“If you wana hate us, God love ya. If you wana loves us, that’s great too but if your in the middle.. get out”

This page wont be much right now but its coming along

1973….. The real early years

The very first guitar that Paul ever had with KISS was one that was made by the same man that made Gene’s first custom bass, that man being Charlie Lobue (you will find his name all over my site soon). The guitar looked like kind of like Gene’s bass (was this the only body shape Charlie knew how to make???) with a natural wood color. To get a good idea of what it looked like before I put pictures up here think of a Gibson Stagmaster and pump it up some and it up some or thing of Brian Mays home made guitar there you have a good idea of what it looked like. I don’t know how long he had it but I have read that it was stolen at the first gig KISS played (Paul’s guitars getting stolen would be a normal story for Paul over the next few years).

From pictures I have seen Paul also had a Gibson Les Paul.

I am having a incredible amount of trouble tracking down Paul’s early guitars so until I find out more I sadly have to skip it for now.

So after Paul’s custom guitar was stolen he had Charlie Lobue again make him a new custom guitar. This time it would be a custom flying V. This V would have the upper wing shorter then the bottom one. It would also only have one humbucking pickup by the bridge. This guitar was used built and used by the time KISS opened for BOC on 12/31/73. He used this guitar to record part of Hotter then hell, I say part of because it was stolen during the recording of it. The legend is that a man walked into the studio and said “I’m here to pick up some KISS guitars” and walked out with Paul’s cherished custom V.

As I said on Gene’s page around the time of Alive, Gibson gave KISS a bunch of free guitars. They gave the most to Paul. The guitars they gave Paul were called L-S6 Customs. They were given the nick name “Midnight special”

They were shaped like a Les Paul but the necks were bolted on. They also had a very odd shaped headstock. They had a pick guard and only 3 control knobs. Paul liked the sound they had so he would always ask for them, but not always for playing. Paul would take them down to a pawn shop and hock them when he needed some cash.

The only evidence I have so far to tell me what kind of guitars Paul used around that time were a bunch of one pickup flying V’s along with a Gibson Firebird

The Firebird was found by Paul used some place ( I don’t know where ) and had his dad strip it down and give it a custom black finish. This guitar was also a reverse firebird.