The History Of Gibson Les Paul Guitar
Production began in the year 1952, the history of Gibson Les Paul Guitar began. It was Gibsons entree into the solid body electric guitar. A couple of years before the Fender paved the way with the Telecaster. The Gibson design was presented in 1945 and was thrown out, the world was not ready for the Gibson yet.
Ted McCarty was the president of Gibson and he claims that he had already made the guitar before Les Paul was approached to endorse it. The 1952 design had a Trapeze tailpiece by Les Paul, tuners bu Kluson, a gold top nitro cellulose lacquered finish and a pair of P90 pick ups. It was listed for 210.00 USD. It did not have a serial number but in 1953 they started including them.
These guitars were quickly known as Gold Tops due to their maple top and a bronze powder that was used in the finish. They officially had no name and over time the bronze oxidized and turned green. They had fret boards and no binding on the edge or rhythm/treble plastic around the pick up selector switch.
The Trapeze tailpiece was changed in 1953 to a new design and the neck angle was changed. Tuning became more stable with this design but was changed again with the addition of the tune-o-matic bridge and tailpiece that is still in models today. This bridge was designed by Ted McCarty and allowed each string to have individual intonation adjustment.
The Les Paul Custom was called the fret less wonder because the fret wire was wider and flatter than on the Gold Top and with the ebony fretboard it took less effort to play. It had gold plated hardware and a black finish and was known as the black beauty among musicians. The bridge had a standard P90 pickup and a single coil pickup in the neck. Pole pieces were rectangular and it was louder. It used an aluminum nickel cobalt alloy designed by Seth Lover and was known as the Alnico pickup.
The budget version was called the Les Paul Junior made from a blond yellow finish and was known as the TV model as it was supposed to look good on black and white television. The Les Paul Junior came out in 1955 and the Junior 3/4 in 1956 which measured 2 inches shorter than the standard 24 3/4 inches of the Les Paul.
The humbucker pickup replaced the P90 in 1957 by Seth Lover to eliminate the interference that the single coil pickups produced. This new design produced a higher output signal and mellower tone and by the design he employed using two pickups and wiring the coils in series and out of phase the hum canceled itself. They received a patent for this design but when they applied the sticker to the guitar they used the wrong number, it is not clear if this was intentional.
In 1958 the gold top was replaced with a cherry red sunburst design, many were sprayed with a dye sensitive to ultra-violet light which is now seen as red or brown due to fading. The 1959 models tend to have a dye that did not fade. In 1960 the dye that was used was not affected by the sun and some can be found to have no sunburst pattern at all just a cherry red finish.