My friend Scott (last name withheld, I don't know if his wife is aware he's shopping for a guitar) is shopping for a Gibson L-5, and right about the time he told me that, TrueTone Music in Santa Monica got in this new Custom Shop L-5 that they'd ordered over a year ago. So they invited me to try it out. And to save Scott the drive, I did a video demo of it for him.

The guitar is really a work of art. The finish is perfect, the setup is excellent, it doesn't even go out of tune. It's so easy to coax a beautiful tone out of it, and even the bridge position sounds authoritatively twangy, which surprised me (not that I've played too many all-solid-wood, 2-pickup guitars, so maybe that's not all too uncommon).

I played it straight into a vintage Fender Pro Reverb amp they had in the demo room, all the EQ controls set at 5, and the Master volume dropped down to about 7 so I could push the preamp a little but not be drowned in feedback.

A little pricey? At $11K, yeah, but it's a Custom Shop Gibson, and you get what you pay for.