Black-tie-looks without the weight! Gibson USA designed the
Gibson Les Paul Custom Lite Electric Guitar to provide the same classy looks of the Les Paul Custom without the heaviness. Made with a considerably thinner body and traditional weight relief, the Les Paul Custom Lite lightens the load and still packs all the elegant looks and dual-humbucker tone that has made this Les Paul legendary!
Gibson Les Paul Custom Lite Electric Guitar Features
- Thin Mahogany body with traditional weight relief and a carved maple top
- Mahogany neck with rounded '50s profile
- Rosewood fingerboard with acrylic split-diamond inlays
- Powerful 490R and 498T humbucking pickups in the neck and bridge positions
- Coil splitting via mini toggle switch for great single coil tones
- Gold plated Grover keystone tuners with 16:1 ratio
Tonewoods
In crafting the Les Paul Custom Lite, Gibson USA starts with time-tested ingredients, including the legendary tonewood pairing of a carved maple top and genuine mahogany body, the latter treated with Gibson’s traditional weight relief to reduce the load and enhance resonance.
The quarter-sawn mahogany neck is carved to a rounded ’50s profile and topped with a Grade-A, rosewood fingerboard with single-ply binding and classic acrylic block inlays. The body and headstock are trimmed in multi-ply binding, and the headstock carries an Acrylic Gibson logo and traditional acrylic split-diamond inlay. Dressed entirely in high-gloss Ebony Black, in genuine nitrocellulose lacquer, the Les Paul Custom Lite exudes class from every angle.
Electronics
The Les Paul Custom Lite is fitted with Gibson 490R and 498T humbuckers for all the tone that made the Les Paul legendary in the first place, plus added single-coil sounds thanks to the coil-splitting mini-toggle switch added in place of the second tone control. The 490R in the neck position is made with a genuine Alnico II magnet and wound with 42 AWG wire in the image of the original PAF humbuckers, for plenty of depth and warmth. The 498T in the bridge position has an Alnico V magnet and extra turns of coil wire for added punch and growl.
Hardware
A traditional Tune-o-matic bridge and stopbar tailpiece enhance the sustain that has long made the Les Paul legendary, and a set of Grover keystone tuners—all in gold, as are the pickup covers and strap buttons—ensure a lifetime of smooth tunings. Check out the Gibson Les Paul Custom Lite today and grab a more comfortable hunk of that classic elegance.
Les Paul Custom History
When guitarist Les Paul and Gibson president Ted McCarty sat down at the start of the 1950s to design a revolutionary new solidbody electric guitar, they originally envisioned two versions of the Les Paul Model: a ‘standard,’ which arrived first in the Goldtop of 1952, and a black Custom model with gold hardware, intended to be the creme de la creme. The 1954 Custom debuted with two single-coil pickups, but McCarty had already set Seth Lover and a team of Gibson designers the task of developing a revolutionary new humbucking pickup, which first hit the scene on the Les Paul Custom and Les Paul Goldtop in 1957. While the Les Paul Custom has always been a supremely elegant instrument—a ‘black tie’ guitar for the formal crowd, as Les originally conceived it—many have come off the line over the years considerably heavier than the typical Les Paul Standard.