Noel Gallagher’s love of the Les Paul spans all the way back to a pre-fame Oasis, where – as is the case for many aspiring rock stars – he toted an Epiphone Les Paul Standard as his main guitar.
With a record deal under his belt, you might expect that to have changed in an instant, but check out the video for Oasis’s first single, 1994’s Supersonic, and you’ll see the Cherry sunburst Epiphone taking pride of place.
However, Noel, who had struck up a friendship with former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, was ‘gifted’ not one but two Les Pauls from Marr himself. The first is a Standard, which began life as a Goldtop and had the honour of being owned and smashed by Pete Townshend before Marr acquired it, and the second is a Les Paul Custom.
The Custom features an additional toggle switch for splitting the coils, which at first appears curious, but Noel removed the humbuckers and replaced them with P-90s, lifted from one of his Gibson Firebirds. In 2023, he told That Pedal Show: “It was only [years later] that [Marr] said, ‘Oh, that’s The Queen Is Dead guitar,’ and I was like, ‘Could you have fucking told me that earlier, before I butchered it?!’”
Which brings us to the Noel Gallagher Les Paul Standard, which is based on the Made To Measure Gibson Custom guitar that Noel has been playing on the Oasis Live ’25 dates. If you weren’t one of the 25 punters with the readies to splurge on one of the £17,500 replicas, this is a much more ‘real world’ opportunity to get close to Noel’s stage guitar.
With a pair of P-90s, it’s from the same tonal lineage as the ‘Marr’ Les Paul Custom, initially causing some fans to set the online comments sections alight with comparisons to the Custom – as well as legitimately pondering whether this was Noel’s homage to the ‘Old Black’ Les Paul of his hero Neil Young.
Down The Riviera
Gibson and Epiphone semi-acoustics play an integral part in the band’s golden era sound, particularly Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs’ Epiphone Riviera; it’s certainly a constant of the Oasis guitar canon.
From some of the band’s smallest gigs at ‘toilet-tour’ venues like Camden’s Water Rats to the record-setting Knebworth gigs in front of a collective quarter-of-a-million fans over two nights, find a picture of Bonehead on stage, and you can, with confidence, bet your 335 that he’ll be clutching his Antique Burst Epiphone Riviera.
The story, as told to That Pedal Show in 2023 (before Oasis confirmed they would reform in 2025), goes that Bonehead and Noel paid a joint trip to Manchester institution Johnny Roadhouse Music to look for guitars.
“We were such Beatles fanatics, we were into Epiphones,” says Noel. “We both bought Epiphones [Rivieras]. He’s got a brown Tobacco one, which, funnily enough, when the band split up, he didn’t take with him – so I’ve got it now.”
The guitars in question were both made in the ’80s and are often referred to by Epiphone fans as ‘Matsumoko’ models, owing to the fact that they were produced by the manufacturing company of the same name.
Both guitars forgo the traditional Riviera configuration of mini-humbuckers and a Frequensator tailpiece, in favour of a tune-o-matic/stopbar and full-size ’buckers, bringing this era of Riviera more in line with Gibson’s ES-335. Noel’s Riviera remains ‘stock’ to its factory build, which included Maxon MMK-61 pickups, with Bonehead’s Riviera very likely to have featured the same models.
Noel’s Riviera, famously used as one of his main guitars during the What’s The Story…? sessions, was recreated as an Epiphone signature model in 2022, and while the Wine Red model from the Don’t Look Back In Anger video makes less frequent appearances, Bonehead has been using his Riviera since joining Liam Gallagher for the Definitely Maybe 30th anniversary dates, and once again in Oasis for the reunion tour.
Hidden Gem?
Gem Archer has continued the Oasis tradition of semi-hollow guitars, both as Bonehead’s replacement from 1999 to 2009, his tenure in post-Oasis band Beady Eye, as a member of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and once again as a member of the three-guitar line-up in the reunited 2025 incarnation of Oasis.
During this time, one of his most-favoured guitars was a US-made late-’60s – according to Gem’s tech with NGHFB, Dave White, when we interviewed him in 2018 – Epiphone Sheraton, which was actually (and remains) one of Noel Gallagher’s guitars.
Despite a few years away from the Sheraton, Gem was reunited with the guitar when joining NGHFB in 2017. “He just goes, ‘What guitars do you want to borrow?’” Gem told us in 2018. “I was like, ‘Well, I’ve played that one and it’s incredible.’ It’s ’60s, but I’m not sure of the exact year. I was going to buy one, but it was about seven grand!”
It is, of course, this guitar that forms the basis for the Epiphone Masterbilt Gem Archer model, which, like the original, features a trapeze tailpiece, rather than the Frequensator or vibrato‑equipped models. Luckily for Gem (and the rest of us), we don’t need £7k to bag the recreation.
- "Not only is this Riviera the most Oasis-relevant guitar of the recently launched trio, it’s the most affordable too": Epiphone Bonehead Riviera review
- "Some might say this is far from a valid Oasis signature guitar, having only come into play earlier this year": Gibson Noel Gallagher Les Paul Standard review
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
