Atlanta, GA, March 23, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Building on a shared passion for beauty, precision and performance, and inspired by the shared historical significance of the iconic 1959 Les Paul Standard and equally iconic 1959 Bonneville T120, the outcome of this unique partnership is a stunning one-of-a-kind custom edition of today’s generation of each legendary model.
Created to support The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride, in its global charity efforts to raise awareness and funds in support of men’s mental health and prostate cancer, the 1959 Legends custom edition Les Paul Standard Reissue and Bonneville T120 feature a host of beautiful hand-detailed custom touches, designed and applied in Triumph’s factory workshop.
Triumph and Gibson Partnership
- Inspired by the shared historic significance of the year 1959, with the legendary 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, the ‘holy-grail’ of guitars, and the equally iconic original 1959 Triumph Bonneville T120, the original British superbike and arguably the most famous name in motorcycling
- Celebrating the timeless connection between music and motorcycle culture,
and the passion that Gibson and Triumph designers share for beautiful design,
precision, performance, and world-class craftsmanship - Driven from a mutual ambition to support the global charity efforts of The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride, uniting motorcyclists through fundraising to support men’s health
Gibson Les Paul Standard Reissue - 1959 Legends Custom Edition
- A genuine guitar icon, the 1959 Les Paul Standard Reissue is the ultimate Gibson classic, and an accurate clone that’s authentic in every detail, from its iconic sunburst finish to the look and feel of each part and its incredible trademark tone.
- The 1959 Legends Custom Edition features unique Triumph design detailing, including hand coach-lined pickguard, inspired by the Bonneville’s trademark engine fins, and etched pick-up covers, branded truss rod cover and reissue switch backplate.
- Along with the 1959 Les Paul Standard Reissue certificate of authenticity, the Legends Edition also comes with its own one-of-a-kind certificate signed by Triumph CEO, Nick Bloor, and Cesar Gueikian, Brand President of Gibson Brands.
Triumph Bonneville T120 – ‘1959 Legends Custom Edition’
- The latest generation of this genuine motorcycle legend, the Bonneville T120, combines timeless character and style, with class defining modern capability
and performance - The 1959 Legends Custom Edition features unique Gibson design detailing, including beautifully unique hand-painted sunburst paint scheme, featuring Jet Black painted guitar neck and headstock shape, edged with hand-painted coach lining, plus a host of branded touches.
The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride
- The 1959 Legends guitar and motorcycle will together be offered as the highest fundraiser reward for the 2022 ride
- The 2022 Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride represents a major milestone in Triumph’s sponsorship, marking 9 incredible years of support, with over 100,000 riders in over 900 cities across the world, raising over $31million USD for men’s mental health and prostate cancer awareness.
Gibson and Triumph 1959 Legends inspiration
Celebrating the shared historic resonance of the year 1959, the custom collaboration project honours the two iconic products central to each brand’s story – the 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard and the 1959 Triumph Bonneville T120, both considered to be the holy-grail of their worlds, and both still manufactured and sold today.
A genuine guitar icon, and a priceless music legend, the 1959 Les Paul Standard is the ultimate Gibson classic. And the Custom Shop 1959 Les Paul Standard Reissue is more than just a tribute, it’s an authentic and accurate clone. Matched to that, the ultimate classic motorcycle icon, the legendary 1959 Bonneville T120, delivered ground-breaking performance, making it the original British superbike. While today’s equivalent, the category-leading Bonneville T120 combines that timeless character and style, with modern capability and performance.
Inspired by the shared 1959 history and the enduring connection between music and motorcycle culture from the birth of rock and roll to the teenage café racer and beyond, Gibson and Triumph set out to create a unique custom edition to highlight and support the incredibly important fundraising aims and passion of The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride.
Triumph Factory Custom Detailing
Reflecting the passion that Gibson and Triumph designers share for beautiful design,
precision, performance and world-class craftsmanship, the 1959 Les Paul Standard Reissue and Bonneville T120 were chosen to be hand-customised by Triumph’s world-leading design team at the Triumph factory workshop in Hinckley, the global HQ and home of Triumph.
Gibson Les Paul Standard Reissue - 1959 Legends custom design detailing:
- Unique Jet Black scratch plate with hand-painted coach lining to celebrate the signature machined engine cooling fins of the classic Bonneville T120
- Elegant Triumph logo laser etched into the lower pickup cover
- Unique hand-painted Jet Black pickup cover surrounds
- Low-profile electroformed metallic gold Triumph badge applied to the headstock
- Beautifully cast, painted and hand-finished reissue switch backplate on the back of the guitar, featuring the “Triumph Gibson 1959 Legends” partnership logo, designed to echo the Bonneville T120 alternator cover badge design
Triumph Bonneville T120 - 1959 Legends custom design detailing:
- Beautiful and unique custom paint scheme to match the Iced Tea Burst finish of the guitar, featuring Jet Black painted guitar neck and headstock design on the top of the tank, edged with hand-painted coach lining, showcasing the expert skills of Triumph’s custom paint team
- Low-profile electroformed metallic gold “Triumph Gibson 1959 Legends” badges applied to the tank, side panels and front mudguard
- Laser etched fuel filler cap featuring Gibson logo
- Custom brown real leather seat, designed to match the leather guitar case, with additional detailing including diamond stitching, embroidered Triumph logo and custom pick holders
- Bespoke alternator badge featuring intricate detailing and the “Triumph Gibson 1959 Legends” logo
Certificate of authenticity:
- Bespoke 1959 Legends Editions certificate, signed by Triumph CEO Nick Bloor, and Cesar Gueikian, Brand President of Gibson Brands.
The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride
The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride unites hundreds of thousands of classic and vintage style motorcycle riders all over the world to raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer research and men’s mental health. Founded in Sydney, Australia in 2012, the ‘dress dapper’ themed ride aims to combat the often-negative stereotype of motorcyclists and connect the global motorcycling community by raising funds for a cause important to every rider.
Since its first year, the DGR’s global community has raised over $31m USD for its charity partner, Movember, and now operates in over 900 cities and 114 countries around the world.
This year’s Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride will take place on Sunday, May 22nd with pre-registration already open to riders across the world, and official registration and fundraising starting on March 28th.
Gibson 1959 Les Paul Standard
The Gibson Les Paul is practically synonymous with rock and roll, becoming the go-to axe for countless guitar heroes including Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, and Guns N’ Roses’ Slash. It’s as versatile an instrument as it is iconic, and in the right hands can wring thunderous riffs, molten solos and warm, clean tones from it in equal measure.
Known as the Holy Grail of Guitars, the 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard represents the pinnacle of electric guitar innovation during Gibson’s enduring golden age. The Gibson Les Paul Standards from 1958 to 1960 are among the most collectible vintage guitars in the world, with the Gibson 1959 model as the most highly coveted of all. No specific Gibson guitar carries more intrigue and gravitas than the 1959 Les Paul Standard. Rare and highly-collectible, it has become the most iconic guitar in history, (under 650 were made), and before long, it was adopted by some of the world's greatest guitarists--Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Duane Allman, Mike Bloomfield, Billy Gibbons, Joe Perry, Slash, Joe Bonamassa, Rick Nielsen and Jason Isbell, to name a few.
“It's just a beautiful guitar and a fantastic instrument, and obviously it was adopted by dozens of hugely influential players,” says Mat Koehler, Senior Director of Product Development, Gibson Brands. “Guitar gods all favored this model. So, when you put that all together, it's no wonder why the values are large fractions of a million dollars for originals.”
Triumph Bonneville T120
Legendary design DNA, class-defining premium finish and detailing with truly modern capability. The latest generation T120 Bonneville has been evolved for pure riding pleasure.
The definitive British motorcycle icon takes its torque-rich 1200cc twin performance, sophisticated set up and beautiful Bonneville DNA and significantly upgrades it for 2021, delivering a new benchmark for timeless character and easy riding capability.
With a significantly enhanced handling set-up, courtesy of a major 7kg weight saving, new lightweight aluminium wheel rims and new higher specification Brembo brakes, plus new rider technology, including cruise control and enhanced riding modes and an even more responsive throttle, the Bonneville legend continues.
ABOUT TRIUMPH
- First established in 1902, Triumph Motorcycles celebrates 120 years of motorcycle manufacture in 2022. For more than three decades, Triumph Motorcycles has been based in Hinckley, Leicestershire, and has produced iconic bikes that perfectly blend authentic design, character, charisma and performance.
- With more than 81,500 motorcycles delivered in calendar year 2021, and over 700 dealers across the world, Triumph is the largest British motorcycle manufacturer.
- This focus, innovation and engineering passion has today created a broad range of bikes suited to all motorcycle riders, including the stunning new Speed Triple 1200 RR, Tiger Sport 660 and Trident 660, all-new transcontinental Tiger 1200 and epic Tiger 900, world leading Rocket 3 R and GT, high performance Street Triple 765 RS, iconic Scrambler 1200, and the legendary Triumph Bonneville family updated for 2021, including the Bonneville Bobber, Thruxton RS, Street Twin, Street Scrambler, and the iconic Bonneville T120 and T100, plus an exciting and accessible A2 range of Triumph motorcycles.
- Triumph currently employs around 2000 personnel worldwide and has subsidiary operations in the UK, North America, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, Sweden (Scandinavia), Benelux, Brazil, India, China and Thailand as well as a network of independent distributors. Triumph has manufacturing facilities in Hinckley, Leicestershire, and Thailand plus CKD facilities in Brazil and India.
- The Triumph Bonneville, famously named to celebrate Triumph’s 1956 land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, USA, was the original British superbike and a race-winner straight out of the crate, chosen by famous motorcyclists of the past for its legendary handling, style, and character. Updated for 2021 with even more performance, capability and style, it’s that handling, character and iconic looks, married to modern rider-focused technology that makes the new Bonneville family THE authentic modern classic choice today.
- Triumph has a glorious racing history, competing in and winning races in almost every class and field of motorcycle sporting achievement. From winning the second ever Isle of Man TT in 1908, through to 1960s road and track domination in Europe and America, right up to contemporary racing achievements with the 675cc Triumph triple powered 2014 Daytona 200 win, the 2014 Isle of Man Supersports TT win, the 2014 and 2015 British Supersports titles and World SuperSport racing, and in 2019, with another victory at the Isle of Man Supersports TT, by Peter Hickman.
- Triumph’s racing legend continues as the exclusive engine supplier to the FIM Moto2™ World Championship since the start of the 2019 season. Triumph Motorcycles provides all of the teams with race-tuned 765cc triples, each of which is based on the class-leading Street Triple RS powerplant. Redefining the class and breaking record after record in the inaugural year, including the first ever +300km/h Moto2™ top speed, the 2020 season got even faster with another 11 all-time lap records and seven different winners from 15 races.
- Triumph’s racing activities are further bolstered by a return to the British Superbike paddock in 2021 with a factory-supported race team, Dynavolt Triumph, in the British Supersport Championship.
- In 2021 Triumph announced their forthcoming entry into the Motocross and Enduro worlds as well as a new factory racing effort, with a commitment to top tier championship racing in both Motocross and Enduro series.
ABOUT GIBSON
Gibson, the leading iconic guitar brand, has shaped the sounds of generations of musicians and music lovers across genres for 127 years. Founded in 1894 and headquartered in Nashville, Gibson Brands has a legacy of world-class craftsmanship, legendary music partnerships, and progressive product evolution that is unrivaled among musical instrument companies. The Gibson Brands portfolio includes Gibson, the leading guitar brand, as well as many of the most beloved and recognizable music brands, including Epiphone, which has been on every stage since 1873, Kramer, the original MADE TO ROCK HARD guitar brand, MESA/Boogie, the home of tone, and KRK, behind great music for over 30 years, and Maestro, the founder of effect pedals. Gibson Brands is dedicated to quality, innovation, and sound excellence so that music lovers for generations to come will continue to experience music shaped by Gibson Brands. Learn more at Gibson.com and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Gibson TV, and Instagram.
ABOUT THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN'S RIDE
- The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride (DGR) unites hundreds of thousands of classic and vintage style motorcycle riders all over the world to raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer research and men’s mental health.
- The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2012 by Mark Hawwa. After inspiration from a photograph featuring classic suits and vintage motorcycles, Mark decided a themed ride would be a great way to combat the often-negative stereotype of motorcyclists and connect the global motorcycling community, and to raise funds for a cause important to every rider.
- DGR raises funds for its charity partner, Movember, and is dedicated to raising funds and awareness for prostate cancer research and men's mental health programs. Together, we have funded key research and community programs to help men make better connections with mates and lead happier and healthier lives.
- Since its first year in 2012, our global community has raised over $31m USD for men's health. The event operates in over 900 cities and 114 countries around the world.
- For more information and to join your local ride, visit www.gentlemansride.com
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