Hey
@deakle
Well, you and I sound like we had very similar situations. I have wanted a Les Paul Custom since I was a teenager, over thirty years back. I finally very recently had the opportunity to make it happen and decided to do it....pic attached.
Quality - it seems like a really high quality build, and I have zero complaints about it.
Neck - It's definitely a fatter neck that I'm used to playing, but I knew that going into this. I don't really notice any significant stickiness and find that it has a similar feeling to my other lacquered finished necks.
Pickups - I have the same 490/498s as you had mentioned. This guitar is definitely a one-trick pony as it's pretty much all-out or nothing. Gibson decided to not have a coil tap option on this Custom which I'm fine with. I knew it was a guitar pretty much built for hard rock, and it can pull that off well. My only complaint with the pickups is that they are incredibly hot, to the point where I'll get some feedback and need to dial back the guitar volume to around 8 whereas the same AxeFX patch played on my PRS Custom 24 or PRS McCarty 594 won't feed back. I'm still debating on whether I want to swap out the pickups for something a bit less hot than the 490/498s.
One thing that surprised me a bit is that the action was really high when I got it, especially on the low-E. In fact the action was high enough where the intonation especially on the low-E was sharp when fretted at the 12th, and moving the saddle all the way to the bridge side still wasn't enough. The truss rod was fine and didn't need adjusting, but the bridge height definitely needed adjusting. Once I worked on that a bit, the action was significantly lower and I was then able to properly intonate it without it being maxed to one side or another.
The only other thing I can think of that might be worth mentioning is this guitar is HEAVY, as in 10.5 lbs, so if you're gigging with it you'll definitely want a really nice strap and probably an upgrade to some strap locks. I'm in a Rush tribute band and we do a full three-hours of music spread across two sets, and although we're on a break right now my plan is to use the Les Paul Custom for maybe 25% of the songs. This is partly to do with the weight, but also that this guitar won't effectively pull off much of the mid-80s material as I need something brighter and jangly for that.
Bill