One of the First Les Pauls with a Serial Number…

This totally original lightweight Les Paul Standard Gold Top weighs just 9.10 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 medium to thick profile, and rosewood fretboard with 22 frets and inlaid pearl trapezoid (crown) position markers. Serial number ("3 0696") 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. Individual single-line "no-name" Kluson Deluxe tuners (stamped inside "2356766/PAT APPLD.") with single-ring tulip-shaped Keystone plastic buttons. Two P-90 pickups with cream plastic covers and outputs of 7.17k at the neck position and a really hot 7.88k 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 "615 0689 306" (ROC February 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-four-year-old "time-capsule" is in exceptionally fine (9.00) 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. The only thing that has ever been changed on this exceptional example are the tuner buttons (which always shrink) and have at some time been professionally replaced with perfect replica tips. This is one of the very first "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 (8.75).

"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).