Mark Morton’s signature Les Paul was years in the making, and then when it finally arrived it sold out in a flash, all 350 units gone. The Gibson R&D team and the Lamb Of God guitarist had cooked up a winner.
They had had also played the long game. As far as marketing campaigns go – accidental or otherwise – this one went all the way back to 2022, when Morton, hitherto a Jackson artist, was first announced as joining Gibson, and everyone wondered what kind of guitar they would develop together.
It was not long before Morton was showing up for shows with a mystery Les Paul like nothing from the Gibson catalogue. In September 2023, Gibson CEO Cesar Gueikian gave us a closer look at this guitar, sharing a video on his Instagram account playing a Les Paul with a similar translucent grey finish and quilted maple top to Morton’s. It had black hardware, uncovered humbuckers – and it sounded gnarly.
Months went by with no release but this unidentified electric guitar would regularly turn up onstage with Morton and on social media. It was officially unveiled in February as the Mark Morton Les Paul Modern Quilt (that finish was satin Translucent Ebony Burst), but if you are a Lamb Of God fan, chances are you had probably already heard it when the Richmond, VA metal stalwarts dropped Parasocial Christ on YouTube, the first track from their forthcoming album, Into Oblivion.
Joining MusicRadar from his home, Morton reveals it’s all over the new record.
“And the prototypes!” he adds, relieved that he can actually talk about this guitar after years of putting it through its paces on the road, the Eddie Van Halen way. “There are three prototypes… those are the ones you’ve been seeing me playing and touring with.”
Morton has all kinds of Les Pauls back home. He could have asked for a reproduction of his heavily modded 1975 Les Paul Deluxe. A double for that could be useful right now.
“That guitar, it’s a beater, man! It’s a Deluxe that was routed out [for full-sized humbuckers]. It’s a pancake body,” he says. “That one’s long been retired.”
The Deluxe was one of his old favourites. Nonetheless, Morton wanted something fresh for his Gibson debut. If the Les Paul Modern was ultimately the platform that he gravitated towards, the first prototypes were quite different, with none of the Ultra Weight Relief patterns that take so much of the bulk out of the Les Paul Modern’s body. Initially, Morton’s thinking skewed more vintage.
“That was in the starting point I wanted to be at, because my thinking originally was that I have some older Les Pauls, and I’ve had a number of pretty classic Les Pauls over the years, and I’m used to them being on the weightier side,” says Morton. “Depending on which era, too, as you well know, once you get you get into the ‘70s, they get really heavy – ‘70s and ‘80s. But I wanted to start out without it being weight relieved.”