The Gibson Joe Perry Boneyard model was conceived by Perry's wife Billie while they were visiting Gibson's Custom Shop in Nashville. Billie conspired with Gibson to secretly build a guitar with a highly flamed "tiger stripe" maple top and a unique finish she called "green tiger." She presented it to Joe for Christmas 2002. Perry liked the guitar so much he immediately added it to his working collection - "The prototype is always two feet away from me down in the studio," he said at the time.

With a few additional modifications to make it a truly personal instrument, the guitar that started out as a gift became a Gibson Custom Shop model. "Joe Perry's guitar work has been a defining element of rock and roll music for the last three decades, and Joe's personal taste is reflected in every element of the Gibson Joe Perry guitar," said Henry Juszkiewicz, chairman and CEO of Gibson Guitar Corp. "Holding this instrument is like shaking hands with a rock legend." In addition to the distinctive top finish, the guitar sports Perry's "Boneyard" logo on the headstock, which is the name of his home recording studio. Perry's specifications also include a neck with a thicker profile than the standard Gibson neck and a pickup that is wired in reverse to add a distinctive "edge" to the tone of the guitar.

The Joe Perry Boneyard Les Paul has a highly figured carved maple top, with a custom “Green Tiger” finish in nitrocellulose lacquer with vintage cream binding. The hardware is aged nickel finish, tuners are Kluson-style tulip-button units. The headstock has a mother-of-pearl “Boneyard” headstock inlay and truss-rod cover engraved with Joe Perry’s signature. It comes with a Tune-o-matic (ABR-1) bridge and stopbar tailpiece as standard but there is a Bigsby vibrato option. Pickups are a BurstBucker 2 in the neck and a slightly hotter BurstBucker 3 in the bridge. The neck pickup has been wired reverse-polarity for out-of-phase tones in the middle position.