“This guitar was made for me in 2008. At the time a friend of mine was working at Gibson and we got fairly advanced in developing a Billy Duffy Signature Les Paul.
I was really pushing Gibson to make it a wood fronted guitar like I was playing at the time and you can see all the pictures from that era and to this day are with my Wood Fronted Les Paul Customs. Unfortunately, Gibson didn’t want to do that because they were planning on doing a Mick Ronson Tribute Guitar, like the one that had inspired my love for them. They felt that it would clash if I did a wood fronted one too but I disagreed because I thought the Mick Ronson one was going to be an absolute replica of his guitar. That would have been a very expensive guitar getting it down to every single detail whereas mine would have been more of a mid-price Signature model that wasn’t meant to look like any one specific guitar.
So we disagreed and they came up with this Black one as a prototype, and they’d based it on the one that featured on the front cover of Sonic Temple, which wasn’t even mine but actually belonged to Steve Jones of the Pistols. That’s why this is a black one even though for the whole Sonic Temple tour and any time since 1989 I’ve only had my wood fronted ones.
Anyway this one has all the elements that I like; the nickel hardware, the slim neck profile, the Grover tuners and all the knobs on the front are my choice. They also decided to do a scratch plate with a little cutout Iron Cross which was kind of sweet but 99.9% of the time I don’t use scratch plates on my guitars. The only time you’ll ever see me playing a guitar with one on is if I’ve borrowed a guitar for a jam.
So unfortunately the project for the Signature guitar fizzled out at the prototype which is this actual guitar. It is a great guitar and I use it from time to time at home. As far as I’m aware they never actually made the Mick Ronson model either.”
Billy Duffy – January 2013
Prototype Iron Cros Scratch Plate