It couldn’t be any simpler – yet, in truth, it couldn’t be any better. The Les Paul Junior, which was launched in the same year as Fender’s Stratocaster, was in some ways the antithesis of Fender’s svelte three-pickup rocketship.
Made for lowly students, not cutting-edge professional artists, it had but a single pickup in the old-fashioned ‘dog-ear’ shape, while its slab body was functional, rather than futuristic, and its glued-in neck evoked an earlier era of lutherie. Yet, somehow, it always was more than the sparse sum of its parts.
In the right hands, its simplicity became a kind of purity – putting so little between the player and nuanced self-expression. Its surprisingly punchy pickup was well suited to the burgeoning age of rock ’n’ roll, too, with enough clout to make a Tweed amp weep and wail when you turned up the wick.
Even its modest price meant that musicians on the way up, such as Mountain’s Leslie West, could afford it – and that means that when they began to define the sound of rock, they did so with Gibson’s most basic and yet most enduringly capable electric.
Jason Davidson, director of product development, joins us to unpick the surprisingly complex tale of Gibson’s simplest guitar.
What marked the start of the Les Paul Junior story? Who was instrumental in getting it designed and brought to production?
“That’s golden-era McCarty. When the original Les Paul model launched in 1952, there was always a plan to also bring about the Les Paul Custom, the fancier model, which debuted in 1954 – along with the Les Paul Junior.
“There’s actually not a lot of history in the archives detailing the origin story of the Les Paul Junior, but it’s pretty reasonable to assume that Gibson had always followed a good/better/best hierarchy in the product line.
“But with the [launch of the] Les Paul they didn’t really have that, initially. So they started building that structure in 1954 with the introduction of the Custom at the top, the Les Paul regular – as they would call it – and then the Les Paul Junior in 1954. And then the next year they launched the Special to fit in between.”
To what degree was Les Paul involved with the Junior as opposed to the flagship Les Paul Model?
“I don’t think I’ve ever read any story of his input on that guitar. He would have had to sign off on it. It would have been part of his contract deal at the time, and I’m sure he was very excited to have another signature model added to the stable. We just don’t have that storytelling piece to add to it.”
It was aimed as a budget conscious, entry-level model, so perhaps there was also some thought put into the student market as well – just a brighter, louder tone
Les was primarily a jazz guitarist – so why did Gibson decide to go with the bridge pickup on the Junior as opposed to a neck pickup, which you saw on student model Gretsch guitars and so on. Was it an attempt to compete with the twangier sound of Fender?
“That may have had something to do with it. With the Les Paul, the first model, you had the options. I assume they probably did experiment with pickup placement and it ended up closer to the bridge for the brighter tone.
“Possibly, it may have just been the players that tested the guitar that really preferred that position – and, actually, it’s hard to make the neck position brighter, whereas it’s easier to make the bridge position a little darker. Les himself may have preferred it on that guitar with the single P-90.”
“It was aimed as a budget conscious, entry-level model, so perhaps there was also some thought put into the [needs of the] student market as well – just a brighter, louder tone.
“And I don’t know if you’ve seen some of the Custom Shop guitars that we’ve made, but we have made Les Paul Juniors with pickups in the neck position and it looks odd. So maybe it was an aesthetic thing as well. Maybe it just looked better to have the pickup at the bridge.”
Given that the Junior was, by 1959, a very popular student model, how did it relate to the yet more affordable Melody Maker line that launched in that year?
“I believe it was seen as a different entity altogether. I don’t know if that was something to do with Les’s contract, or it was just an easier build. They saw the success with the Les Paul Junior and how many units they could sell, and maybe they did think, ‘We could sell even more if we go with this even easier to build, cheaper model.’”
For many people, TV Yellow is the ultimate Les Paul Junior finish. Tell us about the inception of that look…
“Well, I believe they actually did make some in ’54. It wasn’t catalogued, but they did make some and, funnily, some of those ‘TV Yellow’ models were actually natural mahogany, and not the yellow colour.
“The background, the stories that I’ve always heard, was so that the guitar would show up better on black-and-white television. Then there’s also the theory that a lot of television cabinets back then had that same finish. So there are different opinions on that.
“But, unfortunately, there’s no surviving documentation written out telling us the full history, although both theories make sense. I think the TV Yellow finish became a catalogue option in ’56, but as mentioned there are examples of 1954 models.
“In fact, there are even examples of maple-body Juniors; the specification was always mahogany, but there are examples of maple-bodied.”
Were the Juniors made on the same lines as the Standards? How was that organised?
“The same lines. We have some documentation that shows Juniors being assembled in the same area where L5s are produced, Les Paul Standards are produced – it was the same craftspeople, working on the same line.”
So if you were buying a Junior, then, they have the same constructional foundation as L5s, ’59 Standards and the like?
“Yeah. I think that’s what people eventually discovered, that these were not entry-level, basic guitars as they may seem on the exterior. They are the same premium woods we were using back then, Brazilian rosewood fingerboards.
“I believe the first catalogue entry actually called that out – the Brazilian rosewood fingerboard, the same P-90 pickup and so on that we were using on other guitars. The tone was there. The playability was there, the one-piece neck.”
Why do you think the Junior got the older dog-ear P-90 design, rather than the soapbars used on the Specials and, initially, on the Les Paul Model itself? It’s an iconic part of the look of the Junior but oddly out of step with the other Les Pauls with P-90s.
“I think it’s that good/better/best hierarchy again – when the Special came out it had soapbars, as you say. The Special was closer to the Goldtop, with the Tune-O-Matic bridge, for example. You don’t get that on the Junior, but you get it on the Special, eventually. You don’t get it on the Special right away, but you get it on the Special within a few years.”
We mentioned rare Juniors. Because it was a student guitar, it’s hard to imagine many were ordered in custom colours. But were they ever ordered?
“Yeah. We’ve seen a few, including some black examples. I don’t know if those were custom colour orders as such or if those were just produced and shipped out to dealers as a special run. But you don’t see very much of it, no.”
What’s your feeling about the introduction of the double-cutaway Junior in 1958? Again, it wasn’t in step with the look of the Les Paul Standard, which was new that year and seemed to take the Junior even further from the root design. Did market forces prompt that or some other priority?
“It probably was market forces. It was just playability. Maybe they saw a decline in sales and were ready to introduce something new. Gibson was always looking to evolve the line.
“You see it, especially during that period; it was ever-changing. If something worked, stick with it for a year or two but keep evolving it, keep trying to push the envelope. I think that was just another example of that. I’m glad they did. That was a cool idea.”
When we think about the PAF, we know that you can look at a dozen PAFs and find a dozen different methodologies. Was it quite so varied with the P-90s? Or not so much?
“Yeah. You can see changes in the P-90s, and sometimes it may have just been due to production issues or supply chain issues, different magnets were used. So you’ll see Alnico IIIs, Alnico Vs, sometimes I’m sure a different number of windings under or over. It was the same type of thing. Same machines.”
It wasn’t in continuous production. I mean, it had the rename to the SG Junior, so you couldn’t call it Les Paul in the ’60s
Despite its now-iconic status, the Junior hasn’t been in continuous production…
“No, it wasn’t in continuous production. I mean, it had the rename to the SG Junior, so you couldn’t call it Les Paul in the ’60s. So there was the whole SG era, and then even the SG Junior was dropped. And then what we had was the SG-1, the SG-100, those single-pickup models. We had the Firebird I back then, too.
“So you had other single-pickup models, and even budget-friendly models throughout the ’70s but not the Les Paul Junior. There was probably room for it, but it just didn’t make the cut for some reason.
“Even when the Les Paul Standard and the Custom relaunched in the late ’60s, the Junior wasn’t there for that. In fact, I don’t believe it came back out until the mid-’80s, and it ran for a few years. I believe we even dropped it in the early ’90s for a little while, and it came back around 2000.”
There were some pretty unusual attempts to reimagine the Junior as a shred-rock machine in that period…
There were things like the double-cutaway Les Paul Junior [DC Pro] with a Steinberger [KB-X] Trem. You see oddballs like that
“Yeah, there were things like the double-cutaway Les Paul Junior [DC Pro] with a Steinberger [KB-X] Trem. You see oddballs like that. And [in more recent times] there were odd names that we would come up with, like the ‘Junior Special’. We still talk about that to this day, the Junior Special!”
Among modern-day consumers of Custom Shop Junior reissues, do you find a customer tends to be either a single-cut person or a double-cut person? We know you can’t mention numbers, but is there any kind of relative difference in interest in them?
“I think single-cut is still king. It’s the look more than anything. There is the argument for the double-cutaway, the greater access to the upper register, and some people like that look, too. You have some players that will use both. But yeah, I think the single-cut is king.”
If you were going to spec up a Les Paul Junior for yourself, what’s your dream Les Paul Junior?
“I would do a late-’50s single-cut. Just the standard ’57 reissue that we make. As lightweight as possible. That’s perfect for me. Perfect.”
