Reseda, California April 25, 1990
Photo by Jeff Kravitz (Reissue Les Paul 1)
As KISS were finally preparing to tour in support of Hot In The Shade Paul reached back through history and brought out his original Ibanez PS10 prototypes. When a French TV team visited the band during music rehearsals at SIR the PS10 was the guitar that Paul displayed and even played. It was also the chosen instrument at the first club gig at the Stone Pony on April 14, 1990. But it appears as if Paul was interested in rekindling his working relationship with Ibanez and for some reason or other the guitar maker wasn't keen on working with Paul (at least not on his terms). Thus we see a fairly swift pivot from the PS10 to a veritable army of Gibson Les Pauls during this tour. By the second club gig in Reseda, California on April 25 Paul had gotten three Les Pauls. (In order to identify the various guitars we have to look at the grain of the tops and with different angles and lighting conditions that is sometimes a little hard. And as always we are limited by the available photos.)
The Gibson Les Paul that Paul ended up using seems to have been the Reissue model. These had mahogany body and neck, with a rosewood fingerboard sporting the classic trapezoid pearl inlays, and a tune-o-matic bridge. They also had tigerstripe/flame maple tops which, although the Gibson catalogue didn't mention it, seem to have been either book-matched or flitch matched. As seen below the two flame maple top Les Pauls used at the Country Club in Reseda, California, both had all black neck pickups. (There was also a Gold Top but so far I have only seen it in the soundcheck footage that was part of the Exposed II outtakes.) Later, when William Hames photographed the band's guitars (and basses) for Japanese magazine Young Guitar during the short production rehearsals in Lubbock, these were the three Les Pauls in Paul's arsenal: the Gold Top and the two sunbursts used in Reseda that had more or less book-matched flame maple tops. At that time the lattter two still had all black neck pickups.
Just a few days later when the tour got started properly there were additional Les Paul Reissue guitars in tow—all in all there were four (4) tigerstripe/flame maple top Reissues—and by that time they had all gotten zebra PAF-style pickups in the neck position. (The Gold Top kept the pickup configuration it had during rehearsals.) Interestingly all of Paul's Reissues had truss rod covers without any writing on them. These guitars really only varied in the flaming of the maple top so to illustrate the differences you can slide between the four guitars, in order, below.
Although Paul traveled with a shitload of guitars during this tour, these Les Pauls were his main ones. I assume that they had slightly different roles but apart from the open-G tuning in "Heaven's On Fire", most of the other special needs were actually handled by other guitars: the B.C Rich Eagle was used for the capo in "Crazy Crazy Nights" and one of the B.C. Rich ST-III was used for the whammy parts in "Tears Are Falling". Unfortunately, even though we have a veritable cornucopia of video bootlegs from this tour they are not in good enough quality to see the difference in flame maple grain. As best I can tell from the pro-shot bootlegs in Detroit in October, Paul started the show with Reissue no. 1 and was handed Reissue no. 2 which was tuned to open-G. Was that standard procedure? We don't know.
These Les Pauls all disappeared from sight after the end of the tour. When the band returned for Revenge Paul had reconciled with Ibanez and the PS10 was once again his main guitar.
