❌SOLD❌ Gibson Les Paul Axcess Custom Ebony, 2015

There have been many incremental changes to the Les Paul over the years, but the Gibson Les Paul Axcess Custom – and Standard – represents one of the most radical enhancements to the core design.

While the Les Paul Axcess Custom shares the basic construction concept of a carved Maple cap on a Mahogany body with a Mahogany neck. Standard Gibson BurstBuckers (depending on year) feed through individual volume and tone controls, which also provide coil splitting. On the Custom, the fingerboard is Richlite.   And as a Custom model, all the metal parts are gold plated. 

However, there are some significant differences. The one that jumps right out is the factory-installed Floyd Rose vibrato system. It was never easy to install a Floyd on a standard Les Paul, largely due to neck angle issues. Even if one successfully placed the bridge and routed the cavities for the trem block and springs, it might be difficult to set the bridge to an acceptable height. The Axcess neck joint is made to allow for optimal placement of the Floyd bridge, providing pitch rise and drop.    The Les Paul Axcess Standard is also available in Hard Tail. 

The second enhancement is in two places – a ‘belly cut’ on the back, and a contoured heel that greatly improves access to the upper frets.

This Les Paul Axcess Custom dates to 2015 and the Nashville plant based on its serial number. It breaks down as CS YLRRRR where CS is Custom Shop, Y is the last digit of the year, L is the factory location with 0 being Nashville and 5 being the now-closed Memphis plant. RRRR are the ranking numbers for that production run.

This guitar is in very clean condition with minor wear, and no breaks. The arm and Certificate of Authenticity are included in the original brown Gibson branded hard shell case.

How Gibson described the Les Paul Axcess Custom and Standard:

“As the Gibson Custom Shop Operations Manager Michael McGuire puts it, “Everything about this Les Paul has been designed to make it a player’s ‘player’s guitar’. From the easy access to its upper range, to the comfortable belly scarf, to the Floyd Rose vibrato, this instrument was made to give you optimum performance.” And of course, being a product of the Gibson Custom Shop, the Les Paul Axcess is built to the highest standards attainable in today’s market, which includes a final set-up and fret dressing by the computer-controlled PLEK System.

Beyond all these significant considerations for playing feel, the Les Paul Axcess Standard is also geared toward optimum tone, as you’d expect from any Custom Shop creation. Exposed-coil BurstBucker 1 and BurstBucker 2 pickups in the neck and bridge positions—the most accurate reproduction vintage-PAF-style humbuckers Gibson has ever offered—yield everything from warm, fluid vocal tones to fat, sweet growl, while an added push/pull switch on the treble Tone knob provides coil splitting for accurate single-coil tones. The combination excels at everything from singing classic rock lead tones, to contemporary crunch, to extremes of twang and jangle. Even the pure-nickel wound .010 Gibson Vintage Strings it ships with contribute toward its rich, textured voice.”