Slash is cryptically teasing something on his Instagram, but a comment from Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian tells us everything we need to know.
In the image, Slash’s number one Gibson Les Paul, which was built by esteemed luthier Kris Derrig (and not Gibson), is seen on the bench ready for 3D scanning, while Gueikian crops up in the comments saying. “Epic! Let’s go…”
That all but confirms that Slash’s iconic electric guitar is set for a reissue – and quite possibly a Murphy Lab replica at that.
“That Derrig ’59 literally came in the eleventh hour when we were doing the Appetite record,” Slash once told Guitar World. “We’d just finished the basic tracks, and the guitars that I had just didn’t sound right. I was thinking, ‘What the fuck am I gonna do?’
“The Guns N’ Roses manager at the time, Alan Niven, brought this Les Paul to the studio for me, just as I was about to do all my guitar overdubs. It sounded perfect, man... like a gift from on high.”
“I took the Derrig on the road for all of 1987 into 1988,” he added. “In that short span of time, I beat the shit out of that guitar!”
That, then, makes the prospect of a Murphy Lab recreation – which copies it like-for-like, scratches, perfect imperfections and all – even more exciting. Although, as some fans have speculated, the guitar might end up with a price tag closer to the $20k mark than the circa $2k Slash is believed to have paid for it in ’87.
There have been Derrig Les Paul reissues from Gibson in the past, with a Custom Shop AFD model launched in 2016, but none that meticulously replicate every nook and cranny of Slash’s personal guitar.
The interesting thing about Derrig’s builds was that, at the time, Gibson was still a long way off buying into the reissue trend, and Slash’s wielding of the guitar was instrumental in turning the tide of the industry.
After those early tours, where it was more than beaten into submission, Slash retired it from the road, keeping it as a studio-only guitar. At the same time, he forged a relationship with Gibson and started playing legit Les Pauls in its stead.
“I never met Kris,” Slash told Gibson TV last year. “He passed away prior to me getting the guitar. But I have three of his guitars, and they're really well made and technically accurate, to the point that he had the details of a ’59 Gibson noted down by the millimeter.
“And he also made a point of getting original PAF [humbuckers] and getting them in there. He had a real attention to detail.”
There’s no word whether this project is right at the start, or nearing completion, and Gibson didn’t mention it when talking Guitar World through its grand plans for 2026 at NAMM. So patience might be key. But it's been 10 years since the last reissue, and given that it is believed to have been built in 1986, the time is now for an anniversary model.
Is one of the most famous ‘knockoff’ guitars in rock history about to get the reissue it deserves? Let's hope so.
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