“Always a pleasure to host BFG in my office, and even better when he decides to take one of my CEO builds on tour!” Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian has made a stunning custom Explorer – and Billy Gibbons is playing it onstage with ZZ Top

When ZZ Top hit the stage on The Elevation Tour you will see Billy Gibbons sporting all kinds of custom-made electric guitars. But he’s got a new one for this run of dates that is particularly worthy of note – because this one is the latest to have been designed and built by Gibson president and CEO Cesar Gueikian.

This is CEO#11, and it is an off-menu Explorer (the designation CEO#11 is found on the truss rod cover) with a stunning two-piece figured maple top, all finished in a Vintage Cherry Sunburst. The full spec hasn’t been shared for this one yet, but this is the boss man’s guitar, we can well imagine that maple being AAAAA grade. Even from Gueikian’s Instagram post, you can see the three-dimensionality.

If you’ve been following Gueikian’s builds, the most famous of which, the “Ghost Burst” CEO#4 SG that famously ended up in the hands of Kirk Hammett of Metallica at Back To The Beginning, you might recognise some of his signature flourishes.

This custom Explorer, officially on loan to Gibbons, and which will, like its predecessors, be auctioned off at a later date to support the Gibson Gives charitable foundation, bears all the hallmarks of Gueikian’s design proclivities.

Note the Custom livery, the pearl block inlays on what looks like an ebony fingerboard, the multi-ply binding applied to the body’s top and headstock, and the pickups, left uncovered to reveal the “double white” or double cream bobbins.

The only thing missing is the diamond split block inlay on the headstock but there’s no room for that with the Explorer’s six-in-line profile. Other details we particularly like are the slimmed down controls, with just a single volume and tone, plus three-way selector switch serving both pickups. There’s the Tune-O-Matic bridge and that’s all we can tell from this distance.

Gibbons is presently taking the Texas trio’s hot blues-rock shuffle across its home state, and the lineup sees John Douglas sitting in for Frank Beard, who is temporarily out of commission owing to a medical issue. Elwood Francis is on bass guitar. Have no fears about Douglas; he should know the set down pat. A) he’s from Texas, which helps, but B) more importantly, he’s been Beard’s tech since forever.

“Always a pleasure to host BFG in my office, and even better when he decides to take one of my CEO builds on tour!” wrote Gueikian on Instagram. “Stay tuned for more info…should we auction it off for Gibson Gives when the tour is done?”

Gibson Brand Ambassador and Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash signalled his approval in the comments. As did Adam Jones of Tool (that is if a gif of Stone Cold Steve Austin smashing two cans of beer into his face is a sign of approval… But we’d say so, sure).

But something else caught out eye on Gueikian’s page, which has historically been the go-to news source for Gibson teasers of forthcoming attractions.

It was there we first saw the return of the Les Paul Supreme, the Marty McFly Back To The Future ES-345 replicas (the real one is still in the wind), and Mark Morton’s debut Gibson signature guitar, the Mark Morton Les Paul Modern Quilt. And now, has Gueikian revealed the first of his DES series of guitars?

There is a video of him playing a Ghost Burst SG, much like the CEO#4 Hammett played onstage that sold at auction for $76,800 in November 2025.

It has “DES” on the truss rod cover, and looks like a more refined version of the finish. Speaking to MusicRadar ahead of the auction, Gueikian revealed that there would be a Gibson range based on his specs.

“The ones that we’re going to be releasing are going to be based on these guitars that I built, with these features, in the Ghost Burst finish,” he said. “And so I guess it’s not a signature model, but they are built on the basis of the specs of what I did.

“I didn’t want to name them the Cesar line or CEO line. So what we agreed with the team is that we’re going to call them DES, which is what I love on everything, which is ‘Do epic shit.’ So they’re gonna be the DES collection. And then that, one day, if it keeps going and it keeps growing based on other things that I build, hopefully it will outlast me.”

Gueikian says had been a modder all his life but it wasn’t until he took the hot seat as Gibson’s big boss that he decided he wanted to learn how to make one from scratch.

“I had tinkered anchored with them, changed things, opened [them] up, changed parts and things like that,” he said. “But I had never built one.”

Initially, he just wanted to know how to make them. But more importantly it would give him an appreciation of the work done by his team on the shop floor.

“What I really enjoyed was learning from them, and putting myself in a vulnerable situation and having the team in the craftory teach me how to do something,” he said. “That was my favourite thing.”

There was a lot of learning to do. Luckily, he had Gibson’s master luthier Jim DeCola as his coach. Each Friday morning, when time allowed, Gueikian would get hands-on. It wasn’t always so easy.

The first build taught him a hard lesson. He had spent months on this guitar and thought he had one last job to finish it off, only for disaster to strike.

“I happened to be in Nashville then, so with Jim DeCola, I went to a craftory between Christmas and New Year’s. It was just the two of us,” he said. “And I finished buffing it and I was going to assemble it that day. I finished. It took me about three hours to buff the guitar, which probably takes the team members there about 15 minutes for a guitar. It took me three hours. And that was done.

“Then I noticed a little something, a little orange peel from the lacquer on the headstock, and when I put the headstock on the buffing wheel, it threw it out of my hands, and in a fraction of a second, it was on the floor with the broken headstock. That day I learned how to fix a broken headstock.”

You can read more about Cesar Gueikian’s CEO guitar builds here, a conversation in which he talks about how it felt to see Kirk Hammett play the SG he made at the Black Sabbath tribute show. For full dates and details of The Elevation Tour, head over to the official ZZ Top site.

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