Another huge auction went down in Beverly Hills, California, and by the end of it some legendary acoustic and electric guitars found new homes.
This was another blockbuster Music Icons event from Julien’s Auctions. Eddie Van Halen’s Charvel Art Series Strat-style guitar went for $112,500. The 1956 Martin D-18 acoustic guitar that Johnny Cash played on his Grand Ole Opry debut sold for $192,000. But the star of the show was the 1975 Les Paul Custom that the late Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley played at the B Budokan, which sold for $512,000.
For a generation of Kiss fans, this could be the Ace Frehley guitar. The fact that he had many Les Pauls – some notably modded to fire rockets, others fitted with onboard smoke machines – might mean everyone has their own idea of what the ultimate Ace guitar is but if you were in Tokyo in 1977 for any one of Kiss’ four epic shows at the Budokan then this Cherry Sunburst model, complete with three double-white humbuckers, would be the one.
It doesn’t need the pyrotechnics; it’s already 100 per cent smokeshow, with that sunburst lacquer, gold hardware and all the inlays and Custom livery that comes as standard.
Frehley used it extensively throughout the late ‘70s. Once the Rock and Roll Over Tour of ’76 was wound up, Kiss entered Record Plant in New York City to track Love Gun with the help of producer Eddie Kramer, and this guitar was there.
So, too, were the after effects of Frehley’s onstage mishap the previous year, when, on December 12 1976, a grounding issue electrocuted him – just as he was standing on a wall of Marshall amps.
“I should have been dead that night,” Frehley told MusicRadar in 2025. “The fact that I got electrocuted and didn’t fall forward was a godsend. There must have been angels pushing me back. I had a heavy Les Paul around my neck, and my body should have fallen forward – but I didn’t. If I fell forward, I would have broken my f**king neck. But I fell back, and the road crew dragged me back off of the staircase. I had no feeling in my hands for five to 10 minutes.”
But he lived to tell the tale. He finished the show, too, and the feeling would return to his hands. Frehley he got the idea for Shock Me from the incident, which became the first Kiss track that he sang lead vocals on.
The Les Paul Custom would soon be supplanted as the '80s dawned. Other guitars entered the fray. Frehley made some modifications, installing a Washburn Wonderbar vibrato. But the guitar had been restored to its original spec for the auction.
Gibson has made a number of Ace Frehley signature guitars based on this Les Paul Custom, giving it the VOS treament in 2011, complete with the 'pancake body' and rash on the top. While it has always been billed as a 1974 model, Julien's says there is a date stamp visible via the neck pickup routing placing its build at August 13, 1975.
