The History of the Gibson Les Paul Guitar.

One of the stars of the guitar world is the Gibson Les Paul Guitar. A solid body electric guitar, the partnership between Les Paul and Gibson Guitars began in the 1940s. Lester Paul was a very popular guitarist musician of the time and was well known due to his radio show. In his spare time Les Paul also enjoyed playing around with the idea of amplification of the guitar sound and dubbing of various sounds over the top of others.

In his home, Les Paul would begin to play around with the idea of the solid body guitar and come up with some of his own draft models. One of the thoughts of the time was that this would give an honest sound as the hollow body guitar shape does alter the acoustics. The solid piece of wood would also emphasise the sustain quality of the sound.

The "log guitar" was Les Pauls first home-made attempt at the solid-body guitar. It was a very simple guitar that unfortunately attracted more amusement than genuine interest. Its similarity to a strung broom stick didn't help Les Paul but he persevered with the concept and eventually put forward the instrument to the Gibson Guitar company in 1946.

The guitar was initially dismissed completely by Gibson as they did not find anything serious or viable about the instrument. It would soon be a different story after Fender Guitars put out the first version of the Fender Telecaster in 1950 and it started to receive some commercial success.

The urgency of the situation for Gibson Guitars was now apparent as besides Fender there were also other Guitar production companies doing their own solid body concept work. These were National, Richenbacker and Bigsby. So in 1951, Gibson re-contacted Les Paul seeking his assistance in design and promotion of a product for them.

This partnership proved to be a good one as we all know by the close brand association between Gibson Guitars and Les Paul. In 1952 Gibson released the Gibson Les Paul Standard Guitar. Les became an endorsee and signed an agreement where for his input and promotion of the guitar he would be paid a royalty of 5% of sales for a period of 5 years.

The first guitar model released was the Gibson Les Paul Standard and it sold for $210. This made it $20 more expensive than the Fender Telecaster. The first Les Paul Standard was referred to as the Gold Top because of its gold coloured finish. The guitar had a carved maple top with was attached to a mahogany back. The maple top allowed the crisp, bright sound typical of that form of wood and combined it with the more well rounded sound of the mahogany.

The original Gibson Les Paul had a combined bridge and tailpiece that connected to the bottom of the guitar. Les Paul had designed this for support on his big hollow bodied guitars but it was no longer necessary on the solid body guitar so it was soon replaced in 1953. The original guitar also started with two single coil pickups, (P 90s). A volume and tone pot for each pickup was controlled by the three way selector switch. The Les Paul Standard had a mahogany neck topped with a rosewood finger board. There were crown shaped pearl inlays to mark the positions on the fret board.

Happy with its early success the Gibson Guitar company soon saw the need to expand its range of solid body guitars. They branched in both directions from the original Les Paul Standard and produced the Les Paul Junior which was targetted at the beginner guitar market. They also saw the market for the guitarist with some extra cash and released the up-market Les Paul Custom Guitar with its gold hardware. The Gibson Les Paul continues to this day to epitomise the rock guitar industry and has had many superstar advocates.

About the Author:

Terry Booth is very much an advocate of the Gibson Les Paul. Terry has many examples of them currently available showing at his site for Gibson Guitars.

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The History of the Gibson Les Paul Guitar.