A pal of mine let me have a go on his Gold '52 Les Paul a while back. It was a complete sweetheart.
I'm not lusting after the instrument, but I'd love to know how many pairs of hands it passed through on its way to him, the other musicians that worked with the players, (if it could only talk etc...)
I wish there was some kind of 'Black Box' recorder built into these things.
Having said that, I've got a twenty odd year old Jap 'Strat that could tell some stories, but I'd probably want to edit out SOME of the gigs before I passed it on to anyone else.
My ideal instrument would be Richard Thompson's 'Strat, providing that he left all the tunes in it.