"Message in a Bottle…from the Original owner" - An All Original 1953 Les Paul

Signed in Black Marker on the Top "Keep Rockin' / Les Paul".

This totally original lightweight Les Paul Standard Gold Top weighs just 8.20 lbs. and has nice, fat nut width of just over 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid mahogany body with a gold-finished solid carved maple top, one-piece mahogany neck with a wonderful thick thick profile, and Brazilian rosewood fretboard with 22 original thin (.070) frets and inlaid pearl trapezoid (crown) position markers. Serial number ("3 1034") inked-on in black on the back of the headstock. The top of the guitar has single cream binding and the fretboard has single white binding. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo and with "Les Paul Model" silk-screened in gold. Two-layer (black on white) plastic truss-rod cover with three silver (half-inch) initials "G.E.H."affixed to top. Individual single-line "no-name" Kluson Deluxe tuners (stamped inside "2356766/PAT APPLD.") with single-ring tulip-shaped Keystone plastic buttons. Two very hot P-90 pickups with cream plastic covers and outputs of 9.28k at the neck position and 9.07k at the bridge. Single-layer cream plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) on lower treble bout plus three-way pickup selector switch on upper bass bout. '53 (1/2 inch tall) gold plastic barrel-shaped "Speed" knobs. The potentiometers are stamped "134 317" (Centralab, April 1953) and the two original capacitors are stamped "Grey Tiger Type GT 452 .02 MFD 400 VDC." Combination "wrap-under" trapeze bridge/tailpiece. This fifty-eight-year-old "time-capsule" is in near mint (9.25) condition. There is some very fine finish checking on the back, but virtually nothing on the top. There are a few miniscule surface indentations on the back, one small scratch/indentation (one inch long) on the top on the bass bout, a few small scratches on the treble side (near the jack input) and some slight edge wear to the headstock. The frets are original and show a minimal amount of wear. Overall, this guitar is without a doubt one of the finest and most original examples that we have ever seen. This is one of the earliest "Les Paul's" to actually have a serial number, but what is unusual about this particular example is the neck angle, which is just like a late '53 "stop-tail" and therefore makes this a really playable guitar -- truly unusual for a 'Trapeze-Tailpiece' guitar… and - it's one of the best sounding P-90 Les Paul's we have ever heard! Housed in its original Gibson brown four-latch hardshell case with pink plush lining (9.25). 

When we took the guitar apart to check all the components we found a neatly folded piece of paper under the truss-rod cover. On this paper is written "This guitar is the / property of / Jerry Herrman / 48 Park Blvd. / Lancaster, N.Y. / re 4751  8/11/53"  We tracked Jerry Herrman down. Alive, and fifty-eight years after he originally acquired this LP, he responded to our letter.

"I am INDEED the Jerry Herrmann you wrote to.  I purchased the guitar new from Wurlitzer Music Co in Buffalo, NY.  I was then a high school student and purchased it with money I earned setting bowling pins in my home town of Lancaster, NY.  I did have a small band and played occasional gigs locally.  After that the guitar moved with me many times until I had a chance to sell it through Sotheby's in NYC.sometime in the 1980s  

As I recall I paid about $295 for it when I bought it new. As I recall I received about $8,500 from it net from Sotheby's s auction. Evidently a subsequent owner had it autographed by Les Paul..  I am most curious how you acquired it and how you found me. Its like a story of a note in a bottle. Often seeing a guitarist with a Les Paul Gibson would make me wonder if that one was once mine!"

And so, we have a wonderful little story about a marvelous guitar that traveled from 1953 into the future and landed on the shores of Fretted Americana in 2011 to recall the past and alert its original owner: "I'm great, how are you?"

"The first Gibson Les Paul solidbody electric guitar, known simply as the Les Paul Model then but now better known by its descriptive nickname 'gold-top', first went on sale during 1952" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, p. 15).

"The new Les Paul guitar was launched by Gibson in 1952, in the summer, priced at $210, which was about $20 more than Fender's Telecaster sold for at the time…Today, a gold-finish Les Paul model is nearly always called a gold-top thanks to its gold body face…The new gold-top's solid body cleverly combined a carved maple top bonded to a mahogany base, a sandwich that united the darker tonality of mahogany with the brighter sonic 'edge' of maple. Paul said that the gold colour of the original Les Paul model was his idea. 'Gold means rich,' he said, 'expensive, the best, superb'" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, pp. 20-21).