This life-like LEGO Les Paul will rock your socks off!

If you’re a guitar person, you will generally fall into one of two camps. Either you’ll be on the side of the surf-rock Fender Stratocaster, or you’ll favour the heavier, crunchier sound of a Gibson Les Paul. LEGO have already made a set out of one of those – but it’s nowhere near as big as the one Hungarian builder LEGO Revival has just made! This is a life-size replica of not just any guitar, but their very own instrument, which you can see in the background of this shot. And although I learned to play on a variant of the Stratocaster, I always coveted a Les Paul Standard like this. So excuse me while I geek out on guitars for a little bit!

The mark of a great 1:1 scale replica is not being able to tell it’s made of plastic bricks, and there are so many angles of this build where that rings true. I was struck in this shot by how well the back of the fretboard mimics the curvature of the real thing.

And speaking of the fretboard, that’s a real triumph of engineering, using bars and Studs-Not-On-Top building to achieve a very realistic look. But a favourite detail of mine is the fact that you can swap out the pickups from the single-coil P90s to the double-coil humbuckers shown here. This was a revolutionary innovation in the 1950s that eliminated the background hum that single-coils make (hence the name ‘hum bucker’). They’ve been associated with Les Pauls ever since.

The use of Technic half pins is perfect, and makes it look almost playable. In fact, there is only one non-LEGO element here – and that’s the strings. The tuning pegs are non-functional, but in theory you could probably get a note out of them if you’re careful with the tension!

And after all that talk of guitars, I’ve been inspired to go and pick up mine and have a noodle. Now, how does ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ go again…?

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