Les Paul Standard Smoker
Kansas City, Missouri July 26, 1976
Photo by Richard Gailbraith
When it became clear that KISS was a bona fide success, the original stage show was upgraded slightly starting in late 1975. But that was just preamble to the re-imagining of the KISS show that was under way. When the band’s image went from “just” outlandish to actual rock superheroes, the effects of the show also had to be more spectacular. Thus, Ace got a new Tobacco Sunburst Les Paul that would be his dedicated Smoker. This obviously made sense from a longevity standpoint. For the better part of eight months Ace had been putting smoke bombs in his favorite guitar and apart from the fact that it wasn’t a very good solution—as we've seen, smoke mainly trickled out from the control cavity—it wreaked havoc on the pots.
First things first, this new Smoker may have been a Les Paul Standard with full-size humbuckers, rather than a Les Paul Deluxe that was re-routed. The Standard wasn’t part of the official Gibson “lineup” from 1969-1977, but it had been brought back as a special order starting in 1972. (There were actually a lot of Standards produced 1971-1974, but they were all 1958 reissues with P90 pickups and a simple wraparound bridge.) Now, Norlin produced a literal ton of Les Paul Deluxe 1970-1975—roughly 30,000 of them based on estimates I've seen—so it's not entirely out of the question that it was a Deluxe. But the fact that Ace and Paul had gotten custom-made Les Paul Customs in 1975, and the fact that the truss rod cover of this new Smoker actually said Standard, means that we have to at least entertain the possibility that this was a Standard.
As far as the look goes, this new dedicated Smoker was made to be a copy-paste of the 1973 Deluxe but thankfully there are a number of details that allow us to tell them apart. Most obvious is to look at the headstock. By the summer of 1976 the 1973 Deluxe had chrome tulip style Grover Rotomatic tuners, the star decal under the Gibson logo, and an unmarked truss rod cover. The new dedicated Smoker had Kluson double-ring tuners and, as noted above, the truss rod cover that read Standard.
There was also a distinct difference in the output jack. The new dedicated Smoker had a fake neck pickup that was just a front for a small halogen bulb. In order drive that bulb the Smoker had an XLR cable that provided phantom power (much like goose neck mixing desk lights). So, any time you see two cables in a Tobacco Sunburst Les Paul during the Spirit of ’76 Tour, that’s the Smoker. (The two cables—1/4” phono out and XLR in—were run through a cable sleeve to keep things a little neater.)
Lastly, that fake neck pickup was really easy to spot after a while. It was just a hinged humbucker-like plastic plate that Ace would tap with his pick so that it swung aside into the guitar. (The hinge was on the neck side of the cavity.) This exposed the plate to the halogen bulb which got pretty hot so after a few shows it took on a decidedly greyish hue, and the coils were also slightly "sunken" compared to a regular humbucker. The Smoker neck “pickup” also had a complete pickup ring. If you recall, the 1973 Deluxe had a pickup ring that had been cut around the neck, but on the Smoker you can see the complete pickup ring in select photos.
There doesn't seem to have been any controls in the Smoker that allowed Ace to trigger the bulb and the smoke—at least I have never been able to spot him doing anything like pushing a knob or anything like that—so it seems likely that the actual process was handled by a roadie who would activate the phantom power which turned on the bulb and triggered the smoke bomb.
For reasons unknown Ace had the tuners changed on both his 1973 Deluxe and the Smoker after July 28. The 1973 Deluxe got Grover Rotomatic “banjo style” knobs and the Smoker got chrome tulip style tuners. The trussrod cover of the Smoker was also changed to an unmarked one.
Lastly, because it would be akin to a service error not to include it, we end the Spirit of '76 section with this backstage photo that show both the 1973 Deluxe and the Standard Smoker sid by side. Here the "singed" look of the Smoker's fake neck pickup coils are very evident.
When the band returned to the stage in support of Rock and Roll Over the Smoker had gotten a minor makeover. The XLR phantom power input had been removed, and the effect was now powered by D-cell batteries instead. This required hollowing out the majority of the body on the back but, unfortunately, I have no photos that show how they covered this. (The hollowing out was massive, and we learned this when the Smoker ended up in collectors' hands in the early 90s.) In true “five rows out” fashion the hole where the XLR input had been was left open, and it is visible in a number of photos from this period.
The difference in power source didn't affect the impact of the bulb or the smoke bomb, Ace's solo spot was just as dramatic as it had been during the previous tour.
But that hole left from the XLR input evidently bothered someone in the KISS camp, probably a roadie. At the very start of 1977 there was an attempt to cover it up and thanks to that period being ridiculously well-documented, we can trace this development. It's not quite day-by-day, but it's pretty close. On January 6 it was business as usual, Richard Gailbraith caught the hole in the Smoker when the band visited the Assembly Center. The very next day, at the University of Oklahoma, the hole had been covered by a small strip of black tape. Unfortunately Ace's solo spot isn't well-represented for the next handful of days, but when they roll into Chicago later in the month the hole is once again open.
But the idea was apparently still deemed a good one and just a few days later, at Cobo Arena, the Smoker appeared with a slightly wider piece of black tape. We don't know quite how long this second try lasted— unfortunately Terrance Bert, who was at the January 29 show, didn't capture Ace's solo—but from early Februray and for the remainder of the tour, the Smoker was wide open to the world.
And that was also how the Smoker looked when the band took its first trip to Japan in March and April of 1977.
When the band returned stateside to begin the CanAm Tour, the Standard Smoker had gotten a middle fake pickup to match the two Customs. But it was still the same "old" Standard Smoker, easily identified by the hole left from the removed XLR input.
As cool as the Standard Smoker was in this new three-pickup configuration, after a year of heat from the halogen bulb and the smoke bombs it had started to show the effects. There was a piece right above the pickups where the heat from the effects had burned right through the wood. Just about every KISS fan has seen that San Diego photo shoot image, but I would wager that very few have spotted the burn mark. What we can't see in these photos is that the guitar was just as badly burned under the pickguard. That damage only became visible when the guitar ended up in collectors' hands in the 90s.
The plan obviously hadn't been to burn through the body of the guitar but these were effects that hadn't been tried yet. They were making it up as they went along and it was better to have the heat go through the guitar that way than to risk it burning Ace's crotch every night. And the effect looked so cool that it was worth sacrificing a guitar.
But having a guitar that was in danger of actually catching fire, not merely simulating it, was not a viable long-term solution. So when the next tour in support of Alive II began, there was a new Smoker in the ranks. This was also based on a Les Paul Standard and it had a fake middle pickup, the same "sunken look" to the neck pickup, but it lacked a pickguard. It also had a tobacco burst that looked different from it predecessor. But the effect still looked cool.
When the band decamped to Japan for a brief tour, the second Standard Smoker suddenly gained a pickguard. This coincided with the three-pickup black Custom having its pickguard removed so they might have just moved it from one guitar to another. In one of the photos below we see something that appears to have been a minor issue during the spring, that the neck pickup had swung aside prematurely. (There are also photos both from the CanAm Tour and the Show of Shows/Winter Tour that show the fake middle pickup looking like it has lost a coil, but it's hard to even speculate what might have happened there.)
The Standard Smoker was then part of the clones/robots fight in KISS Meets the Phantom. Here we can see that they had learned a thing or two about the construction. There appear to be separate compartments for the controls, the d-cell batteries, and the "active ingredients" (the bulb and the smoke bomb).
Under construction...
