Kiss announces an all-star Ace Frehley tribute concert for the 2026 Kiss Kruise
Ace Frehley died in October 2025 after complications from a fall at his home. Thirteen months later, his three surviving Kiss bandmates plus current guitarist Tommy Thayer will each perform a song they personally picked from his catalog, a one-night, one-time-only tribute at this year's Kiss Kruise. Here is what is planned, and the Gibson gear that made Frehley's sound in the first place.
By Axel, Classic Rock Desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Ace FrehleyKiss announced on July 15, 2026 that all four current members, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Tommy Thayer, and Eric Singer, will perform an all-star tribute to the late Ace Frehley at the 2026 Kiss Kruise: Land-Locked in Vegas, November 13-15 at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. Each member personally chose one Frehley song to perform, backed by the Ace Frehley Band. Frehley, Kiss's original lead guitarist and inventor of the smoke-guitar solo, died in October 2025 at age 74.
Kiss reunites one more time, for Ace Frehley
Ace Frehley never got a proper send-off from his old band while he was alive. Thirteen months after his death, Kiss is giving him one. On July 15, 2026, the band released the full programming schedule for this year's Kiss Kruise: Land-Locked in Vegas, and the centerpiece is a one-night-only Ace Frehley All-Star Tribute concert (Ultimate Classic Rock).
Per the band's own press release, quoted by Ultimate Classic Rock: "Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Tommy Thayer, and Eric Singer will come together alongside special guest artists to honor Ace Frehley's lasting impact on Kiss and rock and roll." Each of the four has personally chosen one song from Frehley's catalog to perform individually, backed by the Ace Frehley Band, described in the release as "a rare and deeply personal honoring of Ace's legacy."
The tribute is one part of a bigger weekend. Kiss will also play two unmasked sets, one acoustic and one electric, and a November 12 pre-party features the Ace Frehley Band performing Kiss's 1976 album Rock and Roll Over, alongside Enuff Z'Nuff and other acts. The full weekend runs November 13-15, 2026, at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, produced in partnership with Vibee, Pophouse, and Topeka.
Who Ace Frehley was
Frehley was Kiss's original lead guitarist and a founding member of the band, playing with it from its 1973 formation until 1982, then again from 1996 to 2002. He invented the silver-starred "Spaceman" persona, wrote or co-wrote Kiss staples including "Cold Gin" and the near-electrocution-inspired "Shock Me," and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 alongside the other three original members (Wikipedia). His 1978 solo album was the best-selling of the four Kiss members' simultaneous solo releases that year, and its single "New York Groove" reached the U.S. Top 20. His songwriting role kept growing into the Dynasty and Unmasked era, three self-written tracks on each, before growing friction with the band's direction and years of touring burnout led him to leave voluntarily in 1982, turning down a $15 million contract to do it.
Frehley described his own technique as almost entirely self-taught. "I play guitar in such an unorthodox way," he told Guitar World in 1996. "I've never taken a guitar lesson." Paul Stanley, recalling the band's earliest days, put it in more physical terms: Frehley "would get vibrato by shaking his whole arm against the neck of the guitar." That instinctive, unschooled style is a big part of why Guitar World has separately ranked him among the greatest metal guitarists of all time, despite Frehley's own insistence that he could not read music.
Frehley rejoined Kiss for the 1996 reunion tour and stayed through the Psycho Circus album before a second, final departure in 2002. He did not participate in the band's 2019-2023 farewell tour, and repeated talk of a guest appearance at the closing shows never materialized. Frehley died on October 16, 2025, in Morristown, New Jersey, at age 74, after complications from a fall at his home earlier that month. He was buried near his parents at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. His full documented gear, guitars and strings both, lives on his CYS profile.
The gear: Frehley's smoking Les Paul and his 9-46 strings
Frehley's stage identity was inseparable from one specific trick: a Gibson Les Paul Custom modified to emit smoke from its neck pickup cavity mid-solo, a special-effects conversion designed by audio engineer John Elder Robison, who worked with Kiss in the 1970s. Gibson eventually turned the association into an official product line.
Produced 1997-2001 · Gibson USA & Custom Shop
Gibson Ace Frehley Signature Les Paul
A bookmatched flamed maple top over a mahogany body, an Ace-of-Hearts trussrod cover, lightning-bolt fingerboard inlays, and a headstock veneer depicting Frehley in his Spaceman makeup. Built in both a limited Custom Shop run and a wider Gibson USA production version.
Source: Guitar-List.com.
Gibson-branded signature set · .009-.046
Gibson Ace Frehley Signature Electric Strings
Nickel-plated steel over a hex core, gauged .009-.011-.016-.026w-.036w-.046w, a hybrid layout pairing a light top three with a heavier bottom three rather than a straight light or straight regular set.
Source: Long & McQuade.
CYS does not carry Gibson's own string line, but the Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinky Cobalt ships the identical .009-.046 gauge layout, a straightforward way to match Frehley's numbers on a widely available, currently sold set. That is a gauge match, not a documented claim that Frehley played Ernie Ball strings; his own signature line was Gibson-branded. Players chasing a similar rock tone in standard tuning can start from that same gauge logic: light enough on top for bends and vibrato, reinforced enough on the bottom three to keep a Les Paul's low end from going flabby.
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