Gibson Custom Shop recreates Mick Ralphs’ 1958 Les Paul Standard
Serial #8 7049 has been lovingly cloned down to the last detail
The Gibson Custom Shop has recreated British rock legend Mick Ralphs’ 1958 Les Paul Standard and, as ever, they have copied every minute detail of this old burst to make it look like the real thing.
Mick Ralphs
Poor old Mick isn’t well, so it is a pity he isn’t around in person to tell us more about this new recreation of one of his old Les Paul guitars, which would have been used on some of his most famous recordings. Having played in both Mott The Hoople and Bad Company Mick is a bit of a British rock legend and, of course, is well known as wielder of a classic LP Standard.
Serial #8 7049
The Les Paul Standard that served as the model for this reincarnation is Serial number 8 7049, and dates from 1958. It’s no longer in Mick’s possession, instead owned by a ‘guitar collector’ (which is a crying shame). This kind of instrument is more an investment than a playable guitar nowadays, which I find is often the case with old classic Les Paul guitars, but you can’t blame people for not using them.
This guitar is part of the by now long-running business model for the Gibson Custom Shop: a limited edition of an aged, guitar associated with a particular artist. They know someone will want to buy into some kind of ‘mojo’ and so it will sell to a collector somewhere and be used as an investment.
Mick Ralphs and ’58 Les Paul · Source: Gibson/YouTube
You can tell how great this guitar sounds by watching the official Gibson video below. The video where nobody actually plays the guitar and Mick’s son just looks at it and waffles off some things his father remembered about it.
The guitar is loaded with a set of Alnico III Custombuckers which seek to replicate the classic PAF tone of the old 1950s Les Paul instruments and has been aged, to make you think it has seen a million faces and rocked them all.
It looks like a nice guitar. Such a pity Mick isn’t very well and couldn’t put it through its paces for us, as he would have made it come alive. I’ve included a video below he did for Gibson in 2015 and you can hear how passionate he is. Legend!
Thomann in Europe are already showing stock here
RRP – EUR 7099/USD 7499
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3 responses to “Gibson Custom Shop recreates Mick Ralphs’ 1958 Les Paul Standard”
What an anysmal article! You give the “collector” a hard time for owning the guitar, but the original 8-7049 gets played by a lot of people, the current owner included, both in the studio and live. It’s loaned out frequently. Hell, if you’d have asked you could have borrowed it for a review…..but instead you come out with a bunch of “chip on the shoulder” crap, masquerading as news. Mick didn’t do an interview because he’s incapacitated due to having suffered a stroke.
Really, you need to get a grip. It’s about as far from an investment as it’s possible to get. There’s a lot more to the story, but you can blow any chance of getting that right out of your ass.
Hi there. You write as if you are somehow connected with the owner in question – could you contact us at editor -at- gearnews dot com so that we can verify this? We are always happy to correct posts if there have been factual errors made, so please get in touch so that we can verify that. Thanks in advance. Angus (Editor)
I don’t give anyone a hard time, I just wrote how I felt about a guitar being owned by a collector.
Just gutted Mick isn’t well enough to play anymore, would have loved to have heard him put one through its paces.
We aren’t a review site, we are a news site and one that has an opinion doesn’t just praise every business decision that a guitar company makes when they are advertising new equipment and we never use press releases.
I would suggest you watch the interview with Mick from 2015 in the article, as he pretty much says it like it is. But then he is a legend!