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Gibson Les Paul Standard '60s

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Electric Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Standard '60s

Gibson · Les Paul Standard '60s (2019 - Present)

Price: 1.614 EUR – 2.999 EUR

Price history 04.09.2026 19.09.2026
Cheapest seen Most expensive seen

Availability: 9/10 (Common)

The slimmer-necked sibling to the '50s Standard, from the same 2019 Original Collection relaunch: identical mahogany-and-maple, non-weight-relieved body, but a SlimTaper neck profile and a matched pair of Alnico V-magnet '60s Burstbuckers (61R/61T) instead of the '50s model's mismatched Alnico II/V pair. It recreates the slimmer neck Gibson had already moved to by 1960, on the last true single-cutaway Les Pauls before the SG takeover.

Where available? Go to the best price – 1.614 EUR About this instrument

About the Gibson Les Paul Standard '60s

Everything below the neck is shared ground with the '50s Standard from the same Original Collection: a mahogany back, carved maple cap left without weight relief, an ABR-1 Tune-o-matic with aluminium stopbar, and hand-wired electronics with Orange Drop capacitors. Where the '60s diverges is exactly where its name says it should - the neck and the pickups.

The SlimTaper neck is noticeably slimmer front to back than the '50s model's rounded carve, and the fingerboard loses the binding the '50s version keeps, a small but real cosmetic and tactile difference. The pickups are Gibson's '60s Burstbuckers, part numbers 61R (neck) and 61T (bridge), and unlike the '50s pair, both use Alnico V magnets rather than a mismatched Alnico II/V combination - a matched, hotter-magnet pairing that mirrors how Gibson's own magnet charge crept up through the real 1960 and 1961 production run. Tuners also change: Grover Rotomatics here instead of the '50s model's Vintage Deluxe units with Keystone buttons.

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Sound character of the Gibson Les Paul Standard '60s

The matched pair of Alnico V-magnet '60s Burstbuckers (61R neck, 61T bridge) pushes a more direct, slightly hotter character than the '50s model's deliberately mismatched Alnico II/V set - less of the airy, uneven early-PAF variance, more of the punchier, more consistent output that real Gibson pickups gained as magnet charge increased through 1960 and 1961. Both pickups being unpotted and wired with vintage-style braided two-conductor cable keeps some microphonic openness in the sound rather than the tighter, more controlled response of a fully potted modern humbucker.

On a solid, unrelieved mahogany-and-maple body, that translates to the familiar dense, mid-forward Les Paul foundation, but pushed slightly harder into the amp - a guitar that leans toward edge-of-breakup grit a touch more readily than its '50s sibling, particularly from the bridge position.

Warm Full-bodied Midrange-forward Vintage-voiced

What owners of the Gibson Les Paul Standard '60s say

The choice between this and the '50s Standard comes down almost entirely to neck preference, and owners are consistent about that framing rather than debating build quality, which both share equally under the same post-2018 Gibson USA production. Players who found the '50s neck too substantial gravitate here and describe the SlimTaper as the deciding factor in the purchase, not a compromise.

Weight discussions run in parallel with the '50s model rather than favouring one side - reports of guitars "north of 9 lb" appear for both '50s and '60s Standards from the same shipments, so buyers looking specifically for a lighter example are generally advised to check an individual guitar's weight rather than assume the '60s runs lighter simply because the neck is slimmer.

Playability & handling of the Gibson Les Paul Standard '60s

The neck is the whole point of choosing this over the '50s version. Where that model reads as a medium-depth '59-style carve, the SlimTaper here is genuinely thinner in the hand - closer to what Gibson's own production had already moved to by 1960, when the company responded to player demand for a faster neck by shaving the profile down from the substantial '58/'59 shape. Players who find the '50s neck too much of a handful typically land here instead.

Weight tells the same honest story as the '50s Standard: no relief chambers, so it comes down to how dense the individual piece of mahogany is. Documented examples run anywhere from about 8.5 lb to just over 9 lb (roughly 3.9 to 4.3 kg), with no reliable pattern suggesting the '60s consistently comes in lighter than the '50s - both share the same solid-body construction, so the spread is guitar-to-guitar rather than model-to-model.

Recommended accessories & strings for the Gibson Les Paul Standard '60s

String gauge and amp logic follow the same 24.75-inch-scale rules as the '50s Standard - .010-.046 as a starting point, wide padded strap recommended given the unrelieved body. Where this guitar rewards a slightly different amp choice is in the pickups: the matched, hotter Alnico V '60s Burstbucker pair pushes a bit more output and a more direct, forward character than the '50s model's mismatched set, so it tends to sit well with British-voiced EL34 heads that have some gain in reserve, and it can push a clean amp into edge-of-breakup territory a little sooner.

As with any nitrocellulose-finished Gibson, avoid soft PVC-based foam linings in cheap stands or gig bags over the long term, and use the included Gibson hardshell case as the default storage option.

Technical data for the Gibson Les Paul Standard '60s

Type Solid-body electric guitar, single cutaway, glued-in (set) neck
Collection Gibson USA Original Collection, launched 2019 (Nashville, Tennessee)
Body Mahogany back with carved AA figured maple cap; no weight relief
Neck Mahogany, glued in (set neck)
Neck profile SlimTaper - noticeably slimmer than the '50s Standard's rounded profile, echoing the slimmer neck Gibson had moved to by 1960
Fingerboard Unbound Indian rosewood, 12 in. radius (unbound differs from the bound board on the '50s Standard)
Frets / scale 22 medium jumbo frets; 24.75 in. scale
Inlays Trapezoid, acrylic
Nut GraphTech, approx. 1.695 in. (43 mm) width
Pickups Gibson '60s Burstbucker 61R (neck) and 61T (bridge), both on Alnico V magnets, unpotted, vintage-style braided 2-conductor wiring
Controls Two volume and two tone controls (hand-wired, Orange Drop capacitors, audio-taper potentiometers, gold reflector knobs), plus a three-way pickup toggle; passive, no coil split, no battery
Bridge / tailpiece ABR-1 Tune-o-matic bridge with aluminum stopbar tailpiece
Tuners Grover Rotomatic (differs from the Vintage Deluxe/Keystone tuners on the '50s Standard)
Finish Nitrocellulose lacquer
Weight No official factory figure; documented individual examples 2019-2022 range roughly 8.5 to just over 9 lb (approx. 3.9-4.3 kg), similar spread to the '50s Standard
Case Gibson hardshell case included
Historical note The SlimTaper profile and hotter matched pickups reproduce specification changes Gibson made during the real 1960-61 Burst production, shortly before the Les Paul Standard nameplate was replaced by the SG body shape

Price history for the Gibson Les Paul Standard '60s

Cheapest seen: 1.614 EUR  ·  Most expensive seen: 2.999 EUR

6.586 EUR1.596 EUR 04.09.2026 12.09.202616.09.202618.09.2026 19.09.2026
Cheapest seen Most expensive seen

The history of the Gibson Les Paul Standard '60s

The '60s neck profile is not a modern reinterpretation of something vague - it documents a real, dated change Gibson made during the original Burst era. Measured examples show the profile shrinking steadily from the substantial 1958 carve through 1959 and into 1960, when depth figures around 0.80 inches at the first fret and 0.90 at the twelfth became typical, alongside a documented change in neck-joint angle that same year. By the time Gibson replaced the single-cutaway body with the SG shape in 1960/61, the Les Paul Standard nameplate briefly disappeared - the guitars that carried this slimmer neck were the last of the original run before that.

This 2019-and-later '60s Standard is that neck profile paired with hotter, matched-magnet pickups, sitting inside the same Original Collection reboot as its '50s sibling - Gibson's response, after 2018's Chapter 11 reorganisation and change of leadership, to a decade in which the plain "Les Paul Standard" name had drifted away from any specific vintage-accurate spec at all. See the '50s Standard's own research entry for the fuller company-history background shared by both models.

About Gibson as a manufacturer

Shared corporate story with the '50s Standard: Orville Gibson's Kalamazoo beginnings in 1894, the company's 1902 incorporation, and - most relevant to a guitar built in 2019 or later - the May 2018 Chapter 11 filing that eliminated roughly 500 million dollars of debt and handed ownership to lenders including KKR Credit Advisors. New CEO James "JC" Curleigh and chief merchant Cesar Gueikian took over that November and used NAMM 2019 to present the Original and Modern collections this guitar belongs to.

What's worth adding here specifically is what the '60s Standard represents within that reset: not a simplification, but proof the new team was willing to keep genuine complexity where it served players. Rather than offering one vintage-spec Standard, Gibson split it into two neck profiles because the original 1958-1960 production itself wasn't uniform - the guitars changed year to year, and Gibson's post-2018 leadership chose to reflect that history with two distinct, correctly differentiated products instead of picking a single average spec.

Notable players & recordings featuring the Gibson Les Paul Standard '60s

Unlike the '50s Standard, this specific 2019-and-later '60s model has documented current players attached to it directly: Noel Gallagher of Oasis, Elliott Gruenberg of Blessthefall, and John Notto of Dirty Honey are all catalogued using this guitar. That's a genuinely useful distinction from its sibling, where no verified current artist tie could be confirmed for the '50s spec specifically.

The deeper historical connection belongs to the neck profile rather than to this particular production run: the slimmer '60s carve comes from the very last single-cutaway Les Paul Standards built before Gibson switched the whole model to the SG body shape in 1960/61, guitars that mark the tail end of the original three-year Standard production window rather than a separate lineage of famous instruments in their own right.

Related guides

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