SLASH GIBSON LES PAUL PREMIERES, GIVES AWAY GUITAR SECRETS

Slash talks about the honor of having another Gibson Les Paul Signature Guitar and what fans can expect from the limited edition axe.

Gibson and guitar virtuoso Slash have officially released the Slash Signature Series Les Paul Goldtop. The guitar, which is available from Epiphone and Gibson USA, is built using many of the same traditional guitar building processes and techniques that have made Gibson’s family of stringed instruments the absolute finest in the world. The new Epiphone Slash Signature Les Paul Goldtop is limited to just 2,000 guitars worldwide and The Gibson USA model is limited to only 1,000 guitars worldwide. No other guitars of either version will be produced once the limited edition quantity is sold out.

We caught up with Slash during the unveiling of his signature guitar and autograph signing at Sam Ash in Hollywood, California to get his thoughts on what an honor it is for Gibson to release a Slash signature guitar.

“Just to let you know, it’s a huge honor. This is actually the third Slash model that we’ve done in the space of a year. So that’s a huge honor that I can put a guitar out through Gibson and then it commands to have another made.”

So what went into designing the Slash signature series guitar?

“I start off with what is basically a Les Paul and then you know over the years I’ve learned how to make Les Paul’s work better for me. You know particular things that you pick up. So, what we do is we start with making sure the neck is sort of a thinner neck as opposed to being very round in the back. It’s sort of flat and we changed the pickups and we put in Seymour Duncan Alnico II pickups in it and we use a Tonepro Bridge, which is a particular type of bridge. That’s a lot of the changing that I do and this particular guitar we customized the tone pots so that when you turn them down you don’t lose any presence or volume. That’s basically it, the rest of it is just pure Les Paul.”

The always busy Slash is currently in the studio writing new material with Velvet Revolver while the band continues to look for a vocal replacement for Scott Weiland, who left in a much publicized split after the bands second album ‘Libertad.’ Slash is also finishing up the initial demos for his soon to be released solo album. Slash plans to bring in different singers for each song and although he didn’t reveal who would be guest vocalists, he did mention it would include singers he has worked with in the past. Already rumored to be a part of Slash’s solo album are Lenny Kravitz, Sebastian Bach and Alice Cooper, to name just a few.