Gibson has officially launched what is perhaps the most anticipated signature guitar in its history, the USA Standard Kirk Hammett ‘Greeny’ Les Paul – confirming it will be priced at $3,199.
The firm first detailed the USA Standard option a few weeks back, alongside the announcement of a painstaking $20k Custom Shop reproduction of the legendary instrument. Now it has opened orders and announced a price that shaves some 85 percent off the Custom Shop offering.
The Greeny is renowned first for its famous owners – notably Peter Green, Gary Moore and, currently, Kirk Hammett. Aside from its pedigree as one of Gibson’s storied ’59 ’Bursts, it carries a famous technical quirk in that its neck pickup was accidentally installed the wrong way round.
As such, when played in the middle position with both pickups selected, it creates a partially out-of-phase tone that Peter Green came to lean on heavily in his early Fleetwood Mac recordings.
When the guitar passed into Hammett’s hands, the Metallica man began to work with Gibson to document and analyze the instrument. The now-notoriously slavish studies led to several high end reissues, including a strictly limited $50k Custom Shop Collector’s Edition and the more recent Murphy Lab-aged $20k Custom Shop build.
Both of those runs have proven to be enormously successful, despite the prohibitive pricing, and Gibson’s initial Custom Shop stock of the $20k model is said to have sold out in the first morning of the announcement.
The USA Standard Greeny still represents a considerable chunk of change in the days of affordable overseas production, but compared with Gibson’s wider USA Standard line looks to represent reasonable value.
For instance, it’s only $200 over the price tag of the Les Paul Standard ’50s at $2,999 and is on the cheaper end of the range of USA Standard signature Les Pauls, which also start at $2,999. We’re not sure if that will fully justify the purchase in the eyes of your significant other/accountant/hungry children, but it’s a start…
Most of the saving is achieved by producing it in Gibson’s main factory, as opposed to the meticulous eyes of the firm’s boutique Custom Shop.
Inevitably, some compromises have also had to be made on the spec and components. For instance, the USA Standard favors an unblemished AAA maple top over the carefully reproduced wear of the Custom Shop’s Murphy Lab aging process.
Elsewhere, it comes loaded with Greeny Bucker pickups, which are still proprietary, but are probably not going to have the same nuance as Custom Shop-produced units found in the more expensive model. The neck is also a standard ’50s vintage profile, rather than a complete copy of the carve found on the original Greeny.
Nonetheless, it’s still a high-end build in the grand scheme of 21st century guitar production and, more importantly, one that will place those killer out-of-phase LP tones in the hands of mere mortals.
If the USA Standard still feels a bit rich for your tastes, well, we’d bet good money that there’s an Epiphone Greeny currently being developed behind closed doors.
In the meantime, head over to Gibson for more information. And for more background on the much-mythologized Greeny itself, check out our guide to 6 times the legendary “Greeny” Gibson Les Paul was used to create electric guitar magic.
