A Near Mint 1956 Les Paul TV Junior.

1956 Gibson Les Paul TV Junior.

This super rare 12 3/4-inch-wide electric solid body weighs just 7.10 lbs. and has a nice, fat nut width of 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid mahogany body, one-piece mahogany neck with a wonderful really fat profile, unbound rosewood fretboard with 22 original thin (.070) frets and inlaid pearl dot position markers. Headstock with "Gibson" logo and "Les Paul / TV Model" silk-screened in gold. 'No-name' Kluson Deluxe strip tuners with white plastic oval buttons. Serial number ("6 2845") stamped in black on the back of the headstock. One really hot P-90 pickup with an output of 8.02k. The black plastic pickup cover is stamped on the underside "UC - 450 - 1 / 2". Single-layer black plastic pickguard with three screws. Two controls (one volume, one tone) on lower treble bout. Black plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs. The potentiometers are stamped: "6152 632" (ROC, August 1956). Original combination wrap-over bar bridge/tailpiece. There is one very small indentation on the top - just a little south of the stud-tail and another small indentation on the back of the neck behind the fifth fret and another on the bass edge of the headstock just above the nut. There are a few other very minor and insignificant surface marks on the edges of the body. This fifty-five year old lightweight 'wheaten-wonder' with the most perfect neck you could ever wish for, plays and sounds just like the guitar of your dreams… and is conservatively in near mint (9.25) condition. On the back of the black plastic control cavity cover, in half-inch gold transfer letters is the name "Larry". Housed in the original Gibson brown alligator cardboard case with brown felt lining (9.00+).

"In 1955, Gibson launched the Les Paul TV, essentially a Junior but with a finish that the company referred to variously as 'natural', 'limed oak' and (more often) 'limed mahogany'. Surviving original TV models from the 1950s reveal a number of different colours, with earlier examples tending to a rather turgid beige, while later ones are often distinctly yellow. Today there is much debate about where the model's TV name came from...One such theory says that the TV name was used because the pale colour of the finish was designed to stand out on the era's black-and-white TV screens. This seems unlikely, not least because pro players appearing on television would naturally opt for a high-end model...Others say the guitar followed the look of fashionable contemporary furniture, where the expression 'limed' was used for a particular look. Certainly Gibson promoted the Les Paul TV as being 'the latest in modern appearance'. There's also been a suggestion that 'TV' might be a less than oblique reference to the competing blond-coloured Telecaster made by Fender. But in fact the name was coined to cash in on Les Paul's regular appearances at the time on television on The Les Paul & Mary Ford Show. This was effectively a sponsored daily ad for a toothpaste company, for which the couple signed a $2 million three-year contract in 1953. Gibson reasoned that if you'd seen the man on TV, well, now you could buy his TV guitar. Following a reader's enquiry to Guitar Player in the 1970s, a Gibson spokesman confirmed that 'the Les Paul TV model was so named after Les Paul's personal Listerine show was televised in the 1950s'" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, p. 28).

The Gibson shipping records show that 511 Les Paul TVs were shipped in 1956.