Description

Bonamassa’s signature Epiphone Joe Bonamassa Les Paul Standard Pelham Blue was designed in close cooperation with Joe and captures all his favorite design details from his collection of vintage 50s Les Pauls including a traditional 1959 neck profile and the “Patent Applied For” sound brought back to life with Gibson BurstBuckerTM pickups. The Epiphone Joe Bonamassa Les Paul Standard Pelham Blue sets a new standard for affordable performance.

Bonamassa’s Les Paul Goes Blue:
The iconic Les Paul profile is made with a solid Mahogany body with a carved Hard Maple Cap, a vital ingredient to the Les Paul’s unique combination of warmth and bite. The Mahogany neck has the Les Paul standard 24.75” scale with a 12” radius, a ‘59 Shape and a Rounded D-Profile that is glued in with a deep-set neck joint using premium TiteBond™ glue. The Rounded ‘D’ Profile, often referred to as “the baseball bat,” feels beefy yet comfortable in your hands while adding warmth and sustain with its greater mass. Extending well into the neck pickup cavity, the long-neck tenon provides additional strength and stability to the neck and offers more wood-to-wood contact between the neck and body resulting in a sweeter tone and longer sustain.

Gibson BurstBucker™ Pickups:
For his signature Les Paul Standard Signature model in Pelham Blue, Joe Bonamassa personally chose Gibson’s famed BurstBucker™ pickups. BurstBuckers™ replicate the sound of Gibson’s original “Patent Applied For” pickups – the ultra rare hand-wound pickups that gave the original ’59 Les Paul Standard its legendary sound and made it a favorite of blues fans like Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, and Jimmy Page. BurstBuckers™ have unpolished magnets and non-potted coils like the originals. The myriad of variations in the output and tone of original “Patent Applied For” pickups came from inconsistencies in winding the bobbins, a result of the lack of automatic shutoffs on Gibson’s winding machines in the late 1950s. Seth Lover, who invented the humbucker, recalled that original “Patent Applied For” pickups were wound “until they were full.” When two coils in a pickup have a different number of turns, that variation puts a little “edge” or “bite” on the classic humbucker sound. Gibson BurstBuckers™ bring that elusive and sought after tone back to life. The neck pickup on the Joe Bonamassa Pelham Blue Les Paul Standard is a Burstbucker-2 and is wound in the range of Gibson’s ’57 Classic. The bridge pickup is a Burstbucker-3 and is slightly over-wound with a hotter output for leads.

In keeping with Joe’s original, the Ltd. Ed. Pelham Blue features a mismatched set of bridge/neck pickup knobs (just like Joe’s), Epiphone’s patent-applied-for LockTone™ Tune-o-matic and StopBar tailpiece, vintage style Nickel hardware, and premium 18:1 ratio GroverTM tuners. And , the Ltd. Pelham Blue has an Epiphone non-rotating ¼” output jack and Epiphone StrapLocks.
Each new Limited Edition Joe Bonamassa Les Paul Pelham Blue Outfit comes with a replica Lifton-style hardshell case and a Certificate of Authenticity personally hand signed by Joe Bonamassa. Combined with Epiphone’s Limited Lifetime Warranty backed by 24/7/365 Customer Service, it’s a one-of-a-kind package and a fitting tribute to an extraordinary musician.

Summary:
The Ltd. Ed. Epiphone Joe Bonamassa Les Paul Standard Outfit in Pelham Blue sets a new standard for affordable performance. Designed with Joe Bonamassa, it features Gibson BurstBuckerTM pickups, a “Deep-Set” Rounded D-profile 1959 neck, and a Lifton-style hardshell case with hand-signed Certificate of Authenticity.

JOE BONAMASSA
Joe Bonamassa (Joseph Leonard) is an American blues rock guitarist, singer and songwriter born in New Hartford, New York. When he was only 12 years old, Bonamassa opened for B.B. King. In the last 13 years Bonamassa has put out 15 solo albums through his independent record label J&R Adventures, of which 11 have reached number 1 on the Billboard Blues charts. Bonamassa has played alongside such artists as Stephen Stills, Eric Clapton, Blondie Chaplin, Foreigner, Buddy Guy, Steve Winwood, Warren Haynes, and Derek Trucks among others. His career highlights include performances at the Royal Albert Hall and a Grammy Award nomination in 2013. In addition to his music career, Joe Bonamassa runs a nonprofit organization called the Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation. The mission is to further music education by funding scholarships and providing music education resources to schools in need.

ABOUT EPIPHONE:
Epiphone is one of American’s oldest and most revered instrument makers. Since 1873, Epiphone has made instruments for every style of popular music and celebrated its 140th anniversary in 2013. The story of Epiphone begins in the mountains of Greece and threads its way to Turkey, across the Atlantic to the immigrant gateway of Ellis Island, and into the nightclubs, recording studios, and coast-to-coast radio broadcasts of Manhattan in the 1920s and 30s. www.epiphone.com