• Peripheral makers CRKD have teamed up with Gibson to turn the iconic Les Paul into a game controller.
• The CRKD Gibson Les Paul Guitar Controller comes in two flavours with the Pro Edition sporting a Hall Effect strum bar.
• Pricing starts at R2 067 for the base version which ships in June.

The Gibson Les Paul is an iconic instrument that has been favoured by guitarists the world over for decades. Now, the company has lent the iconic visuals of the guitar to peripheral maker CRKD.

The new CRKD Gibson Les Paul Guitar Controller has just been made available for pre-order and comes in two colourways and versions namely the Black Tribal Encore Edition and the Blueberry Burst Pro edition. The Blueberry iteration is the more feature rich of the two.

For starters the Blueberry controller features a Hall Effect Strum bar which will last far longer than the mechanical strum bar in the Encore Edition.

Both iterations feature a Hall Effect analog stick on the guitar body that can be used for menu navigation. There are also dials that can be used to load presets quickly. The necks of each controller can be swapped out and the controller connects to your console or PC with a 2.4GHz dongle or via Bluetooth.

The controllers are compatible with Xbox and PC with a version also support Switch and Android platforms as well. There is notably no support for PlayStation consoles aside from the PlayStation 3

CRKD notes that the controller is specifically compatible with Fortnite Festival, Guitar Hero, Rockband, YARG and Clone Hero. We suspect that it won’t take long for somebody to add Souls-like games to that list.

Pricing for the CRKD Gibson Les Paul Guitar Controller starts at R2 067 for the Encore Edition and R2 255 for the Pro Edition with the controller set to ship in June 2025. Pre-orders will ship with a purple/orange ombre strap and a Collector’s Pin. You can place a pre-order over on the CRKD website. Keep in mind that the pricing above doesn’t include shipping and any import fees you may incur.

Now all we need is a Guitar Hero remake. There was talk of such a project a few years ago but it was punctuated by fears that such a game would be driven by monetisation, removing the magic of the original titles.

At least Fortnite Festival players have a swish new axe to use in the game.