We have among us one of the strangest and most amazing Gibson Historic Reissues ever: a one-piece flametop R9! As many of you know, it’s always a two-piece top, and that’s how it’s supposed to be in order to be historically correct. So why the one-piece flametop?

We wrote a long story on this some time ago, but unfortunately it was in Spanish, so we’ll try to mention the main aspects once again:

Apparently from 2003 to 2007 all Gibson Emerald Dealers were awarded one of these guitars each year. The Emerald status is given to the best dealers in the world (usually 4-6 dealers worldwide).

But in 2007 the last batch was built, and since then no more have been made. We have done a great deal of research, but Gibson has no clue about how many of these one-piece top R9’s have been made exactly, though they said that “probably around 25 ever, but maybe much less”. Yeah, not too accurate, but you get the idea of how rare this is... around 25 ever!

The top is obviously the big feature of this guitar. We’d never actually seen one, and a lot of our collector friends didn’t even know these existed! It is a very hypnotic guitar (you keep searching for the bookmatch joint)!

We’ve tried a good number of R9’s but this one, without any doubt, is surely one of the most amazing ones. Infinite sustain and unbeatable tone. As an interesting detail, there is a great resonance going on in the neck when you play, which reminds us of Steve Vai’s explanation of one of his JEM’s, where he points out that this effect usually happens when the neck and the body’s wood frequency is identical (which is a huge coincidence, making a guitar even more desirable). We can’t assure that this is happening here fully (we don’t know how to measure this!), but people notice the great resonance right away.

The guitar is in mint condition, completely stock, and includes COA, Lifton case, tags and case candy.

Well be sorry to watch this one go, since we know how hard and nearly impossible these are to find. 


Details

Model: Gibson Les Paul 1959 Gloss Reissue
Color: Bourbonburst
Year: 2004
Top wood: Carved one-piece flamed maple top
Back wood: solid mahogany
Binding: single-ply cream on top
Neck construction: 1-piece mahogany body w/long neck tenon
Fingerboard wood: 22 fret rosewood
Inlays: vintage trapezoid
Binding: single-ply cream
Profile: 1959 rounded
Scale length/nut width: 24 ¾ ‘’, 1 11/16 “
Pickups: Burstbucker 1 (R) and 2 (T)
Controls: 2 volume, 2 tone, 3-way switch
Hardware color: nickel
Bridge/tailpiece: ABR-1/aluminum stopbar