Midway through 1957, Gibson gave the Les Paul Custom a major upgrade, adding a third pickup and, more important, replacing the single-coil pickups with the new double-coil “humbuckers”. The gold-plated metal pickup covers added a new dimension of elegance to the Custom’s look, and the powerful pickups opened up a new world of sound for guitarists.

It was not the perfect guitar, however. For most players, three pickups was overkill, and the Custom’s switching system limited the choices of pickup combinations to neck pickup alone, middle and bridge pickups together, or bridge pcikup alone, making it actually less versatile than a two-pickup Gibson.

Consequently, the Custom wasn’t as popular as the Standard, but it still held a considerable level of status as Gibson’s top solidbody.

Despite it’s shortcomings, the Custom worked quite well for such players as Robert Fripp and 1970s rocker Peter Frampton, who ended up with a signature model based on his Les Paul Custom.