One of the Earliest Les Paul TV Juniors

This 12 3/4-inch-wide electric solid body weighs just 7.00 lbs. and has a 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, one-piece mahogany neck with a thick profile, and unbound rosewood fretboard with 22 small frets and inlaid pearl dot markers. Headstock with "Gibson" logo and "Les Paul TV Model" silk-screened in gold. Black plastic bell-shaped truss-rod cover. Closed-back single-line "no-name" Kluson Deluxe strip tuners with white plastic oval buttons. Serial number ("5 8550") inked-on in black on the back of the headstock. One hot P-90 pickup with an output of 7.60k. Black plastic pickguard with three screws. Two controls (one volume, one tone) on lower treble bout. Gold plastic barrel-shaped "Speed" knobs. The potentiometers are stamped "134 522" (Centralab May 1955) and "615 2632" (ROC early fifties). "Grey Tiger Type GT 452 .02 MFD" capacitor. Original combination "wrap-over" bar bridge/stud tailpiece. This exceedingly rare guitar is in excellent (8.50) condition. There are three tiny holes around each of the stud holes where presumably a different stop-tail was at one time used on this guitar (these are almost hidden by the original combination wrap-over bar bridge/stud tailpiece). The jack plate is not original and one side of the Grey Tiger capacitor necessitated re-soldering. Otherwise everything is totally original on this very rare early example of one of the very first of the Les Paul TV Juniors. The tuner buttons are a little darkened and shrunken, but still functional. The finish on the back of the neck is heavily worn and there is a fair amount of edgewear, but overall, considering the amount that it has been played, this fifty-one-year-old survivor, with its original frets, looks great, feels great, and absolutely screams! Housed in its original rectangular brown semi-hardshell case (8.50).

"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 $2million 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).

This guitar, with an original Mahogany finish (rather than the usual TV "limed mahogany" finish), was one of the earliest examples produced, while Gibson was still experimenting with its desire to make a guitar that would stand out on the fifties era black-and-white TV screen. We have never seen another example offered for sale, but we do know that only a handful were made.