The Coventry December 21, 1973.
Photo by Rik Fox
When Ace got the advance money from Casablanca he wasted little time and bought a used Gibson Les Paul Deluxe at Manny's Music on 48th Street in Manhattan. The main reason it seems likely that it was used is that the Deluxe was modified for humbuckers and the way the neck cavity was routed to accommodate the full-size humbucker is a professional job, one that Ace wouldn't have done himself. (We'll see his slightly hamfisted handiwork shortly.) Despite what Ace may have said over the years the Les Paul Deluxe was not used to record the first album, that job was handled by his Ovation Breadwinner. Ace bought the Deluxe some time in December and the first time it shows up are for the "farewell" shows at the Coventry.
Even though the Deluxe was something Ace had dreamed of he apparently wasn't quite happy with it. Despite having played the Ovation Breadwinner for the past six months, a bolt-on instrument which had a sizeable heel, Ace doesn't seem to have liked the heel of his new Deluxe. We don't know quite when he starts but when the band makes its professional debut on New Years eve he has taken a chunk out of the heel of the guitar. Look closely at the photo below and you'll see the naked wood where he had carved the heel.
Just a couple of days later when Aucoin arranged a showcase at Fillmore East Ace had continued his modifications. Several of the photos show a large section of naked wood where the heel used to be, a much larger section that seen in the New Years photos above.
Luckily for the Deluxe Ace settled on a re-shaping of the heel not long thereafter. When the band returned to the stage on January 26 the carved section had been finished (poorly as we shall see). Ace removed a lot of wood from the back of the instrument, so much so that it is a wonder that it endured life on the road for another two-and-a-half years before it was retired. Just compare the original look of the heel of a 1973 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe to the photo from St. Louis below. In later years (2015) Ace has claimed that he carved the heel using a screwdriver which seems unlikely even by his standards of mutilating instruments.
Before we look at the many small variations the Deluxe would "suffer" over the next two years, let's look at what the original instrument Ace got was actually like. The Deluxe had a mahogany body and a mahogany neck with a rosewood fingerboard. It had a pancake body—the practice of having a thin layer of maple between two slabs of mahogany—to be able to use less thick slabs of mahogany and reduce cost. This is seen in numerous photos of Ace's Deluxe over the years. The original pickups had been mini-humbuckers but Ace's Deluxe had been routed for full-size humbuckers. We don't know what the pickups were but it's a reasonable guess that they were Gibson PAF humbuckers. As noted before the original owner most probably had this modification done since the routing had the neck pickup placed right against the end of the fingerboard which necessitated that the pickup ring was cut. The ridiculously awesome closeup below shows this in amazing detail.
Two more details that will become relevant as we move forward. The Deluxe originally had no binding on the headstock and it had perloid Kluson double-ring tuners. Both of these details can be seen in the photos below and in this closeup of a different 1973 Les Paul Deluxe. OK, that's the basics of how the guitar looked in late 1973 and very early 1974. Let's get started on the many changes it went through. Let's go to 1974.
