A Totally Original One-Owner  -  1955 Les Paul Standard Gold Top.

1955 Gibson Les Paul Standard Gold Top.

This totally original lightweight Les Paul Standard Gold Top weighs just 8.50 lbs. and has nice, fat nut width of 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid mahogany body with a solid carved maple top, one-piece mahogany neck with a nice, thick profile, and rosewood fretboard with 22 frets and inlaid pearl trapezoid (crown) position markers. Serial number ("5 6509") inked-on in black on the back of the headstock. The top of the guitar has single cream binding and the fretboard has single cream 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 with single-ring tulip-shaped Keystone plastic buttons (stamped on the inside "2356766 PAT APPLD."). Two incredibly hot P-90 pickups with outputs of 8.28k and 7.85k. Single-layer cream-colored plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) on lower treble bout plus three-way pickup selector switch on upper bass bout. Gold plastic barrel-shaped "Speed" knobs. The potentiometers are stamped "615 4190" (ROC early fifties) and the two original capacitors are stamped "Grey Tiger Type GT 452 .02 MFD 400 VDC." Combination "wrap-over" bar bridge/stud tailpiece. This super guitar is in excellent plus (8.75) condition -- it plays wonderfully and has sustain to die for! There is some minor finish checking on the top of the guitar and a couple of small areas around the controls where the gold paint has actually flaked off, the largest (triangular-shaped) area measuring approximately 3/4 x 3/4 inch. There are also a couple of areas on the edge of the top, but these are much smaller. There is some very minor belt buckle wear on the back of the guitar and a few tiny marks on the back and on the top edges of the headstock. Housed in the original Gibson brown hardshell case with four latches and pink plush lining (9.00).

This totally original '55 Les Paul Standard Gold Top -- with a neck and a sound to die for -- is the one of the best that we have ever seen. It has the early "ROC" pots (which were used only between 1949 and 1954) and the "Grey Tiger" capacitors, which preceeded the usual "Bumble-Bees." At just eight and a half pounds, it is a real lightweight. This one owner guitar has been off-the-market for over fifty years...and this is the first time that it is being offered for sale.

Many guitarists consider this to be the ultimate "blues machine" -- the sustain on this guitar is quite unbelievable!

"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' 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).

"In 1955 the gold-top gained Gibson's new Tune-o-matic bridge. The unit had the facility to adjust individual string-length, improving intonation. Two years later humbucking pickups replaced P90s on the gold-top" (Tony Bacon and Paul Day, The Gibson Les Paul Book, p. 19). This guitar is one of the last Les Paul Standard Gold Tops with "wrap-over" bar bridge/stud tailpiece before the Tune-O-Matic bridge was introduced in late 1955.