A History: The Les Paul Jr.

This is a new section I think I'll start to run. A "history of" section dedicated to looking into where certain guitars, amps, companies etc. find their roots.

For the first post, we'll look at the Gibson Les Paul Junior.

First introduced in 1954 as a cheaper alternative to the popular Les Paul model, the LP jr. sold for $99.00 and came in sunburst, TV yellow and cherry red. It featured a more cost effective aluminum wrap-around bridge, a slab of mahogany (without a maple cap like the Les Paul standard), and had one dog-ear P90 single coil pickup.

Over the years, the Les Paul Jr. some changes, including in 1956 when the bridge and pickup were repositioned to fix a problem of having the bridge lean too closely to the pickup.

In 1958, the Les Paul Jr. started to come with a double-cut design, instead of the classic single cut.




Then, in 1961, the Les Paul Jr. became the SG Junior.

Production went on pretty much unhalted until 1992 when the model was discontinued. Following a fairly large cult following and appreciating collecting value, Gibson began making the LP Jr. again in 1998.

For more info, check out the article on Guitar Time.