RS Recommends: Slash Marks New Album With Limited-Edition Les Paul Guitar Collab
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Slash is teaming up with guitar maker Gibson on the release of the Slash Les Paul Standard Limited 4 Album Edition, a new electric guitar inspired by 4, the new studio album from Slash Featuring Miles Kennedy and The Conspirators.
Recorded on Gibson Records and released earlier this month, 4 is fittingly the fourth studio album by Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, and Slash’s fifth solo album overall.
The guitar, meantime, is a classic Les Paul Standard, built solid with a mahogany body, nickel plating and a “translucent cherry” finish. Slash’s signature details abound, like two custom BurstBucker Alnico 2 pickups, a Fifties neck profile, and hand-wired dual volume and dual tone knobs with orange drop capacitors.
The headstock features vintage keystone tuners with an AAA flamed maple top and Slash’s branded skull self-portrait in back, along with a 22-fret Indian Rosewood fingerboard neck.
Buy Slash Les Paul Limited 4 Album Edition Sam Ash
Slash, who rose to fame in the late Eighties and early Nineties with Guns N’ Roses, has had a monumental music career that’s still going strong over 40 years on. The instantly-recognizable guitarist has also had a long list of side projects too, including Velvet Revolver, Slash’s Snakepit, and a solo album, along with backing legends like Michael Jackson and Lenny Kravitz.
Slash recently talked to Rolling Stone about growing up bi-racial, overcoming addiction, and reuniting with Axl Rose and Guns. “I didn’t really ever feel totally comfortable in my own skin,” he says of his childhood years. “Then I picked up the guitar in seventh or eighth grade, and that changed things. All of a sudden I was ‘cool’ because I was standoffish or aloof.”
Universally recognized as one of rock’s great guitarists, he effortlessly landed on the All-Time Best Guitarists lists in Rolling Stone, Gibson, and TIME, along with being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. Slash owns more than 400 guitars, but is a lifelong fan of Gibson and best known for his restored 1959 Les Paul Standard, which he played on every Guns N’ Roses album, helping to give GNR their signature sound (he’s been playing the 1988 model for his onstage performances). This isn’t his first collaboration with the company either, as he’s previously released seven creations for fans in the Gibson Custom Shop.
The new Slash x Gibson Les Paul guitar comes with a hardshell case, along with a vinyl copy of the new record, a Slash 4 sticker, a 4 tin with eight picks inside, and band portrait signed by SMKC.
The Slash 4 Limited Edition Gibson Les Paul is available at Sam Ash Music. The album, meantime, is available on CD, vinyl and as a digital download on Amazon.