Only 100 of these faithful recreations of the Spiders from Mars guitarist's iconic stripped Les Paul Custom are being made worldwide.
If there’s one guitar that perfectly captures the raw, blustering energy of early ’70s glam rock, it’s Mick Ronson’s battered 1968 Les Paul Custom — and Gibson Custom has just announced an ultra-limited recreation.
Catch up on all the latest news here.
The Mick Ronson 1968 Les Paul Custom Collector’s Edition is a handcrafted tribute to the Hull-born guitarist whose contributions to rock music remain criminally underappreciated. Best known as David Bowie’s right-hand man through The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, and Hunky Dory, Ronson was also a songwriter, arranger, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who helped shape some of the most enduring records of the decade. His work includes Lou Reed’s Transformer, on which he arranged the strings and performed the piano on “Perfect Day”.
Central to his sound was this very guitar. Ronson famously stripped the original Ebony finish from his ’68 Les Paul Custom, giving it that raw, road-worn look that became inseparable from his image. Paired with a parked wah, fuzz, and echo, it was an instrument that sounded exactly like it looked — bold, expressive, and a little dangerous.
Gibson Custom has gone to considerable lengths to honour that. Built by the luthiers at the Murphy Lab in Nashville, each guitar features a mahogany body with plain maple cap, a mahogany neck carved to an Authentic ’68 Medium C profile, and an ebony fretboard with mother-of-pearl block inlays. The unpotted, aged ’68 Custom humbuckers with Alnico 2 magnets deliver the aggressive tone Ronson was known for, while CTS 500k pots and Black Beauty capacitors keep the electronics vintage-accurate. Even the mismatched volume and tone knobs have been faithfully reproduced — a small detail, but exactly the kind of thing that matters.
Each of the 100 guitars ships in a Custom case with a replica strap and a Certificate of Authenticity booklet, both bearing a reproduction of Ronson’s signature.
As Suzi Ronson put it, “I think Mick would be totally astonished that he’s still being talked about in such a positive way.”
