The 1952 Gibson Les Paul was originally made with a mahogany body, a mahogany neck with a rosewood fretboard, two P-90 single coil pickups, and a one-piece, 'trapeze'-style bridge/tailpiece with strings fitted under (instead of over) a steel stop-bar,[note 1] and available only with a gold-finished top, giving rise to the moniker "Gold-Top".

The "Split Diamond" inlay on the headstock was taken from the carved archtop Super 400,[2] which was the top of the Gibson line.

In mid-1957, Gibson began to equip the Les Paul Custom with the new PAF (Patent Applied For) pickup designed by Seth Lover.

It is this configuration that remained until the guitar was discontinued in 1960, replaced by the new double cutaway body Les Paul model.

In 1975, Gibson began making a number of Customs with maple fingerboards,[7] instead of the typical ebony, which was discontinued by the early 1980s.

From 1979 to 1982 or 1983, Gibson made a limited edition of 75 Les Paul Customs worldwide in the Silverburst color with 2 "Tim Shaw Burstbuckers".

By the end of the 1980s, the Les Paul Custom specifications feature a mahogany neck with ebony fingerboard, Standard Gibson frets (as opposed to wide, flatter frets), and a smaller headstock, a mahogany body with a maple top, gold hardware, two humbucking pickups, and a Nashville bridge.

[citation needed] Les Paul Custom guitars from 2000 to 2003 were specially made to the requirements of the client, as regards fretboard, neck and body woods, and type of hardware, with some models allowing for requests for specific numbers of turns in the pickups' coils, as well.