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Products Electric Guitars Les Paul Gibson Custom
Pickups
Pickups Model
The Collector's Choice™ #1 1959 Les Paul Standard is equipped with a pair of Gibson's popular BurstBucker humbucking pickups, a BurstBucker 2 in the neck position and a slightly hotter BurstBucker 3 in the bridge position, for a hotter performance from the "lead" position and the perfect output balance between the two pickup selections. Gibson's BurstBuckers are widely regarded as the most accurate reproductions of original PAF humbuckers available today, and even go so far as to reproduce some of the inconsistencies that are credited with contributing a certain magic to original Gibson humbuckers from 1957-'62.

BurstBuckers are made with unpolished Alnico II magnets and unpotted coils that are wound to slightly different numbers of turns, like the originals. While using two slightly mismatched coils depletes a humbucking pickup's noise-canceling abilities slightly, it also gives the pickup a little more edge—a sound that you could even say comes a little closer to single-coil bite—than can be achieved with perfectly balanced coils. Furthermore, the position and wiring of the neck pickup are reversed to create the famous reverse-phase Gary Moore tone in the middle switch position (both pickups on). Pickups
Magnet Material
Gibson's BurstBuckers use unpolished Alnico II bar magnets, just like many of the most prized original PAF humbuckers. Magnet Material Tonal Characteristics
The BurstBucker 2 is a standard-wind humbucker with an output at the middle of the PAF range. It offers added clarity mixed with vowel-like tone in the neck position, with the bonus of good volume balance when paired with a BurstBucker 3 in the bridge position. The "3" has a slightly hotter output in the range of some of the more over-wound PAFs of the era, for more grind and sustain from the bridge position. Between them, the accurately translate all the warmth, depth, and clarity of the Collector's Choice™ #1 1959 Les Paul Standard's woods into a tone that is rich yet crisp and can range from an aggressive wail to a mellow moan, all at the flick of a switch and the turn of a knob… just like a great original '59 'Burst.
Electronics
Volume Controls
Just like the original, the Collector's Choice™ #1 1959 Les Paul Standard uses an independent Volume control for each pickup, which consists of a quality CTS 500k audio-taper potentiometer for a smooth, natural volume roll-off. Volume Controls Tone Controls
Individual CTS 500k audio-taper potentiometers with accurate .022mF "bumble bee" tone capacitors provide independent tone controls for each pickup. Tone Controls
Toggle Switch
The Collector's Choice™ #1 1959 Les Paul Standard features the classic three-way Switchcraft toggle switch with cream plastic tip. In the down position this selects the bridge pickup, in the up position the neck pickup, and in the middle it selects both pickups together for the famous out-of-phase Gary Moore tone. Toggle Switch Output Jack
The guitar features a 1⁄4" output jack made by Switchcraft, for years of trouble-free service. Output Jacks