volume controls
• Gibson "Nashville" Tune-o-Matic bridge with stop bar tailpiece
• Kluson-style Tone Pros tuning machines with tulip buttons and 16:1 ratio
• Mahogany body with grade AA maple top, single-ply cream binding, and set-neck construction

With all the fat, sweet, snarling Les Paul tone that purists love, the Traditional plays, sounds, and feels like the Les Pauls that today's players grew up loving and lusting after. Taking design and visual cues from the Les Pauls of the '80s and '90s, the Les Paul Traditional starts with a Grade-A mahogany body and adds nine strategically placed traditional weight-relief holes for a beefy tone that maintains the resonance of modern Les Pauls, while losing a large portion of the weight. This is capped with a maple top, giving the Les Paul Traditional the look of the great Les Pauls that helped to bring rock back to the front of the stage in the mid '80s. Capping the Traditional with a maple top not only looks great, but it also brings out presence and definition to the tone. With the look of the great Les Paul Standards that helped to make rock king again, and every ounce of the tone thanks to legendary Gibson construction, classic tonewoods, and two genuine humbucking pickups, the Les Paul Traditional is the guitar to take your music center stage where it belongs.

Mahogany Body With AA Maple Top

Each Les Paul Traditional is made from a figured two-piece Grade-AA maple top attached with ultra-strong Franklin Titebond 50 glue to a solid, one- or two-piece Grade-A mahogany body.

These tone woods nail that legendary Les Paul combination of good clarity, definition and treble bite from the maple, and excellent depth and richness from the mahogany. This is one of the most revered wood combinations of all time, and truly offers a "best of both worlds" design in the way that mahogany and maple complement each other to offer superior resonance, sustain, depth, clarity, and definition.

'57 Classic pickups accurately recreate the tone and performance of original PAF humbuckers with a few tonal enhancements that players appreciate.

Tune Pros vintage-style tuning machines with a 16:1 ratio.

Gibson "Nashville" Tune-o-matic bridge with stopbar tailpiece.

Set Mahogany Neck

The neck of the Les Paul Traditional is constructed from one solid piece of quarter-sawn, lightweight Grade-A mahogany for improved strength and resonance. The luthiers in Gibson's Custom Shop carefully match the grains and weights of these guitars' bodies and necks to optimize tone and sustain.

The neck on the Les Paul Traditional is carved to a comfortably rounded '50s "D" profile. Every detail counts in the effort of bringing authentic '60 Les Paul tone to the Les Paul Traditional, and the angled, classical-style peg head and fuller mahogany neck work together to provide exceptional tonal richness and resonance from the neck, with a good string definition and sustain.

Rosewood Fretboard

The Les Paul Traditional carries a Grade-A rosewood fingerboard, the traditional fingerboard of the original Les Paul Standard. Rosewood is both hardwearing and sonically superlative, adding sweetness and depth to the guitar's overall sound. To enhance the guitar's classic look and feel, this fingerboard is trimmed in antique cream binding.

The fingerboard carries 22 medium-jumbo frets made from traditional nickel-silver wire, along with acrylic trapezoid position-marker inlays, echoing the traditional look of the original Les Paul Standards.

Angled Headstock

Just like the original Les Pauls of '50s, and many classic Gibson models, the Les Paul Traditional headstock is carefully angled at Gibson's traditional 17 degrees. This subtle yet crucial element of the guitar's design increases pressure on the strings and helps them stay in the nut slots. An increase in string pressure also means there is no loss of string vibration between the nut and the tuners, which equals better sustain.

Classic Series Pickups

The Les Paul Traditional Plust Top is equipped with a pair of pickups from Gibson's popular 57 Classic series. Its 57 Classic (neck) and 57 Classic Plus (bridge) accurately recreate the tone and performance of original PAF humbuckers with a few tonal enhancements that players appreciate. The standard '57 Classic in the neck position is wound to a DC resistance toward the lower range of the original PAF pickups, for a warm, round, rich tone with plenty of definition and clarity. The 57 Classic Plus in the bridge position is wound toward the hotter end of the PAF spectrum to reflect vintage pickups whose coils were wound "until they were full," for an open, clear, punchy vintage voice with plenty of snarl and aggression when you crank up your amp. The coils are wax potted to combat microphony and feedback squeal at high volumes so, while vintage voiced, they are suited to high-gain playing, too. The number of windings in the two coils in each pickup are also equally matched, an enhancement that provides a creamy, balanced performance that many players enjoy.

The Les Paul Traditional boasts an independent volume and tone control for each pickup, along with a three-way toggle.

Tone Pros Tuners

The headstock of the Les Paul Traditional is equipped with Kluson-style Tone Pros tuners with green tulip buttons. These keys have a vintage look that complements the model, while offering an extremely efficient 16:1 turns ratio for precise tuning performance.

Nashville Tune-o-matic Bridge

The Les Paul Traditional carries a "Nashville" Tune-o-matic bridge that is made from zamak and plated in chrome. This bridge provides a firm seating for the strings, while also allowing the player to adjust and fine-tune the intonation and string height in a matter of minutes. It also yields excellent coupling between strings and body, maximizing resonance, tone and sustain.

Every Tune-o-matic bridge is combined with a separate "stopbar" tailpiece, which is essentially a modified version of the earlier wraparound bridge that's designed to further enhance the connection between the strings and the body. The Les Paul Traditional's stopbar tailpiece is made from zamak and plated in chrome.

Les Paul Traditional Specs

• Body: Mahogany
• Top: Maple
• Hardware: Chrome
• Bridge: Nashville Tune-O-Matic
• Tailpiece: Stop Bar
• Tuners: Kluson-style Tone Pros with Tulip Buttons
• Neck Pickup: '57 Classic
• Bridge Pickup: '57 Classic Plus
• Controls: 2 Volume, 2 Tone, Three-way Toggle
• Control Knobs: Gold Speed
• Neck: Mahogany
• Nut: Corian
• Nut Width: Standard Gibson (1.695" +/- .050")
• Fingerboard: Rosewood
• Inlays: Figured Acrylic Trapezoids
• Frets: 22
• Scale Length: 24 - 3/4"

With all the fat, sweet, snarling Les Paul tone that purists love, the Traditional plays, sounds, and feels like the Les Pauls that today’s players grew up loving and lusting after. Taking design and visual cues from the Les Pauls of the ’80s and ’90s, the Les Paul Traditional starts with a Grade-A mahogany body and adds nine strategically placed traditional weight-relief holes for a beefy tone that maintains the resonance of modern Les Pauls, while losing a large portion of the weight. This is capped with a maple top, giving the Les Paul Traditional the look of the great Les Pauls that helped to bring rock back to the front of the stage in the mid ’80s. Capping the Traditional with a maple top not only looks great, but it also brings out presence and definition to the tone.