A full-bore Les Paul, certified for shred.
If you’re seeking a full-bore Les Paul primed for the rock excesses of the 21st century, the new Shred Les Paul Studio with Floyd Rose™ from Gibson USA is the way to go. This guitar has all the ingredients that have helped to make the Les Paul a legendary rock axe since the 1950s—including the classic mahogany and maple body construction, glued-in mahogany neck, and dual humbucking pickups—enhanced with the versatility of a genuine Floyd Rose™ vibrato bridge. To make it all the more appealing for the demanding guitarist on a tight budget, the entire package is wrapped up into the Les Paul Studio format, making the Shred Les Paul Studio with Floyd Rose™ the latest in a long line of guitars that have been consistent favorites since their introduction in 1983. Blending genuine Gibson Les Paul quality and construction with trimmed-down, no-nonsense styling, the Studio range offers unbeatable value, and provides the perfect home for the powerful new Shred Les Paul Studio with Floyd Rose™.
Just like the most revered Les Pauls of all time, the Shred Les Paul Studio with Floyd Rose™ starts with the classic tonewood combination of a mahogany body with solid carved maple top, finished in hand-sprayed high-gloss nitrocellulose. Together, these woods offer outstanding tonal depth and richness from the mahogany, with superb clarity and “snap” from the maple. In this model, the strategic chambering enhances resonance while also reducing the guitar’s overall weight considerably, without sacrificing an ounce of punch or sustain. And even in this more affordable instrument from Gibson USA, the glued-in solid-mahogany neck is cut to the superior “quarter-sawn” grain orientation for superior strength and optimum resonance transfer between neck and body. The profile is a superbly comfortable and fast rounded Studio ’50s shape that measures .818” at the 1st fret and .963” at the 12th. The 22-fret fingerboard is crafted from Richlite®, a fabricated material composed of cellulose fiber and phenolic resin, which offers the constructional and resonant properties of fine hardwood, but with improved durability, for a superb playing feel. It carries traditional acrylic trapezoid inlays, and remains unbound, in keeping with the Studio ethos.
Two of Gibson’s most popular PAF-style humbucking pickups—a 490R at the neck and 498T at the bridge, made with Alnico II and Alnico V magnets, respectively—translate the Shred Les Paul Studio’s muscle to your amp of choice, yielding anything from deep, warm tones in the neck position to endless growl and roar in the bridge, to round and funky tones in between. Kicking it all up a notch, of course, is the Floyd Rose™ vibrato unit that helps to give this Studio model its name. A legendary “double-locking” vibrato system, the Floyd Rose™ sets the standard for high-performance trems, and excels at everything from dramatic divebombs to subtle evocative warbles, helping the guitar stay in tune amazingly well along the way, thanks in no small part to its locking nut. A set of vintage-style TonePros™ tulip button tuners grace the headstock, while the traditional four-knob control section of independent volume and tone controls and three-way toggle switch provide optimum versatility.
