Gibson Les Paul Guitar. The Gibson Icon.
The Gibson Les Paul Guitar is an icon of the electric guitar industry. The successful partnership had its beginnings in the 1940s. Les Paul, real first name Lester, was one of the more popular guitarists of the time and indeed had his own radio show. Although known for his playing ability he was also a man who liked to tinker with the sound, dubbing and amplification of the guitar sounds.
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.
Les Paul's first concept model was referred to as the log. A basic structure with do real design features, the first models were laughed off as no more than a strung broom stick. None the less, Les Paul continued to work on his ideas and play his version of the solid body guitar and presented himself and his concept to Gibson Guitars 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.
This put commercial pressure on Gibson Guitars and they needed to think about their position in the market with this new instrument. In 1951 they again spoke to Les Paul explaining that they now wanted to work with him to put Gibson back in the running. This was important as there were a number of other guitar manufacturers such as Bigsby and Richenbacker working on the same concept.
The collaboration between Gibson Guitars and Les Paul was a successful one as history now shows. In 1952, Paul signed an endorsement contract to have input into the design and also play Gibson's first solid body guitar and so the Gibson Les Paul was released. For his part Les Paul was to receive 5% in royalty of sales for a 5 year period.
The price of the first Gibson Les Paul Standard was $210 which placed it slightly more expensive than Fender's rival Telecaster guitar. The Les Paul Standard has a gold finish so was always to be referred to as the Gold Top. The Les Paul combined a mahogany body with a carved maple top. This combined the clean, clear sound of the maple with the warmer resonance of the mahogany.
The 3 way selector switch was used to control the two single coil P90 pickups that were contained in the first Gibson Les Paul Standard. There was a volume and tone control for each pickup. There was a rosewood fingerboard on the guitar which was overlayed on a mahogany neck. There were mother of pearl, crown shaped inlays as position markers on the finger board. There as also a combined mechanism which was a bridge and tailpiece that attached to the base of the guitar on the original Les paul Model. This was basically the design that Les Paul had used for the previous archtop guitars. It was soon replaced in 1953 as being not needed or wanted on a solid body guitar.
With the growing market, Gibson soon released more models of its signature Les Paul Guitar. In 1954 they produced a cheaper model targetted at the beginner market which was called the Les Paul Junior. At the other end of the range was the Les Paul Custom with its gold hardware. This was the beginning of the golden age of the rock guitar. Gibson was closely aligned with the rock genre and was favored by many rock gods of the 60's and 70's.
Article Source: http://www.search-raven.com
About the Author
Terry Booth is very much a supporter of the Gibson Les Paul. Terry has numerous selections of them currently on sale listed at his guitar site for Gibson Guitars.
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by: TerryBooth
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