“This is serial number 003. It’s in Royal Crimson and my other one is in Viceroy Brown - that’s serial number 001 of the actual production run that anyone can buy.

“It’s based on the Axcess model with a thinner body but we went with a very heavy [non chambered] mahogany so it still has weight and resonance. There’s a lot [of electronics] in the guitar so it was important to have a good solid block as a starting point.

“We have coil taps on the pickups, a Floyd Rose and the piezo is the second jack - the Life-O-Sound - that we run independently or you can mix both magnetic pickups and the piezo through the main output.

“We’ve switched out the tone pot for a piezo volume pot to give control there, and then the other tone control becomes a universal tone pot.

“Gibson did a nice job with the neck carve at the back because it’s always been a little difficult to get up high [on Les Pauls]. We really wanted to come up with a good utility guitar on a solid platform like the Les Paul. Gibson was great, and we went through a whole lot of different weight models and pickups.”