A stage-used 1968 Gibson Les Paul, played by Free's Paul Kossoff, is currently up for auction and expected to sell for a figure in the range of £30,000 to £40,000 ($37,833 to $50,445).
According to the statement provided by auction house Bonhams, the guitar was originally a Les Paul Gold Top before being converted to a Burst around 1969-70.
The conversion was carried out by luthier Les Tones, who was also a founding member of the band Beckett. Tones gave this guitar to his bandmate, guitarist Arthur Ramm, before an instrument exchange in October 1972 led to it being played on stage by Kossoff.
At the end of what was to be Free's final UK performance, held at Newcastle-upon-Tyne's Mayfair Ballroom, “Kossoff damaged his own '59 Les Paul and borrowed Ramm's for the encore,” reads the statement.
“Apparently, Kossoff loved the sound of this guitar and agreed to swap it for his damaged guitar once it had been repaired, lending Ramm another guitar until then. As it happened, the following year Ramm's guitar was returned and Kossoff kept his now-repaired Les Paul.”
However, Kossoff remembered the guitar when, on May 16, 1975, during the opening night of Back Street Crawler's UK tour at the Sunderland Locarno, he borrowed the guitar from Ramm as a backup instrument and played it again for the encore.
Construction-wise, the guitar features a mahogany body with a bound maple top finished in Honey Burst, a mahogany neck with a bound Indian rosewood fingerboard, jumbo frets, trapezoid inlays, a nylon nut, and a headstock adorned with a ‘crown’ inlay.
In terms of hardware, it comes equipped with two Patent decal humbuckers, two volume and two tone ‘speed’ controls, a three-way selector, an ABR-1 Tune-o-Matic bridge, three-a-side Grover tuners, and an aluminum stud tailpiece.
It lacks a pickguard and is housed in a heavily taped, 1970s-style hardshell plush-lined case. Included as a bonus is a signed copy of the book Paul Kossoff: All Right Now - The Guitars, The Gear, The Music.
According to Bonhams, “The guitar has been professionally maintained and played regularly in the intervening years.
“Ramm fitted a replacement pair of nickel-plated pickup covers and the ‘speed’ controls; it has been re-fretted and with a new nut, but it is essentially the same as when in Kossoff's hands, and still has a Beckett sticker inside the back control cavity.”
Kossoff's Gibson Les Paul is part of Bonhams' Rock, Pop & Film auction, which ends on December 4 at 1 pm GMT/8 am ET.
For more information, head to Bonhams.
