1958 Gibson Les Paul Custom

Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson of Well Strung Guitars and the Songbirds vintage guitar museum retraces the history of the Les Paul Custom as we take a close look at this stunning 1958 Black Beauty…

- Rod Brakes

David Davidson is no stranger to rare guitars. As the owner of Well Strung Guitars (formerly We Buy Guitars) in Plainview, New York, and COO and curator of the Songbirds vintage guitar museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee, he’s sourced vintage instruments for players and collectors for well over 40 years. His expert eye remains focused on rarities from the scarce to the absolutely unique, yet to this day he retains a soft spot for those all time classics that piqued his interest in the beginning.

“It was the Les Paul Custom that did it for me,” begins David. “I remember watching Bill Haley & His Comets’ Rock Around The Clock and the guitar player, Franny Beecher, was playing a Les Paul Custom. I thought that was just about the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I said to myself, ‘Wow! That is just beautiful.’ In that black and white film, it just bounced off the screen.

“I’ve opened up well over 10,000 guitars in my life,” David continues. “It’s a lot of fun and I still learn something new every day. You never stop learning. You’ve got to learn, and as an old hand, I love helping and teaching people about guitars. That’s what the [Songbirds] museum was all about in the first place. The educational aspect of guitars is very important to me and, at this stage in my career, it’s about teaching the next generation before all this stuff turns into firewood!”

Preserving vintage guitars themselves is as much to do with preserving our knowledge of them, and, in David’s case, his insight into what went on behind the veil at Gibson has always been rooted in a fascination with engineering.