1960 Gibson Les Paul Junior
The late 1950s marked a major transition period for Gibson. Since the company's first foray into the solid-body guitar market with the Les Paul Model in 1952, it was clear that the solid-body electric Spanish guitar was here to stay. By the end of the decade, Gibson began to focus heavily on electric guitar design and production, introducing a new hum-canceling pickup along with several newly designed solid-body guitar models while updating others. The success of a certain double-cutaway solid-body electric being produced in California by Gibson's competition had not gone unnoticed, and the company responded by revamping their Les Paul Junior and Special models into a double-cutaway design in 1958. These second-variant Les Paul Juniors and Specials were produced from mid '58 through early '61, after which the models was redesigned to what we now refer to as the "SG."
A lightweight and resonant double cutaway Les Paul Junior with the perfect amount of honest wear, this example from 1960 is an exciting guitar. The original "dog-ear" P-90 sounds absolutely phenomenal, offering a powerful and full-bodied voice with incredible depth along with well-defined note separation. The original volume and tone pots are quite responsive, allowing for a great deal of versatility from the single P-90 pickup. With the volume pot completely open, the guitar delivers a warm growl that pushes the front end of an amplifier beautifully. As the volume knob is rolled back, the guitar cleans up and offers a chimier response akin to an amplified acoustic guitar. Rolling back the tone knob achieves some fairly convincing neck pickup tones, leaving all of us wondering if we ever really needed that second pickup in our guitars.
A clean and break-free guitar that remains largely original, this vintage Gibson Les Paul Junior is low on excuses. While crazing and small chips, scratches, and dents can be found in its original Cherry Red finish, the guitar is clean overall and presents very well. Our repair team filled a strap-button hole that’s hiding on the underside of the upper horn and installed a set of aged Kluson three-on-a-plate tuners to replace the non-original Grover Rotomatics that had previously been installed. Grover washer footprints are visible on the headstock's face.
This 1960 Gibson Les Paul Junior sports a well-made reproduction truss rod cover and a nice set of repo control knobs. The original bridge is in the case pocket, and we've installed a Music City Bridge for improved intonation and resonance. A previous refret and a shimmed original nut allow this vintage Les Paul Junior to set-up very well.
Scale length of 24.75", nut width of 1-21/32", 1st fret depth of 0.761", and 12th fret depth of 0.849". Weight of 6lbs 13oz, pickup DC resistance of 7.8k.
With 1970s hardshell case.
