Gibson has honoured one of its all-time greats with the Mary Ford Les Paul Standard, a truly magnificent Goldtop based on her original 1958 custom order.
A Goldtop is a wonderful thing, one of the most aesthetically pleasing electric guitars ever to leave Gibson’s – or anyone else’s – factory. But this is really something.
Ford knew what she liked in a guitar. She was a big proponent of the ES-295 and asked Gibson to install a floral pickguard from the hollowbody on her new Goldtop. There was a matching floral armrest, too. Comfort, meet style. Style, meet comfort...
Another rare detail was the Cherry stain on the back of the guitar. You didn’t see that on a Goldtop in 1958. You don’t see that on a Goldtop in 2024, besides this new Ford signature guitar.
Ford’s signature Les Paul is accompanied by a mini-documentary on the GibsonTV YouTube channel, celebrating her accomplishments in music, and there were many.
Born Iris Colleen Summers, on 7 July 1924, Ford came from a musical family and started out performing in SoCal churches. By 1943 she was performing in the Sunshine Girls, the singing cowboy Jimmy Wakely’s backing group.
But it was with Les Paul, her collaborator and future husband, that Ford would really make it. Changing her name to Mary Ford, marrying Paul that same year, the pair shifted a lot of records. Gibson says they sold over six million records in 1951 alone – a big year for guitar.
With Les Paul’s groundbreaking reel-to-reel studio techniques and Ford’s vocals they were unstoppable, amassing a string of Top 10 hits. Les Paul’s collaboration with Gibson was about to come to fruition, too, which leads us to this instrument.
The Mary Ford Les Paul Standard is not a Murphy Lab run. It is not a Custom Shop model. This is off-the-line from Gibson USA in Nashville, and as such it is a high-end electric guitar that’s priced for working pros.
In a sense it is quite an anachronistic build. It’s based off a ’58 but the neck has a SlimTaper profile that was introduced in 1960. Some will find this speedier than the clubbier ‘50s profiles.
The body is solid mahogany capped with maple. The neck is mahogany, too, glued to the body. Scale length is 24.75”. The Indian rosewood fingerboard has a 12” radius. There is an ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge and a set of vintage deluxe tuners with Keystone buttons on the headstock.
There are a pair of Burstbuckers and they are controlled by the usual three-way toggle switch and dual-volume and dual-tone controls – the gold Top Hat knobs complement that sweet Goldtop finish nicely, and the whole thing ships in a hardshell guitar case.
You can check out Epiphone signature artist Emily Wolfe demo the guitar with a cover of Ford’s Sitting On Top Of The World.
Priced £2,599/$2,999, the Mary Ford Les Paul Standard is available now. See Gibson for more details.
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