The Les Paul Model of 1952 was the joint product of one man’s uncompromising vision and a manufacturer’s ability to embrace invention and innovation, and the results forever transformed the future of the electric guitar. To celebrate the brilliance of the man who started it all, Gibson USA is crowning 2013 The Year of Les Paul with the launch of the Limited Edition Les Paul Tribute, a stunning showpiece that honors its creator’s legacy. The Les Paul Tribute is a recreation of the Les Paul Model in its first year of production, with a bridge adapted to the specifications of Les Paul’s own patented 1952 design, plus an all-gold finish on top, back, and neck, a rarity that adorned some guitars in the early years of production. Commemorative details include a maple headstock veneer with laser-etched logo and Les Paul portrait, a steel truss-rod cover etched with “Les Paul,” a vintage cream pickguard hot-stamped with Les’s real signature, “Lester William Polsfuss” and the years of his lifespan. A must-have for any Les Paul collector, the Les Paul Tribute is also primed for vintage tone and unparalleled playability—and is available in a strictly limited run of 400 guitars, each protected in a textured brown hardshell case with custom fleece interior. The Les Paul Tribute starts with the same foundation that made the original 1952 Goldtop such a powerful tone machine. Its body is made from two pieces of solid lightweight mahogany with no weight relief, capped with a carved maple top. Its one-piece, quarter-sawn mahogany neck is set with Titebond to secure its long-tenon joint, and carved to a traditional rounded ’50s profile, with a solid rosewood fingerboard. While the Les Paul Tribute carries the original trapeze tailpiece of the first Les Pauls, Gibson USA corrects the way this was used on guitars from 1952 to early ’53 by following Les’s original design, with an appropriate neck angle to allow the strings to be wrapped over the bridge, rather than under, for an improved playing feel. The correct colored cream binding, gold Speed knobs, and TonePros™ vintage-style tuners complete the guitar’s period-correct appearance. The Les Paul Tribute is more than just a trophy piece, however, and shares the same fat single-coil P-90 pickups that have made 1952-’56 Les Pauls such favorites with players for the past 60 years. Gibson makes its P-90s today just like it did six decades ago, with two Alnico V bar magnets in each pickup and coils wound with approximately 10,000 turns of 42 AWG wire, for plenty of beef when you hit ’em hard, but crystalline clean tones when you back off the guitar’s volume controls. Orange Drop tone caps assist in that warm, singing “woman tone” when you roll back the tone controls, too. All in all, it’s both a stunning tribute, and a great playing and sounding guitar—just as Lester intended.