Among the more unique and unusual guitars that we have offered for sale here at Folkway Music is this 1999 Gibson Les Paul Pickup Demo Model. It’s an extremely rare, non-production guitar that was never intended for public sale.

Information on these Les Paul Pickup Demo guitars is scarce; but, from what we can gather, Gibson sent these guitars to several of their top dealers in 1999 and 2000. These guitars were intended to serve as vessels for the demonstration of several of the company's pickup sets, including the '57 Classic, ’57 plus, 496R/498T, 490R/500T, Tommy Iommi, and a humbucker-sized P90. These guitars were built in extremely limited numbers between 1999 and 2000, with few examples ever having hit the market for resale as far as we can determine. And if you’re interested in sampling other pickups in the guitar, it’s quite simple to remove the factory-installed humbuckers and wire in whatever pickups you want, insofar that they are housed in standard humbucker mounts.

The design of the instrument is rather clever. Two pickup-sized areas were CNC-routed to accept wooden blocks with pickups mounted to them. The pickups themselves are wired to the same connectors used on 9 volt batteries and simply snap into place when pushed into the back of the guitar. This design allows for on-the-spot pickup swapping with no soldering required. You can hold a chord and A/B pickups in real-time. There’s simply no better way to hear the differences between pickups.

While some of the Les Paul Pickup Demo guitars we’ve discovered seem to have been sent out looking rather crude with simple appointments and no finish, this Les Paul Standard is unique in that it boasts a beautiful Sunburst finish over an incredibly figured top.

The guitar is otherwise a Les Paul Standard with a serial number that dates to 1999. The guitar specs are typical of the mid-late 1990s Les Paul Standard, with one-piece mahogany body, maple cap with cream top binding. The neck is mahogany with a rosewood fretboard and pearloid fret markers, Grover tuners, and pearl logo. The neck has a round carve, 1-11/16” nut and .810” depth at the 1st fret. The guitar is in excellent, largely unplayed condition, except for a ½” hole the factory drilled into the side of the cutaway to denote this as a not-for-sale unit (in case that wasn’t already obvious). 9lbs 15oz.

Included in the sale are the 6 sets of pickups mentioned above, a laptop bag to store them in, the guitar, and its original hardshell case.