A Wonderfully Light Early '60 Les Paul Junior… a.k.a. 'The Baseball Bat'

This super little guitar weighs in at just 6.70 lbs. and has that great baseball-bat '59 neck with a nice, fat nut width of just over 1 11/16 inches and standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid mahogany 'slab' body, one piece mahogany neck, and rosewood fretboard with 22 jumbo frets and inlaid pearl dot position markers. Gold silk-screened "Gibson" logo and "Les Paul Junior" on headstock. Closed-back strip tuners with white plastic oval buttons. Serial number "0 4775" inked on in black on back of headstock. One black P-90 pickup with a huge output of 9.01k. Single-ply tortoiseshell pickguard. Two controls (one volume, one tone) with black plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs. The potentiometers are stamped "134 6005" (Centralab February 1960). Combination "wrap-over" bar bridge/tailpiece. There are a few very minor dings and there appears to be an 'extra' screwhole under the pickguard - but we are absolutely certain that this has been there since the day this guitar was made. This is an exceptionally fine example, totally original, the cherry color rich and unfaded. Housed in its original "alligator" softshell case (8.00).

"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).