Warren Haynes' favorite guitar comes with a very surprising story. Although it looks like a Les Paul guitar, legally, it isn't. And yet it sounded better than all the other guitars in the store the day he picked it up for the Allman Brothers Band.
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A couple years ago, in 2023, Warren Haynes invited Premier Guitar's John Bohlinger to the Ryman Auditorium. There, Haynes explained the story of his illegitimate Les Paul guitar.
He immediately jumped into the story.
"Years ago, I went to the Gibson custom shop and said that I was looking for a tobacco Sunburst Les Paul," he set the scene. Although he tried a few of the guitars he requested, none were quite right for him.
"You can always tell a really magical guitar and none of them had that magic," he explained.
Thankfully, his friend, Rick Gimbar, who was running the shop, introduced Haynes to a rather special guitar that was hanging in his office.
However, the guitar wasn't exactly fit for selling.
"It's flawed," they said to him. "There's two extra screw holes in it where somebody put screw holes in the wrong place." With such a flaw, they were set to scrapping the thing.
The two wrong screws where the least of the guitar's problems, however. Because it wasn't a guitar yet. That design flaw paused construction, so it was simply the wood. No tuners, strings or anything else.
Warren Haynes Got The Flawed Les Paul Fixes Up
Warren Haynes asked the team how long it would take to finish the flawed guitar. Thankfully, only 20 minutes.
"So we sat around and tried some other guitars and played and stuff and they brought it out and it sounded better than any of the guitars that that I had been playing," he said.
Without hesitation, Warren Haynes got the guitar.
Although "they couldn't sell it legally [and] they couldn't call it a Les Paul," it was the guitar for him. And it has served Warren Haynes well for decades.
"For all the guitars that I had from that time period, this is my favorite one."
