Gibson RD Custom

Guitars

I’ve always been a fan of the Gibson RD. It’s like the love child of the more metal-oriented Explorers and the mellower Firebirds. While it wasn’t as popular when it was initially released back in 1977 the fanbase has definitely grown over the years (like Fluff of Riffs, Beards & Gear on Youtube). There’s been some frustrations seeing Gibson (or Epiphone, for that matter) not showing this model more love, or when they did they changed a lot of it, like returning to the normal, shorter Gibson scale that the original didn’t have.

Well, good news! Now you can get a Gibson RD Custom, complete with the Fender inspired 25.5″ scale length just as the gods intended (actually it’s the custom shop’s first 25.5″ scale guitar). It’s only available in Ebony as of now, and there’s no fancy active Moog circuitry like the RD Artist had back in the day, but does anyone really miss that? But wow.. It’s a looker, for sure. Could an Epiphone version be in the cards somewhere down the line?

Spec-wise you get:

Mahogany body with multi-ply top binding
Long neck tenon, 25.5″ scale medium C profiled mahogany neck with a bound ebony fretboard
22 medium jumbo frets
Custom cosmetics (mother of pearl block inlays and Custom split diamond on the headstock)
Gold hardware
Gibson 490R + 498T pickups, CTS pots, hand-wired harness
Custom Shop hardshell case