One of the Very Earliest Double-Cut Les Paul Juniors - and the Lightest…

This super little 'featherweight' guitar weighs in at just 6.10 lbs. and has that great 1958 neck with a nice, fat nut width of 1 11/16 inches and standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid mahogany body, one piece mahogany neck, and rosewood fretboard with 22 frets and inlaid pearl dot position markers. Gold silk-screened "Gibson" logo and "Les Paul Junior" on front of headstock, serial number "8 5133" inked-on in black on back of headstock. Closed-back Kluson Deluxe 'single-line' strip tuners with white plastic oval buttons. One black P-90 pickup with an output of 7.71k. Tortoiseshell pickguard with four screws. Two controls (one volume, one tone) with black plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs. The potentiometers are stamped "134 808" (Centralab February 1958) and "6154190" (ROC early fifties). Single original 'Bumble-Bee' capacitor. Combination "wrap-over" bar bridge/tailpiece. This totally original first generation slab-bodied (with the noticably sharper body edge, like the edge on the single cutaway Junior) double-cut Les paul Junior is almost like new with just a few very minor surface marks. This forty-eight year old baby is truly near mint with a lovely '58 profile neck and the earlier style frets - quite a bit smaller than the usual jumbo's found on the 59's or later. And as for the sound - this featherwight little Junior (the lightest by a full five ounces that we have ever heard of) wails like a 'banshee'…and stings like a 'bumble-bee'… complete with the original brown leather guitar strap, housed in it's original brown 'aligator' softshell case with brown felt lining (9.0).

"In 1958 Gibson made a radical design change to three of the Les Paul models, and a cosmetic alteration to another. The Junior, Junior 3/4 and TV were revamped with a completely new double-cutaway body shape. Ted McCarty explained the re-design as a reaction to player's requests. 'They wanted to be able to thumb the sixth string,' he said, 'but they couldn't do it if the only cutaway was over on the treble side. So we made them with another cutaway, so they could get up there. We did things that the players wanted, as much as anything.' The Junior's fresh look was enhanced with a new cherry red finish" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, pp. 33 and 36).

"Even in double-cutaway style, the Junior retained its charming simplicity. It is, if you like, the Fender Telecaster of the Gibson line: the guitar for the player who is fed up with all those over-complicated instruments out there and instead seeks heads-down no-nonsense boogie" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, p. 31).

"Mid 1958 Gibson "Les Paul SG" Junior guitar specs: body style change to symmetrical rounded double cutaways, thick slab mahogany body, cherry red finish around serial number "8 49xx" (but note that single cutaway Junior have been seen as late as 1959). The peghead still says "Les Paul Junior", but often this body style is referred to as the "Les Paul SG" body style. The first few batches of 1958 and early 1959 double cutaway Les Paul Juniors had a noticably sharper body edge, like the edge on the single cutaway Junior. By early 1959 the edge became more rounded… With the double cut body style the pickguard changes to single ply tortoise, but either a black pickguard or a tortoise pickguard can be seen until late 1959/early 1960. The serial number color changed from a yellow inkstamp to a black inkstamp on the cherry red models, but some early 1958 cherry Juniors still had a yellow serial number… The Les Paul TV Model also changed to a double cutaway format by mid-1958". (http://www.provide.net/~cfh/gibson5.html#lpjr)