A Les Paul Junior for A Les Paul "Burst" Owner…

This 13-inch-wide electric solid body weighs 8.1 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 with two-color brown-to-yellow Sunburst finish on top, brown finish on sides and the most amazing 'quilted' finish on the back. Mahogany neck, and unbound Brazilian rosewood fretboard with 22 frets and inlaid pearl dot markers. Headstock with "Gibson" logo and "Les Paul Junior" silk-screened in gold. Three-in-a-line Kluson Deluxe strip tuners with white plastic buttons. Serial number ("8 2983") stamped in yellow on the back of the headstock. One hot P-90 pickup with an output of 7.82k. Black plastic pickguard. Two controls (one volume, one tone) on lower treble bout. The potaentiometers are stamped "134 713" and "134 738" (Centralab April and September 1957). Gold plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs. Original combination wrap-over bar bridge/tailpiece. There is some minor finish checking and a few marks on the body and on the back of the neck, but overall, this is one of the best original examples and one of the very last made of the single-cut Juniors... and it has the most unusual and sensational 'quilted' back on the planet! This guitar is the little brother to someone's 'burst'… Housed in its original Gibson chipboard "alligator" case with brown velvet lining (9.00).

Introduced in 1954, the "budget" Les Paul Junior "was designed for and aimed at beginners. It did not pretend to be anything other than a cheaper guitar. The outline shape of its body was the same as the gold-top and Custom, but the most obvious difference to its Les Paul partners was a flat-top solid mahogany body. It had a single P-90 pickup, governed by a volume and tone control, and there were simple dot-shaped position markers along the unbound rosewood fingerboard. It was finished in Gibson's traditional two-colour brown-to-yellow sunburst, and had the wrap-over bar-shape bridge/tailpiece like the one used on the latest gold-top. The September 1954 pricelist showed the Les Paul Custom at $325 and the Les Paul Junior at $99.50. The gold-top meanwhile had sneaked up to $225" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, p. 25).

"At the time they were intended for guitar-teaching schools...but have now become revered for their direct rock'n'roll spirit" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, p. 23). So successful was this model, that an astonishing 9,750 guitars were shipped from the factory during its production run between 1954 and the end of 1957.