Stripped down it might be, but this Musician’s Friend exclusive from Gibson USA is a feature-packed Les Paul with both the versatile tone and the stunning looks to stand with the finest single-cutaway electrics ever produced. Since 1983 Gibson USA has been proving not only that less is sometimes more, but also that less can sometimes knock your socks off—when it comes in the form of the popular no-nonsense Les Paul Studio model, at least. Originally designed as a model for studio artists but adopted wholeheartedly by countless players of all stripes, the Les Paul Studio combines stripped-down appointments with the full tonal splendor and unrivaled playability of a Les Paul Standard at a significant financial savings. The Musician’s Friend Les Paul Studio Pro Plus from Gibson USA includes the minimalist appointments that players have come to love, but dresses up the theme in a range of exclusive finishes revealing gorgeous Grade AA-figured maple tops, and hotrods it with push/pull switching to offer independent coil tapping from two of Gibson’s most popular humbucking pickups. All in all, it’s a Les Paul for the ages, primed for rock, blues, pop, fusion, or whatever music you want to make.
Crucial elements of the Les Paul Studio Pro Plus’ design include the carved, Grade AA-figured maple top and chambered mahogany body, a classic tonewood combination that is legendary for its blend of clarity, sustain, depth and richness. A solid one-piece mahogany neck is glued in with a traditional mortis & tenon joint, and carved in the fast and comfortable SlimTaper™ profile. Faced with a rosewood fingerboard with 22 medium-jumbo frets, with a 12″ radius for each choke-free bending, the neck is topped with a headstock with the preferred 17-degree backward pitch for improved string pressure in the PLEK-cut Corian nut. In keeping with the dressed-down Studio series, body and fingerboard are left unbound, to show the beauty of the wood and provide a natural feel under the fingers. Traditional elements of Les Paul styling remain, however, in the acrylic trapezoid fingerboard inlays and the time-tested pairing of a Tune-o-matic bridge and stopbar tailpiece, both made by TonePros® for locked-and-loaded sustain and solidity. A set of Grover kidney-button tuners—a popular upgrade for more than half a century—top it all off in grand style.
Your tone slams through two uncovered humbucking pickups, a set that comprises a pair of Gibson USA’s finest. A 490R in the neck position offers rich, warm Alnico II goodness, while a BurstBucker Pro in the bridge yields the tighter, more aggressive PAF voicings from an Alnico V magnet and a few extra turns of wire. Upping the ante in tonal versatility, both pickups are wired to individual push/pull Volume pots, allowing you to split the coils of either pickup or both together for a wide array of single-coil tones, or single-coil and humbucker voices mixed. Finally, each example of the Musician’s Friend Les Paul Studio Pro Plus looks stunning in your choice of four genuine nitrocellulose finishes: Antique Natural, Red Velvet, Manhattan Midnight, and Trans Black.
Wrap it all up, and there’s no better looking or more sonically versatile Les Paul out there than the Gibson USA Les Paul Studio Pro Plus, available exclusively from Musician’s Friend. Each guitar comes protected in a formfitting Gibson hardshell case, and is covered by Gibson’s famous Limited Lifetime Warranty and 24/7/365 customer service.
