There are many ways to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For Raven Slaughter, a fixture of the Cleveland music scene going back to the 1970s, that means having his S-shaped guitar on full display at the prestigious Rock Hall.

Now in hospice care, Slaughter still makes the effort to visit his old friend, a Gibson Les Paul Junior, which he sawed up and transformed into a custom S-shaped guitar for what he deems a really good reason.

“I made an S out of it because it sucked, and they thought it meant Slaughter. Really, it just sucked,” Raven tells Fox 8 News Cleveland. “It just kept going out of tune.”

Slaughter made a name for himself across Northeast Ohio and the Midwest throughout the ’70s and ’80s, playing iconic venues such as the Agora, the Beachland Ballroom, and the Fantasy. While he’s not a nationwide household name, he served as a mentor to many artists navigating the Cleveland scene and built a decades-long career in music.

All these years later, the guitarist admits “it’s weird” to see his loyal companion displayed at the Rock Hall, “because I’d like to play it, but it’s in there for everybody to see, but that’s OK.”

Mostly, though, he’s just glad that music fans now have the opportunity to see a very unusual guitar and learn more about the scene that helped him flourish.

Having his instrument displayed at such a prestigious location is validating for Slaughter. It showed how music allowed him to “just [be] me. I could be myself, and everybody dug just me being me.”

And, speaking of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the 2026 Rock Hall inductees were announced just a couple of weeks ago, and there’s a long overdue nod to some British heavyweights.

If you’ve seen Joe Perry do his thing with his Project, The Hollywood Vampires, or Aerosmith over the last few decades, then there’s more than a fair chance you’ve seen him playing a mouth-wateringly beautiful black Gibson Les Paul Junior with hard-to-miss mother-of-pearl inlay.

Of course, the guitar didn’t ship that way from Gibson's factory back in the ‘50s, nor was it that way when Perry got hold of it in the late ‘70s. In fact, Perry never intended it to be that way at all, but after he busted the headstock during an Aerosmith show – and after Steven Tyler nearly fed its remains to the ravenous audience – Perry was forced to pivot.

This leads to the Junior’s revival, and its current state. As for the details, we’ll leave those for Joe to reveal below.

What’s the story behind your black Gibson Junior double-cutaway with the hard-to-miss pearl inlay?

I’m pretty sure it’s a ’56. It’s one of those Juniors that started off with cherry stain, but it wasn’t a burst – it was just a cherry stain. It’s got one P-90. I actually had two of them in the mid-’70s, like the ones Johnny Thunders and Leslie West played. They’re killer guitars. It’s just volume, tone and a P90, and it screams. I was lucky enough to get two of them.

You broke one of those guitars while on stage, correct?

Yeah. We were doing a show at a festival and I threw this thing up in the air at the end of a song. This was before wireless, so it went to the end of the patch cord and came down on the neck – and the headstock snapped off.

I remember thinking as it was going up in the air, “Wow, I can’t believe it. That looks so cool.” And then, on the way down, I was thinking, “Holy shit, what did I do?” [Laughs]

After it came down and was broken, Steven grabbed it and wanted to throw it out into the audience, so I had to wrestle him for it. [Laughs] I knew we could fix it, you know? I got it back and gave the pieces to my guy, and the show went on.

Did you add the pearl inlay after you repaired the headstock?

I had some marble gargoyles in the backyard of the house I was living in, and I took some Polaroid photos of them and sent them to Gruhn Guitars in Nashville to see if we could incorporate them. A lot of people think the picture on there is a decal, but it’s all mother-of-pearl inlay work, and it’s still a killer guitar. It sounds great, and it’s one that comes to the studio with me as well as on the road.

I still have its brother, and that one is all original except for the chrome Grovers that pretty much everybody put on their ’50s and ’60s Gibsons if the tuning pegs started to rot, which they did quite a bit.

You’ve got hundreds of guitars. Given your love for tinkering and open-mindedness regarding tones, do you think you’ll ever find one guitar to rule them all?

My rat guitar, the Burned Strat, pretty much checks all of the boxes. It takes a guitar a while to settle in because they’re not designed to play with really light strings. I’m making generalizations here, but Strats and Les Pauls were designed to have heavier-gauge strings. I bet when you took a Tele out of the box in the ’50s, it had flatwound strings on it. [Laughs]

I’m sure Joe Bonamassa could tell you more about that than I could, but they were designed to have heavier strings – and not really roundwound. But over the years, we’ve managed to adapt and deal with that, so it takes a while if you’re gonna use the vibrato bar, and not just to divebomb. It takes a while for the guitar to settle in.

Have you found that since you’ve gone to lighter strings and the Vega-Trem that the Burned Strat has come into its own?

Yeah. The lighter the strings, the harder it is to get that to work. When you get a Strat-style guitar with that type of bridge, it takes a while for things to settle in. I don’t know… maybe that’s part of the voodoo, if you want to put it that way. So, with that guitar, if I’m doing a show, I can do things where I can trust it and count on it.

I know it’s gonna stay in tune. Of course, you never know if you’re gonna break a string, and with a floating bridge, when that happens, you’re fucked. [Laughs] It’s a roll of the dice, but I trust that guitar. I would use that one, even when I have access to all of my stuff.

At the end of the day, when it comes to “desert island guitars,” it’s a matter of taste. It’s not one-size-fits-all.

Right. It’s about what you’re looking for as far as the song. I’m driven by the song, you know?

I have a couple of hardcore rules, like when you’re playing live, you follow the singer. And if the song starts to sound like a trainwreck because somebody fucked up, just follow the singer and it’ll be less noticeable.

Hopefully, there’s a certain amount of charm to having a trainwreck onstage. [Laughs] If anything, it proves we’re not playing to a tape. The other thing is, like I said before, there are no wrong sounds. There might be a wrong sound for a particular song, but you keep searching until you find the right one. I have guitars that I paid $100 for, and they’re on some of our biggest hits. They worked in that particular situation.

Has anything new, gear-wise, caught your ear or eye?

I get guitar magazines all the time. I get Guitar World, and I look at the back pages for new pedals and whatever else, just messing around with different speakers and things. They all go down in the book, you know, in the back of my mind. I’m not organized enough to actually have everything in files on a computer, but I know where to get a particular sound or feel. It’s all built around what works for the song.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

The Gibson Les Paul remains an aspirational electric guitar for many, but in recent years the Nashville-based brand has been expanding its entry-level options.

And when you factor in the rising prices (and increasing high-end specs) of top-line Epiphone guitars, it makes some of these instruments all the more attractive.

Here we take a look at six of them that prove a good Les Paul needn’t break the bank.

Les Paul Modern Lite – $1,399/£1,159

Currently the entry point into Gibson USA (aside from online-only ‘Exclusives’), the Modern Lite uses a thinner all-mahogany body with quite trendy satin ‘open-grain’ finishes, with matching headstocks, in a choice of some six hues (from $1,399/£1,159).

You get four controls for the well-loved 490R ‘Modern Classic’ and 498T ‘Hot Alnico’ uncovered buckers. And while it’s not the sharpest craft, it’s got some SG-like raw power. A good starter or gigging spare.

Les Paul Junior – $1,599/£1,499

Launched the same year as the original Les Paul Custom, the single-pickup Junior is an undisputed classic of simplistic ‘student’ style. Offered in gloss nitro Vintage Tobacco Burst and Ebony, and TV Yellow (at $/£1,599) finishes, the current Junior remains a hard-to-beat rock ’n’ roll axe for, frankly, not a huge outlay.

The slab-body, all-mahogany construction with its 22-fret rosewood ’board ticks the tone boxes, and many of us enjoy Gibson’s now positively ancient P-90 single coil. A must-try!

Les Paul Studio – $1,599/£1,499

Pictured here in gloss Smokehouse Burst, this hits the same price point as the LP Junior (as does the Tobacco Burst in this model; other colours are from £1,699), but it’s a proper plain-maple-topped if slightly thinner-depth Les Paul, with Ultra-Modern weight relief.

There’s no body binding here, but the covered Burstbucker Pros provide a slightly hotter vintage voice, plus we get ‘coil taps’ for more P-90-like optional sounds. A deservedly long-time favourite.

Les Paul Special – $1,799/£1,699

This price gets you a two-pickup Junior in TV Yellow or Vintage Cherry, while you’ll pay $/£100 less if you opt for the Ebony finish. There’s plenty of vintage style here, too, from the plastic-button tuners to that one-piece wrapover bridge.

Plus, of course, the four-control layout means it plays more like a proper ’Paul. Like the Junior, the Special uses Gibson USA’s P-90 pickups and has been played by countless pros over the years. We’re still in love…

Les Paul Studio Session – $1,999/£1,899

As an upgrade to the Studio, the Session piles on the style with its figured maple top over the Ultra‑Modern weight-relieved body, which additionally has the Modern Contoured heel.

Like the Studio, there’s no body binding, but we get ‘coil taps’, as well as out-of-phase and pure bypass options from the four pull-switch controls. Gibson’s 57 Classic and 57 Classic Plus humbuckers provide the power. A serious guitar offered in four translucent colours.

Les Paul Standard ’60s Faded – $2,299/£1,999

Just before you get to the real Standards, the ’50s and ’60s Faded models trim a little off the price. The finish is actually satin nitro (not gloss) and we get a lightly figured AA maple top with edge binding (at last!).

The ’60s uses ’60s Burstbuckers with a SlimTaper neck profile; the ’50s has a ’50s Vintage neck profile with Burstbucker 1 and 2s. There’s no weight relief and limited colours, but this is the real deal with vintage vibe and feel.

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

You don’t have to be a blues fanatic, or even a guitar player, to enjoy the latest release from Anglo-French singer-songwriter Laura Cox.

On album number four, titled Trouble Coming, she’s penned her most universal collection of songs to date – traversing her way through swampy vintage blues into contemporary rock.

The Parisian started her career on YouTube with note-perfect renditions of classics by Lynyrd Skynyrd and Guns N’ Roses, but in recent years she’s established as an artist in her own right. Her latest efforts will broaden those horizons even further.

Swamp Music

While she’d be the first to admit she’s still making guitar-oriented music, this latest body of work sees Laura focusing more on the songs at the heart of the fretwork.

“I wanted to take my music somewhere else in the hope of reaching people who aren’t musicians or guitarists,” she explains. “Some songs don’t even have solos, which is a first for me. I was more focused on the rhythms, melodies and vocals. And now it’s like I can enjoy my music from a distance, as if I wasn’t the composer.”

Anything Goes

To ensure she was covering new ground, Laura chose to mix things up and recruit some different personnel around her – which is why Trouble Coming documents a new chapter of her career.

“For the first time I didn’t record with my band,” she reveals. “I collaborated with a French duo called No Money Kids who reminded me of The Black Keys, playing bluesy rock with a modern edge. I recorded at home for the demos, and we ended up keeping some of those recordings.

“There are even vocals where you can hear the TV in the background. After all, the right take isn’t the one you record with expensive gear in a nice studio; it’s the one with the right intention.”

Cherry Bomb

In the video for lead single No Need To Try Harder, Laura can be seen playing a Gibson Les Paul Junior in Maraschino Cherry.

“I started playing Juniors in 2019 and ended up looking for more,” she says. “I found this one on Reverb and it turned out to be Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day’s signature.

“I love it because it doesn’t look like other Juniors. It has a humbucker, which suits my style, and the red finish against a white scratchplate makes it look like a Fender guitar. It’s very special.”

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Another favourite in Laura’s collection is her Gibson 1961 SG reissue in TV Yellow.

“I love this finish because it’s not the traditional red,” she says. “TV Yellow feels like a Telecaster colour. I love the neck, it’s larger than what I usually go for, but it works well. And the stock Burstbucker pickups sound great.

“I used to play Les Pauls earlier on in my career. More recently, Gibson sent me this SG to try out and I couldn’t send it back. If you are coming from Les Pauls, SGs feel so easy.”

Slide Away

Being a fan of Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers Band, it should come as no surprise that Laura’s albums tend to feature a healthy dose of slide guitar.

“The most important thing with slide is finding the right finger and size,” she says. “I feel comfortable using my middle finger, which is not the case for most people, and I prefer thick ceramic slides because they seem to resonate more.

“Muting with the index finger is important to stop other strings from ringing. It’s nice to explore different tunings. Doing that helps you discover new ideas – it can be hugely motivating when you’re stuck in a rut.”

Laura on the SoloDallas Orbiter: the fuzz pedal that’s always by her side

“At first, I got to know SoloDallas because of the AC/DC connection. Eventually, they asked if I wanted to try their Orbiter fuzz and I thought, ‘Why not?’

“I’ve tried many fuzzes and not all of them work well with my rig. Fuzz pedals can be sensitive – some are only good at a certain gain level or volume. The Orbiter really impressed me.”

• Trouble Coming is out now via earMUSIC.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Gibson is thrusting two old favorites back into the spotlight with the return of the Les Paul Junior Double Cut and Les Paul Special Double Cut electric guitars.

Offering “stripped-down simplicity” and “surprising versatility” in tandem, the LP evolutions were first released in the 1950s. The Junior, with its single P-90 pickup, was a game-changer, and became favorites of Leslie West, Mick Ralphs and more on the way to becoming a rock 'n' roll staple.

The Special, meanwhile, offered greater tonal tinkering with a twin pickup design, while adding binding to its fretboard and a more luxurious mother-of-pearl headstock inlay. Both these guitars reflect that history, and their recipe sees them “return to the classic design that made it relevant, played, and loved.”

They offer double cutaway mahogany bodies for improved upper fret access, and glued-in set necks with 22 medium jumbo frets for their rosewood fingerboards. Keeping to tradition, the Special also gets a bound ‘board.

Their mahogany necks are crafted with SlimTaper profiles for speedy playing. Vintage touches come via a wraparound bridge, Gibson vintage deluxe tuners with white buttons, and, of course, Dogear P-90 pickups.

Here, the Special doubles up with two P-90s and, naturally, twice as many Tone and Volume controls and a three-way pickup toggle. Both guitars have 24.75" scale lengths and acrylic dot inlays, and are offered up in some classic colorways: Ebony, Cardinal Red, and TV Yellow.

The Gibson Les Paul Junior Double Cut comes in at $1,699, with the Gibson Les Paul Special Double Cut rising to $1,999.

Head to Gibson for more.

Elsewhere, Gibson has announced its plans to open a third Gibson Garage location.

What is it?

I’m a big believer in simplicity when it comes to the electric guitar, especially when the priority is the boldest, most dynamic tone.

I often find that the best approach is to strip things down to the barest of essentials and that any and every addition to the signal path is more likely to take away than add to the equation.

Hey, this theory worked for everything from Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein to Leslie West’s Gibson Les Paul Junior, and who could argue with that?

Playability and sounds

The LTD EC-01FT may be stripped down, but that doesn’t mean it’s austere. The mahogany body and three-piece mahogany neck are seamlessly joined as if they were crafted from a single slab of wood, and body routing is kept to a minimum to ensure maximum resonance.

The control cavity is a little larger than usual, but it provides ample space for a battery should you choose to later install an active pickup.

The neck’s Thin U profile combined with the deep cutaway facilitates fast, unimpeded playing across the entire silky smooth Macassar Ebony fretboard. The recessed bridge keeps the strings close to the body, making it easy to comfortably palm mute the strings.

Full disclosure: I’d bet that most rock guitarists use only the bridge pickup with the tone control wide open 90 percent of the time or more, so why bother with an extraneous neck pickup and tone controls? The EC-01FT proves that you don’t need all that extra hardware to enjoy big, aggressive tones for rock.

If you want clean tone, just back down the volume control. Prefer a more mellow attack? Pick closer to the neck.

The Duncan Custom 14’s high output (14.65k ohms resistance) can push an amp extra hard, but it delivers an alluring midrange roar with outstanding articulation, clarity and bite. The split function provides honking single-coil tone with assertive mids that fall between a P-90’s growl and a Tele’s twang.

Verdict

The ESP LTD Deluxe EC-01FT may be stripped down to the essentials when it comes to its single humbucking pickup and solitary master volume control, but its upscale materials, design refinements, quality hardware and impeccable craftsmanship result in a luxurious ax that’s much more than a bare-bones Junior model.

Guitar World verdict: If you prefer to keep your tone as big, pure and uninhibited as possible, this guitar certainly meets those goals without any feelings of compromise or missing out.

Specs

Launch price: $1,099 / £1,039 / €1,019
Origin: Indonesia
Type: Solidbody electric guitar
Body: Mahogany
Neck: 3-piece mahogany, glued-in, Thin U profile
Scale length: 24.75" / 629mm
Fingerboard: Macassar ebony, 13.8" radius, 22 extra-jumbo stainless steel frets
Pickups: 1x Seymour Duncan Custom 14 humbucker (ESP exclusive)
Controls: Volume, tone, coil-split
Hardware: ESP-branded locking tuners, Recessed TonePros Locking TOM bridge with String Thru
Finishes: Black [as reviewed], Olympic White, Vintage Burst
Contact: ESP Guitars

Hands-on videos

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• ESP LTD EC-201FT review

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.”

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.”

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…

“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.”

When Irish blues-rock icon Rory Gallagher’s guitar collection went under the hammer at Bonhams of London on 17 October, all eyes were on the fate of his celebrated ’61 Strat – which sold for £889,400 including premium and, happily, is to return to Ireland to be exhibited at the National Museum of Ireland after being bought by Live Nation Gaiety Ltd.

However, while the spotlight fell squarely on the Strat there were other guitars Rory used to blistering effect that deserve more attention. In the days before the auction, Guitarist was lucky enough to play two of the best: Rory’s two Gibson Les Paul Juniors – built in 1958 and 1959 respectively but separated by different body styles and, in the case of the single-cut Junior, a series of tour-focused mods.

Dynamic Duo

The 1959 single-cut is notable for having what appears to be a gold Leo Quan Badass bridge (or a variation on that theme).

Steve Clarke, who prepared the guitar for auction at Bonhams, had this to say of it: “Those particular bridges, mid-’70s or something, were a nice replacement. They tilted forward a little bit, but they gave you the intonation that Junior-type guitars needed more – especially with the gauge of strings that were coming in.

“What I noticed with the Badass bridge is that when you thread a string through the front of the bridge and it comes out the back, it goes over the back lip of the Badass bridge before it makes contact with the saddles and, because of that, it’s almost like a tune-o-matic bridge and tailpiece all combined.

“There is a difference in the tone compared with just the simple wrapover, which resonates more in your body; I could actually noticeably feel that difference between it and the 1959 double-cut. They’re both completely different. They sound and behave differently because of these slight differences. And, of course, the double-cut will sound different for starters because it’s [made with] less wood.”

While preparing the Juniors for sale, Steve was able to take precise measurements of their relative weights, reporting that the 1958 single-cut weighed 3.5kg (7.76lb), while the 1958 double-cut weighed in, as anticipated, a half-kilo lighter at a very comfortable 3kg (6.74lb).

Steve adds: “Both the ’58 and ’59 have the original pots and wiring. The Sprague bumble bee caps are the paper-in-oil type with the small tube at one end.”

When Guitarist gave both to Barrie Cadogan – whose stellar playing has lit a fire under the music of Little Barrie, The The, Primal Scream and others over the years – to try out, we observed that the double-cut had a lovely woody expressive voice whereas the single-cut had terrific punch and a soul-searing voice that worked perfectly for slide. The latter should be unsurprising given Rory’s virtuosic touch with slide guitar.

Final cut

Rory’s nephew Daniel Gallagher explains that one of Rory’s Juniors was used on the superb tracks Kid Gloves and Walkin’ Wounded from Rory’s final album, Fresh Evidence, though, alas, no record remains of which of the two Juniors made the cut.

Given both their historic connection to Rory and their intrinsic tonefulness as instruments, it’s unsurprising that these classic late-50s Juniors fetched final prices of £21,760 for the ’58 single-cut and £19,200 for the ’59 double-cut.
Guitarist would like to thank the Gallagher family and Bonhams of London for their generous help in producing this feature.

For this month's column, I’d like to talk about my biggest guitar hero, Leslie West from Mountain. Leslie was the king of heavy, and the king of tone, phrasing and nuance.

There are a ton of things I took directly from Leslie, such as my preference for guitar pickups. Leslie is famously revered for the incredible tone he got from the single bridge-position P90 pickup on his signature guitar, a Gibson Les Paul Junior.

I remember being a kid, looking at the pictures of Leslie’s guitars on Mountain’s Twin Peaks album and realizing there was something different about his guitar as compared to a Les Paul Standard, which is fitted with humbucker pickups.

My friend told me. “No, Leslie uses a Les Paul Junior with a P90 pickup.” I was blown away by his tone, as he was able to make each note sound so big. Years later, when I formed my first trio, I thought about where I wanted the guitar to sit, sonically speaking, and the first place my mind would go was the sound of Leslie West’s guitar.

Leslie is most famously associated with his classic track Mississippi Queen, which is a benchmark for tone and feel. One of the things that influenced me on that track was Leslie’s approach to chords.

Figure 1 shows a series of standard two-note root-5th power chords played on the A and D strings: starting with E5, I then move up three frets to G5 and then alternate between the two chords.

Leslie would fatten the sound of these power chords by octave doubling each note. As shown in Figure 2, the index finger barres the bottom two strings to sound B and E, and the ring finger barres the D and G strings to sound the same two notes an octave higher.

Octave doubling notes in this way serves to make each chord sound huge. The first time I ever heard Leslie’s use of these voicings was on Don’t Look Around, similar to Figure 3.

Another technique I copped from Leslie was his use of volume swells. In a live performance, he would often play unaccompanied solos before the song Dreams of Milk and Honey, as he does on Flowers of Evil.

As demonstrated in Figure 4, with the guitar’s volume turned all the way down, Leslie would hammer onto a note then slowly turn up the volume.

In Figures 5 and 6, the initial note is bent up one and a half steps and then released and vibratoed. The sound produced is akin to that of a bowed note played on a violin or a cello.

Figure 7 demonstrates another way to use swells, as each note is fingerpicked with the volume off and then swelled.

Lastly, Leslie also influenced me to lean on major pentatonic licks along with minor pentatonic licks.

Figure 8 begins with E minor pentatonic (E, G, A, B, D) and then switches to E major pentatonic (E, F#, G#, B, C#). FIGURE 9 offers a longer example of how Leslie might stick with major pentatonic to weave long, beautifully melodic phrases, offering a great, warmer sounding alternative to minor pentatonic-based phrases.

Texas is home to some of the best guitarists the world has seen – and among the best are the underrated. Jim Suhler is primarily known for his lead role in George Thorogood and the Destroyers, but there’s more to his forceful talent for playing slide guitar, transforming that twang of blues into celestial quality.

Starting out in his trio, Jim Suhler & Monkey Beat, he’s gone on to work with incredible artists, collating extraordinary stories along the way. Those including a memorable encounter with Stevie Ray Vaughan, Billy Gibbons officiating his wedding, and Joe Bonamassa’s star appearance on Monkey Beat album Tijuana Bible.

Why did you gravitate towards slide technique?

“Initially it was Johnny Winter’s Captured Live! album. His cover of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited really hit me hard. I remember going to a friend’s house and watching Dazed and Confused, sitting in his room listening to that; it just blew my mind.

“Slide came more naturally to me than anything else I was trying to do. I was also listening to Robert Johnson in my late teens and started trying to cop a lot of that stuff somehow.”

Monkey Beat’s second album Shake includes the track Snake Bit, where different instruments characterise a snake – slide movements up and down the fretboard, and 16th notes on shakers like a rattle. Was all that intentional?

“Probably only with the shaker! Not necessarily the slide – but now you mention it, yeah, I hear that! I remember cutting that solo. We did it at Compass Point Studios in Nassau in the Bahamas with Terry Manning producing.

“He wanted me to use a particular guitar sound on the solo, but I wasn’t digging the sound at all. Man, he was right! Once I listened to the track it really fit well within it. I’m glad he overrode me that day. I’d never thought of the snake vibe with the guitar before, but I guess you’re right!”

What guitar did you use on Snake Bit?

“It was a ’93 Gibson Hall of Fame Les Paul Junior with P100 pickups. The neck got snapped – I was flying overseas and when I opened the case, it had snapped at the headstock. I had it repaired; twice, actually, but it was never the same. I really miss that guitar. It had such a great sound and great vibe to it.”

Was Monkey Beat a Gibson gig, or did you switch it up?

“On the first album Radio Mojo, any electric guitar you heard would have been a Strat. But the second album going forward I was using more Gibsons. More humbuckers and P90s, just for a little textual variation.

“There were times where a Fender was a little thin. I’m always trying to find a happy medium between Gibson and Fender. It’s a never-ending battle. It’s easier for me to make the Fender sound like a Gibson than the other way around.”

When you joined George Thorogood and the Destroyers in 1998, was it an easy decision?

“My only question was: ‘When do I start?’ Things were slow – I was between albums and struggling financially. I’d actually thought to myself it would be nice to get a side gig with some big band. I got the call and started playing a few months later with them. I was elated. It was a very easy decision to make.”

How has George shaped you as a guitarist?

“First and foremost, George is an entertainer. Even before I was in the band, just watching him, I learned how to deal with the crowd and how to handle an audience. I had always liked playing with a second guitar player so that was easy. If George is playing one thing, I’ll find another thing to play.

“It’s not a ground-breaking musical idea, but learning how to listen, when to step up and when to stay back, is another thing I got with George.”

You opened for AC/DC in 2002. What was it like playing to their crowd?

“They don’t have a lot of patience for anything other than Angus – on the second show in Hamburg, the Black Crowes, who were opening, got booed off. The first show, we got into Bad to the Bone, then they were like: ‘Oh, those guys. I know who this is.’

“I remember AC/DC signed my Strat. I had everybody sign it – Neil Young, Jeff Beck… In fact, when Angus saw Beck’s signature he said: ‘Oh, the bouffant!’ They were great to us; gave us all kinds of access, like standing with the guitar tech. It was just a wall of Marshall amps for as far as you could see.”

How did you get Joe Bonamassa to appear on Monkey Beat’s Tijuana Bible album?

“Joe played on Deep Water Lullaby, which was a title I’d dreamed. A friend of mine – I didn’t know this at the time – had a family member who drowned. I don’t know where this stuff comes from, but it’s floating around.

“The song is very Hendrix, so I was thinking, ‘This really calls for a superhuman to play a solo beyond my abilities.’ I knew Joe, so I called him. He was coming from Houston and had a night off, but he was sick. He came out to the studio, did the solo and killed it.

“He did a couple passes, one with a Les Paul and one with a Strat; I think we used the Strat solo. I tried to pay him some money but he wouldn’t accept it. I’ve got a lot of love for Joe. We go way back; he was still riding around in a van when I met him before he ascended the stratosphere.”

Can you remember the first time you met?

“I was playing with George in San Diego in 2001 and Joe was opening. I walked in and hear this guy playing Cradle Rock by Rory Gallagher, and I was like: ‘Whoa!’

“First of all, Rory wasn’t that popular, so that had my attention. Second, he was absolutely killing it. We became friends from then on. Monkey Beat would do shows with Joe whenever he came through Texas or Oklahoma. He came down to Dallas and played the guitar show with me a few times; he’s a good friend and a good man.”

On a slightly different note, Billy Gibbons officiated your wedding.

“Yeah! The crew working for the Destroyers also worked for ZZ Top and they were still in touch with Billy. I knew our tour manager had been married by Billy; I think they were the first couple. I jokingly said to a crew member: ‘I’m engaged – ask Billy if he’d do it!’

“Then Billy called me, and I thought it was a prank call. I don’t know what he knew about me, but he did it. It was as nutty as you’d think it was. He took it very seriously and his mother, Lorraine, was there. Then we all went down to the Texas coast.

“Billy sent us champagne, chocolates and flowers. You haven’t lived until you’ve gone out on the town in Texas with Billy Gibbons. His influence is very big on me, personally as well as musically.”

You’ve met Stevie Ray Vaughan – how did that come about?

“I never got to play with him, but I had seen him a bunch of times. I met him for the first time in ’89. We had a family jewellery shop in Dallas and Stevie had an old antique watch he brought in to get repaired. I just happened to be there when he came in; in fact I walked right past him when my dad was talking to him.

“My dad called me back and said, ‘Son, there’s somebody here you want to meet.’ And it was Stevie. I was in my late 20s, trying to get it together. I hadn’t met George at that point; so my dad asked him: ‘Do you have any advice for my son?’

“I was really embarrassed by that at the time, but Stevie said to me: ‘Yeah, keep it clean.’ To me, one of the greatest parts of his legacy was his sobriety and him helping others through that journey as well.

“He never come back to get his watch, so in 1990, the last time he played in Dallas, I took the watch out to where he was playing, got backstage and gave it back to him. He did have a light – an aura or energy – about him. It was palpable. It was real and he was very powerful. God bless him; he was a great man.”

With the Gibson Les Paul Junior celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2024, it’s hard not to immediately think of Leslie West – arguably the most influential Junior player who ever lived. The legendary Mountain co-founder and guitarist wielded his instantly recognizable TV Yellow and Sunburst models throughout his career.

In an excerpt from a 1993 interview, which was published in the latest edition of Guitarist, West reflects on his love affair with the Les Paul Junior, and recalls how he ended up giving one to Pete Townshend.

“Felix [Pappalardi, Mountain's bassist] gave me the first Junior that I used in Mountain,” he says. “It was basically a hunk of wood with a pickup on it, the cheapest guitar that Gibson ever made. But it was all I needed. It had one pickup, a tone control, and a volume control.

“When I started Mountain with Felix I used an SG Junior and the thing would never stay in tune. So he had this old beat-up Junior and he said, ‘Try this thing,’ and I never gave it back.”

West ended up giving the guitar he got via Pappalardi to The Who's Pete Townshend after he was summoned to play on the 1971 record Who's Next.

“I played on Won’t Get Fooled Again, Baby Don’t You Do It, and Behind Blue Eyes. They came over to the States and they were at the Record Plant in New York. Kit Lambert [The Who's record producer and manager at the time] called me up and said, ‘Pete wants to record an album, but he doesn’t want to overdub; he wants you to play lead.’ So we went down and we did it.”

These takes, which are a great example of two guitar legends collaborating, didn’t make the final cut – but were eventually released as part of the deluxe edition. However, West had built a good rapport with Townshend, so much so that he gave him a few trinkets from his collection.

“When I finished the sessions I gave Pete my Junior and an old Tweed Fender Champ and he wrote me a really beautiful letter. I had the greatest time seeing how they recorded because that was a unique group, I’ve got to tell you.”

The Who guitarist wasn’t the only individual West converted into a Les Paul Junior disciple. When Mountain supported Jethro Tull in the States, West, wielding his Junior, caught Martin Barre’s eye, inspiring him to adopt one himself.

“I ended up buying a Les Paul Junior, like everyone else who met him did. I had a really old ropey Fender Strat, but basically Aqualung was all recorded on the Les Paul Junior.”

For more about the history of the Gibson Les Paul Junior, plus new interviews with Marcus King and George Benson, pick up issue 518 of Guitarist at Magazines Direct.

Here we take a look at the electric guitars, amps, and effects as used by punk’s greats. Back in the '70s these players embraced a DIY ‘make do and mend’ ethic...

And there was a lot of mending to do as players such as Steve Jones, Joe Strummer, and Johnny Ramone pushed their gear to the limit. We'll also recommend some contemporary punk guitars that you can pick up and use to make some noise of your own,.

1. Wayne Kramer’s Stratocaster

In the 1970s, poverty-stricken early punk innovator Wayne Kramer repainted his Strat metallic purple and sold it. The guitar has never been recovered, so hard info is scarce today.

The big headstock puts it no earlier than December 1965, and Kramer had it for the recording of the MC5’s Kick Out The Jams in October 1968.

In a bid to make his solos cut through, Kramer installed a humbucker (most likely a Gibson, given the era) in the middle, retaining the single coil Strat bridge pickup for his preferred rhythm tone. In the Vietnam era, the stars and stripes motif was Kramer’s own patriotic way of reclaiming the US flag from right wingers.

• Buying now? Fender did a run of Wayne Kramer Strats in 2011. Failing that, you’ll need to find a Strat with a middle pickup rout to install a PAF ’bucker.

2. Johnny Thunders’ 1960 Les Paul Junior

The New York Dolls were forerunners of punk and glam metal, and you can thank Thunders for the Junior’s subsequent appearances on records by The Clash and Green Day. Thunders started out playing a 1957 Les Paul Special with the neck pickup disconnected.

At a show with the Stooges in Memphis, Thunders hit the pickup selector, cutting out the sound. Thinking his guitar was broken, Thunders smashed it and incited a riot.

On returning to New York, he purchased his TV yellow doublecut Junior which had no confusion-causing switches. He referred to it as an ‘automatic guitar’ because it was easy to use, like an automatic car.

• Buying now? The Harley Benton DC-Junior has all the right features, and even comes in TV yellow.

3. Johnny Ramone’s 1965 Mosrite Venture Model II

Johnny Ramone wanted something cheap and individual, and the Mosrite was perfect. They’re now highly collectible, as less than 150 of Ramone’s preferred slab-bodied variant were originally built, but at the time it was a junk shop special.

A 2021 auction catalog description of Ramone's #1 Mosrite said, “The fretboard shows an incredible amount of wear to the bass side of the higher register frets” from Ramone’s savage pick attack, and “extreme wear on the back of the neck from the first to 5th fret” from his constant powerchording. It sold for $937,000 to an anonymous buyer who, we would assume, does not play punk guitar for a living.

• Buying now? The Harley Benton MR-Classic gives much of the look and vibe of the original Mosrite.

4. Steve Jones’ 1974 Les Paul Custom

By his own account, the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones, er, “borrowed” some of the gear he used in his early career, but this guitar was not misappropriated.

It had belonged to the New York Dolls’ Sylvain Sylvain, and some say that Malcolm McLaren took the guitar as payment for managing the Dolls, eventually passing it on to Steve.

Regardless, it wound up in Jones’ hands for the duration of the Sex Pistols’ career, before being stolen from him in 1978. Rumours flew about its whereabouts until May 2024, when it sold for a not-very-punk $390,000 at auction.

• Buying now? The Epiphone Les Paul Custom looks the part, but the Inspired by Gibson Custom version has Gibson specs, including an ebony fingerboard.

5. Joan Jett’s 1972 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe

The 17-year-old Joan Jett picked up a natural finish Deluxe on joining the Runaways, and wouldn’t get her better known Gibson Melody Maker until her solo career. The Deluxe’s mini-humbuckers are clearer and brighter than PAFs, and live footage frequently shows Jett using the neck pickup.

Although manager Kim Fowley called the Runaways “an all-girl answer to Grand Funk,” the group quickly became friends with the Ramones, the Damned, and the Sex Pistols, cementing their punk credibility.

Being a ’72, the Deluxe had a ‘pancake’ body, with a layer of maple sandwiched between two mahogany slabs in addition to the maple top, for greater rigidity.

• Buying now? Mini humbuckers are rare but will fit in P-90 routs, so something like the Harley Benton SC450 is ripe for modification.

6. Joe Strummer’s 1966 Telecaster

Strummer had this Sunburst model sprayed black and the bridge swapped to a six-saddle model for better intonation. The tuners were replaced with contemporary 70s models, too, but this was otherwise a stock 1966 Telecaster.

The tradition of adorning guitars with anti-establishment messages goes back at least to Woody Guthrie’s “This Machine Kills Fascists,” probably earlier, but Strummer popularized stickers in punk.

The ‘Ignore Alien Orders’ and ‘Trash City’ decals sat alongside ‘NOISE’ stencilled in white. There were raised eyebrows when Fender released a roadworn Joe Strummer Tele for £1,599, and a run of 75 masterbuilt replicas of his original for – gulp – $20,000.

• Buying now? The Squier Sonic Telecaster has the six-saddle bridge and comes in black. Job done.

7. Mick Jones’ 1958 Les Paul Standard

It might not seem very punk to play the world’s most collectible guitar, but when Jones picked up his ’58 the vintage market had not yet exploded, and they were much more akin to playing a ’90s Les Paul today.

The classic combination of Les Paul and Tele fuelled The Clash from London Calling onwards, although Jones played the majority of guitars on the band’s studio albums. And, though Jones is more associated with the Les Paul Custom because of its appearance in hit videos like Should I Stay Or Should I Go, it was the Standard on The Clash’s most important recordings.

• Buying now? Almost every budget brand has a singlecut option. The Vintage V100NB has no frills but solid quality.

8. Patti Smith’s Fender Duo-Sonic

Patti Smith’s 1962 Sunburst Duo-Sonic was a gift to her from Television’s Tom Verlaine, who played it on Little Johnny Jewel. The Duo-Sonic was rumored to have belonged to Jimi Hendrix during his stint playing for the Isley Brothers after his original one was stolen – though its authenticity can’t be proven.

Smith is more frequently photographed with her other, black, Duo-Sonic, which has a pre-1959 maple fingerboard. The short 22.5” scale length gives it a spongier attack and deeper tone than a Strat. Smith refers to the Duo-Sonic in various lyrics and is credited on some of her albums specifically for Duo-Sonic guitar.

Buying now? Tough! Only the Fender Player Duo-Sonic comes close, and it’s based on the later 24” scale spec.

9. Greg Ginn’s Dan Armstrong Plexi Guitar

As Black Flag pushed punk’s evolution into hardcore, guitarist Greg Ginn looked for something unusual and came up with the Dan Armstrong Plexi guitar. He’s the reason Dave Grohl plays one – Grohl’s even touts a Black Flag sticker.

Ginn replaced the pickup with assorted humbuckers, frequently having trouble with them shorting out. Greg reputedly sweats like a beast, and the pickup was later sealed in a bid to prevent damage.

There were two Black Flag Plexis. One had the Black Flag logo taped on and was eventually sprayed black, while the other remained clear. Both were eventually stolen and remain missing.

• Buying now? Budget acrylic-bodied guitars appear frequently on eBay; we cannot attest to their quality!

10. Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein’s Annihilator

Misfits guitarist Von Frankenstein drew this body design in high school, inspired by Batman, and then built it himself while working in a machine shop. He bought mahogany body wood from Paul Reed Smith and used a graphite neck-through design.

Rather than side dot markers, the frets are labelled with the names of the E-string notes. Although there’s a Floyd Rose bridge, it’s modified to be a hardtail, and Doyle even wound the pickup himself to his own spec. After a brief partnership with Oktober Guitars, Dean now makes a replica for an eye-watering $9,999.

• Buying now? Nope! Your best bet may be the Ibanez Iceman as played by Doyle before he built the Annihilator.

11. Billie Joe Armstrong’s Fernandes Blue

Billie Joe got his 1980s Fernandes Strat copy for his 10th birthday and it has been his favorite ever since. Only the bridge pickup is connected. On Dookie it featured a Bill Lawrence dual blade humbucker, but this died in an epic mudfight at Woodstock ’94.

The guitar has housed a Seymour Duncan JB SH-4 since then. The body is probably made from reclaimed bowling alley wood – Fernandes built many of its 80s guitars this way, pancaking silver heart planks together to get the required thickness. Blue has probably been seen by more people than any guitar in the history of punk.

• Buying now? If you’re beset by brand loyalty, you could track down a new Fernandes RT model. An HSS Fender Strat will be easier to locate on these shores though.

12. Tom DeLonge’s 1994 Fender Stratocaster

DeLonge’s original Strat is an Olympic White USA 40th Anniversary model, covered – of course – in stickers. Tom has always used the hottest pickups he can find.

He originally fitted this with a Duncan Hot Rails and JB Jr in the neck and middle, and an angled DiMarzio X2N. In 1997, the JB Jr was swapped for a Lil Screamin’ Demon and the X2N became a Duncan Invader.

The guitar stayed in this form for Dude Ranch and the band’s breakthrough, Enema Of The State. As Blink-182 exploded, Fender custom built DeLonge five single-pickup Strats in various colours, each with a single Invader pickup.

• Buying now? The Squier Sonic Stratocaster HT H has a single humbucker, fixed bridge, and bright colors and is ripe for stickering.

Punk rock: the amps

Fender

Steve Jones recorded Never Mind The Bollocks with a Fender Twin Reverb using his ‘magic settings’ – everything on 10. It was also Joe Strummer’s amp of choice for London Calling.

The Dead Kennedys’ East Bay Ray recorded his parts for their seminal debut, Fresh Fruits For Rotting Vegetables, using a Fender Super Reverb he’d modded himself.

Marshall

Historically, this is probably the punk amp brand. Johnny Ramone bought three in 1976, along with six 4x12 cabinets, all of which he ran simultaneously.

Steve Jones toured with a 100-watt Super Lead during the Pistols’ original run. Minor Threat and their early 80s contemporaries leaned hard on the JCM800, and Green Day’s Dookie was recorded with a 1959SLP.

Vox

Vox amps, widely available in the UK, were unsurprisingly grabbed by many young punks. Most notably, The Clash’s debut album tone is defined by the AC30. The Stranglers’ Hugh Cornwell has used them for his entire career, only recently resorting to the Fender Blues DeVille as an emergency backup.

Mesa/Boogie

The Clash’s Mick Jones was an early adopter of Mesa/Boogie, using MkI and MkII models paired with Marshall cabs from London Calling onwards.

Pop-punk loved Boogie too. The Offspring and NOFX used the Mk IV. Tom DeLonge ran his Triple Rectifier alongside a Marshall JCM900, with the 900 on the clean channel, gain on 10.

Solid-state amps

Solid State goes right to the roots of punk. The Stooges’ Ron Asheton used the transistor-powered Vox Super Beatle. Wilko Johnson was an early HH IC100-S user, as were The Clash, Bauhaus, The Buzzcocks, and The Skids, too.

Early on, Johnny Ramone used an Electro-Harmonix Mike Matthews Freedom Solid State amp until his budget permitted that wall of Marshalls. Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould gigged Yamaha G100 and Roland JC-120 heads.

The brittle and cutting tones of post-punk were an ideal home for solid-state gear. In Siouxsie and the Banshees, John McGeoch used one with the chorus on all the time, alongside two 50-watt Marshall JMP combos, one clean and one dirty. Gang Of Four’s Andy Gill proudly used an early 80s Carlsbro 2x12.

Pedal power: Essential effects for punk

Modulation

Punk is not about brand loyalty, but you may spot a pattern here... Mick Jones originally employed an MXR Phase 90 before moving on to the Phase 100 for London Calling.

Steve Jones similarly employed MXR phasers on Anarchy.... Dr. Know/Gary Miller was an MXR devotee for reggae parts, and, in Magazine, John McGeoch used MXR M117R flangers.

Delay/echo

After modulation, a good tape or analog delay is the next most common punk accessory. Mick Jones used a Roland RE-201 Space Echo on Train In Vain and its successor, the RE-301 Chorus Echo, on Lost In The Supermarket.

The Echoplex, meanwhile, was part of the Dead Kennedys’ sound, heard most prominently on The Man With The Dogs and Holiday In Cambodia.

Compression

These crop up more frequently than you might expect, particularly in the spiky cleans of post-punk. David Byrne and John McGeoch favoured the MXR Dyna Comp, while the Boss CS-3 is used by East Bay Ray and Blondie’s Chris Stein.

If there's one word that describes Barrie Cadogan's playing, it's versatile. In addition to leading his own band, Little Barrie, the English guitarist has played with the likes of Primal Scream following Robert Young's departure, stepped into Johnny Marr's shoes in The The, acted as a sideman for The Chemical Brothers, and joined Oasis' Liam Gallagher's touring band, playing alongside John Squire of The Stone Roses.

Cadogan's latest role? Testing out the late Rory Gallagher's guitars before their much-anticipated auction on October 17. The Irish legend's 1963 Gibson Melody Maker is one that particularly attracts Cadogan due to its relative simplicity.

“I suppose it's not as cosmetically luxurious, but I guess that's part of the thing, why this sounds so good,” comments Cadogan.

Gallagher was a big fan of Melody Makers – even though they're largely considered budget guitars due to their stripped-down design and specs – and eventually owned four of them. His 1963 model, equipped with two pickups, four gold reflector control knobs, and a three-way selector, was purchased in London sometime in the ’80s.

“He seemed to get so much out so little, didn't he?” ponders Cadogan. “He probably would have plugged this in, and he could just do the rest, couldn't he? If it was a good sound straight away.

“It was only later on in his career, wasn't it, that his setup got a bit more involved but still not that intricate by today's standards. But through the ’70s stuff, it’s just so, so simple... All those sounds, all those different feelings, were just coming from him.”

Alongside the ’63 model, Cadogan also tests out Gallagher's 1959 and 1958 Gibson Les Paul Juniors, as well as his 1960 Melody Maker – which Gallagher primarily used for slide.

Fontaines D.C. guitarist Carlos O'Connell was also among the lucky few to try out Rory Gallagher's guitars, including his prized 1961 Strat, which recently found itself at the center of controversy.

70 years ago, Gibson’s Les Paul Junior set the bar for single-pickup guitars: packing a lone P-90, yet somehow managing to wring seven decades of stellar, tonal versatility out of the most basic of formats.

More recently, Yungblud is pushing a one-and-done ethos with his signature Epiphone SG, and we’ve seen the single-pickup idea pointed in a different direction from the likes of Manson, EVH and others.

Similarly far from the dusty, vintage fuzz of garage-rock sits LTD, the affordable arm of ESP traditionally (although not exclusively) tailored towards the heavier end of the spectrum. Earlier this year, LTD released a pair of flat-topped single-pickup Eclipse models (the EC-01FT and more affordable EC-201FT here) that puts its spin on the format, promising instruments “for players seeking the most hardcore performances imaginable”.

The unbound mahogany body design and slightly retro scratchplate are met by all-black hardware (LTD tuners and T-o-M-style bridge with through-body stringing), the angular LTD headstock and apparently fire-breathing single pickup. Elsewhere, we get a three-piece, glued mahogany neck, which is fitted with a roasted jatoba fingerboard, block inlays and 22 extra-jumbo frets.

But, we can see where LTD is coming from. Considering that a high percentage of LTD fans are likely to spend a lot of their time gained-up for rock, punk and metal with the bridge pickup engaged, possibly not even changing the tone control, doing away with the neck pickup and additional electronics sort of makes sense for some people.

Our Black review model comes shining out of the box bathed in a solid gloss finish. The setup is comfortable, with the potential to go lower, but ultimately buzz-free and where we’d expect for a middle-ground action.

The jatoba fingerboard has a reddish-brown mahogany-like hue while the frets look like they could have done with more time under the buffing wheel. But the thin U-shaped neck offers a comfortable ride for open and powerchords as well as lead playing.

Tonally, the LTD LH-150B pickup is solid, and excels under higher gain. It cleans up nicely with the volume rolled back, but, to our ears, it’s lacking some of that bite we were hoping for. There’s a slight woolly-ness to it that means punky, overdriven open chords lose some note separation – nothing a quick EQ change can’t fix.

The coil-split is engaged from the volume control, and yields a decent single-coil bridge sound. There’s a roundness to the attack and a midrange honk that lends itself to Clash-style jabs and greasy vintage funk and soul rhythm playing.

So, it seems we’ve got a model with a potential identity crisis on our hands. But what we do get is a very playable, quality guitar for bridge-heavy rock sub-genre playing. It’s fuss-free and fairly affordable, just don’t expect it to do everything.

Specs

• PRICE: $499/£479
• BODY: Mahogany, flat-top
• NECK: Mahogany, three-piece
• SCALE: 24.75”
• FINGERBOARD: Roasted jatoba
• FRETS: 22 XJ
• PICKUP: LTD LH-150B (bridge position)
• CONTROLS: Volume, w/ push-pull coil split
• HARDWARE: Black LTD tuners and T-o-M-style bridge (through-body-stringing)
• LEFT-HANDED: Yes
• CASE: No
• FINISH: Black [as reviewed], See Thru Cherry
• CONTACT: ESP Guitars

Gibson had used the ‘Electric Spanish’ or ‘ES’ designation since the launch of its first electric guitar, the ES-150, in 1936, but it would later become synonymous with the thinline double-cutaway ‘semi-acoustic’ ES-335T, which first appeared on the back cover of Gibson’s spring catalogue in 1958 (along with the initially short-lived Flying V).

A quick word on ES nomenclature before we continue: T stands for thinline, so applies to all models; D is for double-pickup, redundant for all but the 330; N is for Natural, C for Cherry and W for Walnut); S for stereo; and V for Vari-tone. Some now call the later, longer variant a 330L, but that was never official.

Back to the ES-335, then, and this model had a pair of Gibson’s new and improved noise-cancelling ‘humbucking’ pickups, four controls and a switch, dot fretboard markers and a stop tailpiece, while also launching with new, bigger frets, which would soon feature across all models.

Sunburst was the standard finish at $267.50, with Natural blonde an optional $15 upcharge. A radical design, it proved successful and has been in production ever since, almost matching Gibson’s long-running ES-175 jazzbox, which was produced for 70 years, from 1949 to 2019.

Like the early Les Pauls from 1952, the neck angle of the first 335 models was too shallow. This required the bridge and stoptail to be ground thinner and thereby made more fragile to get a good playing action. This issue was fixed by 1959 when neck binding was also added.

That same year, Gibson jumped to extend the range with the fancier ES-345, featuring stereo output (sending each pickup to a separate amp) and Vari-tone circuitry, and the even posher ES-355 (introduced in a very small number in 1958 before its official introduction in ’59) added multi-ply binding, gold hardware and Les Paul Custom neck appointments.

Single Minded

The runt of the litter was the ES-330T – the single-pickup sibling to the 330TD and the main focus of this feature – which joined the ranks in 1959, replacing the ES-225, along with its fellow new double-cutaway thinlines, the 335, 345 and 355. Not much cheaper at $230 (in Sunburst), it was a more showy proposition than entry-level ‘student’ models such as the Les Paul Junior.

The 330’s construction was surprisingly different. The neck joined the body three frets earlier (at the 16th fret, rather than the 19th of the 335), reducing higher register access.

And whereas the rest have a solid maple block under the top to anchor the pickups, bridge and tailpiece, the 330 is fully hollow. It therefore has a trapeze tailpiece to anchor the strings, which wasn’t fitted to other ES models until several years later – and in turn was removed by many players.

330s are a great transition guitar for acoustic players who often play cleaner and are used to dealing with feedback, while the hollow construction confers a certain familiar snap to the action.

Unlike their fancier siblings, 330s had Gibson’s earlier single-coil P-90 pickups under dog-ear covers – black plastic until ’62, then nickel-plated until turning to chrome in ’65. Bigsby and Gibson vibratos were offered across the ES range and all models’ features evolved along the typical Gibson path over time.

Knobs started as ‘bonnets’ and became metal cap ‘reflectors’ in 1960, before changing again to ‘witch hats’ by ’67. Switch tips lightened over the years as plastics improved, but they often darken to a nice amber with age.

The 330 necks had a chunky C profile in ’58, flattening slightly to a D in ’59, and got much skinnier in 1960, fattening again by ’63. Many feel the fatter necks have a bigger tone – just witness Clapton’s famous ’64 Cherry ES-335. By ’65, however, necks were narrower at the nut, compromising playability and desirability. Meanwhile, rectangular pearl blocks replaced the original dot fret markers in ’62.

As ever, there are transitional examples, such as the mid-’62 330s with plastic pickup covers and block fret markers (Guitarist contributor Huw Price has a great example). To many, the plastic covers sound better and their combination with the great-playing dot necks explains why these earlier examples are the most sought after.

Another quirk is that some 330s seem to have left the factory with two knurled thumb wheels on each bridge post. One adjusts bridge height and action, while the other rests on the body, arguably helping tone transfer and certainly stabilising the posts, which can lean and skew intonation.

Taking Shape

Body shapes also evolved, the earliest having very rounded corners and nicknamed ‘Mickey Mouse ears’; these became more pointed by ’63. Body thickness was quite variable, too, and the earliest ES models had thinner tops (4.4mm versus the later 5.6mm), making them even more responsive – and indeed desirable.

This writer discovered this via a fellow UK collector who sourced many of his beautiful ES guitars from world-leading expert Charlie Gelber of OK Guitars in Kent, Connecticut. Charlie has handled hundreds of golden-age ESes, including unique custom orders. Most of his personal favourites have these thin tops and come from a specific serial number and date range in 1959.

The finish colours of 330 models followed that of the 335: three-tone Sunburst was standard, with Natural blonde an option in ’59 and ’60, succeeded by Cherry in ’60 (though Gelber has so far unearthed 19 Cherry-finished 335es from ’59). A two-tone yellow to sepia sunburst, Argentine Gray, also surfaces occasionally.

The first Sunburst Les Pauls show Gibson’s red pigment was famously unstable until early to mid-1960. The earliest Cherry ESes also fade to a much sought-after ‘watermelon’ shade, and a Sunburst that often ages to an attractive ‘teaburst’ was offered by ’65. This writer had one with chrome pickup covers – a very pretty but uninspiring player.

By ’68, the 330’s neck length was brought into line with the 335s and Walnut and Sparkling Burgundy finishes had appeared. A very few Gibsons of the time were custom-ordered in black. Super-rare and highly desired by collectors, solid black is easier to fake than transparent finish, so buyers need rock-solid provenance – and/or a steady nerve!

Next mention must go to Epiphone, which Gibson acquired for $20k in 1957 and had integrated into production ready to be shipped from the Kalamazoo factory in 1959. Made alongside Gibsons, models share craftsmanship but retain distinctive features: New York and then mini-humbucking pickups, headstocks, tailpieces, pickguards and fret markers.

The ES-330-equivalent E230 Casino debuted in 1961, in both double and rarer single-pickup variants; standard finish was Royal Tan, a paler orangey sunburst. By 1962, Casinos had acquired a mother-of-pearl headstock legend, but a few earlier examples (see image 6, above) exist with Epiphone’s previous enamelled metal plate ‘bikini’ logo and dot fret markers.

Unsung Hero

Surprisingly few big-name players are associated with 330s. The great jazzer Grant Green and bluesman Slim Harpo are the most notable, and it was Emily Remler’s main squeeze, too.

B.B. King and Chuck Berry played them in the early days, JJ Cale and Terry Smith (’60s award-winning British jazz player who later founded early fusion band If) also picked up the model, and – perhaps unlikeliest of all – wall-of-fuzzers The Jesus and Mary Chain used them, too.

Likely because of affordability and suitability for rhythm, the ES-330 is quite common in pictures from the early ’60s British scene; influential Animals’ guitarist Hilton Valentine sported one, as did The Stones’ Brian Jones. Latterly, John Mayer has used one to great effect.

The sibling Epiphone Casino had better fortunes as it was taken up by The Beatles, an association that ensured its success and a unique position among Epiphones as the only model that consistently commands higher vintage prices than its Gibson equivalent. Paul Weller, Noel Gallagher and Gary Clark Jr keep the flame alive.

Even at today’s soaring prices, then, 330s are relatively affordable because their fully hollow body means they’re prone to feedback, so they don’t suit higher gain styles. This writer was in Dallas in September 2019, teching for the late Alan Darby when he rejoined Eric Clapton’s band for the Crossroads Festival fundraiser’s finale.

Gary Clark Jr was playing the show and he shared a little of how he managed his signature Casinos at volume. He’d started with the old bluesmen’s’ trick of stuffing socks/rags/t-shirts into the f-holes but had recently found a clever new way: inserting the long thin balloons that kids’ party entertainers twist into animal shapes and, once inside, inflating them to break up body resonances.

Pictured in this feature are this writer’s 1960 Gibson ES-330TN, 1961 Gibson ES-330TC and 1961 Epiphone E230T. All three are in excellent condition, though there is some checking on the blonde model, and a previous owner was careless with a tuning peg winder on the sides of the Cherry model’s headstock.

The Epi is very clean and has never had a neck-heel strap button, so it’s a sitting-down guitar – not a problem, though, as these are the ultimate couch guitars.

But why are the single-pickup models of particular interest? Well, they really can sound better. Consider how Les Paul Juniors tend to fetch more than Specials, despite being less fancy, for example.

Some say the second pickup’s magnetic pull and ‘phantom’ circuit loading both influence tone; the neck pickups on many 330TDs can be quite boomy, while the bridge unit can be contrastingly thin. But the ES-330T’s single pickup is mounted in the middle – the ‘Goldilocks’ spot – meaning the early dot-neck 330T is definitely up there as a must-have guitar.

For a guitar that was specifically created and aimed at beginners, the Gibson Les Paul Junior has been embraced by many professionals since it first saw the light of day in 1954. Gibson had no idea it had created a rock ’n’ roll benchmark that would still provide inspiration for players – and guitar makers – everywhere some 70 years on.

Later in that decade, Gibson changed the Junior’s ‘dress’ with a new double-cutaway version, which certainly has its fans and, as on the ES-335, that extra cutaway gave full access to the fingerboard, as well as increasing the unsupported length of the neck, of course.

It was exactly at this period that the Coronet was born, the first solidbody Epiphone (along with the two-pickup Crestwood) and the first one designed by Gibson since it had purchased the brand in 1957. It was initially called the ‘Moderne Black’, but that name was appropriated for Gibson’s near-mythical modernist design that appeared in 1958 alongside the V and Explorer; the Coronet name goes at least back to a pre-war Epiphone archtop.

Clearly, this was a pretty fertile time for Gibson’s design department. Not only had the Les Paul Standard grown into its classic style, there was the revolutionary ES-335, those modernist models, that double-cut Junior and Special, and now someone had to create new designs under the Epiphone brand.

Perhaps the diligent designers ran out of steam because the Coronet could be seen, outline-wise, as a symmetrical double-cut version of the Fender Telecaster or, more accurately, the single-pickup Esquire.

Gibson Charlie Starr Les Paul Junior

At the starting point of Gibson USA’s models, the standard Tobacco Burst Junior will cost you $1,599/£1,499.

This signature guitar (limited to 250 in each of its two colours) is a tweaked version of that, reflecting the mods Charlie’s 1956 Junior has gone through: there’s the Grover tuners, the six-saddle Leo Quan-style wrapover bridge with locking posts, a chromed metal output jack plate, and an overwound dog-ear P-90. More esoteric alterations are those amber speed knobs without any numbers.

There’s a signature squiggle on the truss rod cover, too, and the guitar comes in what Gibson calls a “historic Les Paul Junior ‘Gator Skin’ hardshell case”, which includes a some case candy in the form of the Charlie’s rather good signature ceramic slide and a ‘Hey Ya’ll’ sticker that replicates the DIY artwork on the back of his original.

The standard 45mm thick slab body with its small edge radius is two-piece centre-joined mahogany, the mismatched grain clearly visible under the translucent satin nitro Dark Walnut finish.

As ever, the neck is also mahogany, glued into the body with the typical Junior lip in the treble cutaway. To style, there’s no fingerboard binding and just simple dot inlays.

The mounting of the pickup – which has a ‘P90 Dogear OW’ logo on the back – is standard for the dog-ear style. Two lips extend from the ends of the baseplate and rest on the body top (here with a single spacer to raise the height) and it’s all held in place by the screws that also hold the plastic cover in place.

While there are some nice touches, those locking studs for one and the metal output jack plate, the classic black-plastic single-ply pickguard’s edges are left sharp and look – and feel – pretty cheap.

While we’re shouting out the cons, the heel finishing looks a little scrappy, plus there’s an area on the body by the base side of the fingerboard that hasn’t been properly grain-filled.

Epiphone Coronet (USA Collection)

Pulling this new USA-made Coronet from its attractive blue-plush-lined rectangular hard case, it comes across as the more expensive piece. The body is thinner and more SG-like at 34mm, and under the fetching translucent cherry colour it seems more attention has gone into the diagonally grain-matched two-piece centre-joined body. The gloss finish just seems more expensive than Charlie’s oh so utilitarian Junior, too.

Removing the white scratchplate we notice those sharp edges again as well as sharp points on the bass side, and the screws aren’t fully countersunk, which lets the craft down. Nevertheless, you see the neck extends into the body some 58mm, although it’s not full width like the post-’58 double-cut Les Paul Junior, for example.

Like our Junior, here there’s no fingerboard edge binding and you get those same dot inlays, while that ‘bikini’ badge that displays the headstock logo is a rather budget-looking plastic affair.

The tuners are single-unit Kluson style with white plastic buttons but with modern securing nuts on the front, not vintage-style bushings. More vintage is the same Advanced Plating lightweight wrapover bridge that you’ll see on Gibson’s standard Junior – ours looks aged, although that’s not mentioned on the spec sheet.

The soapbar P-90 – a ‘Lead P90 soapbar’, according to its rear label – is chosen over the rectangular New York single coil that would have graced the early Coronets. It direct-mounts to the body and is height adjustable.

That said, it seems quite loose and could probably do with firmer supports, and on closer inspection the two fixing ‘screws’ are actually bolts (as used to hold a humbucker into its mounting ring) that thread into a metal baseplate that’s screwed to the body under the pickup. The pickup is suspended with humbucking-like springs… so, direct-mounted to the body? No, not really.

Those funky ‘carousel’ control knobs look pretty cool, but again the pointer extension on each is very sharp. Along with that pickguard, we’d be tempted to smooth and round some of the edges and sharp points here.

Feel & Sounds

At 3.72kg (8.18lb), the Junior isn’t overweight but feels pretty substantial, which can’t be said for the Coronet; at 3.06kg (6.73lb), it feels featherweight in comparison and also a little more delicate.

Strapped on, they do hang slightly differently: the Junior feels very centred; the Coronet feels a little wider and sits a little lower using the same strap thanks to that bass-side horn strap-button position.

There’s little difference in the width of the necks and both have the same 20.8mm depth at the 1st fret. The Junior fills out a bit more by the 12th to 24.2mm; the Coronet is marginally slimmer at 23.5mm. There’s less difference than you might initially think, with both having quite full‑shouldered ‘C’ profiles.

The similarity continues with the relatively small fretwire (approximately 2.3mm wide by 1mm high) and you can’t help thinking a bigger wire on Charlie’s Junior would suit its modded vibe – his own original has apparently been refretted three times since the early ’90s when he bought it. As is, the chosen wire gives both guitars quite a vintage vibe, but the fret height is pretty low.

We expect nicely fettled frets these days and here the work is okay, although the Coronet’s frets do feel a little smoother on both the crowns and the ends. The fingerboard edges are very square on both, too, with no incurve; there’s some light edge rolling on the Junior, less, if any, on the Coronet.

Setup wise, both are pretty good – there’s a slightly sticky D string nut slot on the Junior and the Coronet’s nut grooves are a little high but not excessively so.

Neither guitar disgraces the single-pickup style and the Charlie Starr comes close to our real ’57 Junior with that almost cocked-wah throaty midrange push. No, it doesn’t quite match the wallop of the real thing – the top string response is a little thinner and brighter – but that archetypal Gibson grind is here in spades.

The Coronet’s different construction and slightly lower-output pickup lightens up that lower midrange grind a tad, but its slightly clearer voice has plenty of appeal. It’s not a million miles away in the heat department, either, with plenty of juicy punch and slightly more clarity, or twang, on the lower strings.

The missing ingredient on both, however, is a more flexible control setup. If you play with everything full up, that’s not a problem.

But whereas the original Junior has considerable contrast and shade from its controls – going from an almost acoustic-like clean response with the volume and tone pulled back to that full roar – both review models are a little more ordinary. That’s a pretty quick DIY fix, though.

Verdict

From a sound and, to a certain extent, playability perspective, both of these ‘Juniors’ hit the spot. But it’s at the expense of the finer details that many makers simply wouldn’t allow.

That said, for those who need the Gibson logo and embrace the Junior style, Charlie’s model has got something going on: it comes across as a real giggers’ delight, far from precious and with a very strong, full-fat P-90 roar.

To be fair, the Coronet isn’t far behind and any good boost or overdrive would even up the slightly lower output here. And there’s something very appealing about the slightly less-thick voice, not to mention the resonant lightweight platform and superb finish.

Specs

Gibson Charlie Starr Les Paul Junior

• PRICE: $1,999/£1,769 (inc case)
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Single-cutaway, single-pickup solidbody
• BODY: 2-piece mahogany
• NECK: 1-piece mahogany, ‘Artist Spec 50s’ profile, glued-in
• SCALE LENGTH: 624mm (24.57”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech/43.7mm
• FINGERBOARD: Indian rosewood, acrylic dot inlays, 305mm (12”) radius
• FRETS: 22, medium
• HARDWARE: Adjustable wrapover with locking studs, Grover Rotomatic tuners with kidney buttons – nickel-plating
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51.5mm
• ELECTRICS: Overwound Dogear P-90, volume and tone controls with numberless speed knobs
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.72/8.18
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISH: Dark Walnut (as reviewed), ebony – satin nitrocellulose
• CONTACT: Gibson

Epiphone Coronet (USA Collection)

• PRICE: $1,699/£1,599 (inc case)
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Double-cutaway, single-pickup solidbody
• BODY: 2-piece mahogany
• NECK: 1-piece mahogany, ‘SlimTaper’ profile, glued-in
• SCALE LENGTH: 624mm (24.57”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech/43.3mm
• FINGERBOARD: Indian rosewood, acrylic dot inlays, 305mm (12”) radius
• FRETS: 22, medium
• HARDWARE: Wrapover bridge, with locking studs, vintage-style ‘Gibson Deluxe’ tuners with white plastic buttons – nickel-plated
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 50mm
• ELECTRICS: Soapbar P-90, volume and tone controls with ‘carousel’ knobs
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.06/6.73
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISH: Vintage Cherry (as reviewed), Ebony, TV Yellow (Epiphone.com exclusive only) – gloss nitrocellulose
• CONTACT: Epiphone

Gibson has given five of its most popular electric guitars a gorgeously striking Dark Walnut finish.

The namesake Dark Walnut Series – top marks for imagination – comprises a ’60s-style Les Paul Standard, SG Standard, ’70s Flying V, Les Paul Junior, and an ES-345.

The vintage-yet-timeless ’70s-style finish has always been one of Gibson's best, but over the years it has been rather hard to come by, often eschewed in favor of some more orthodox finishes. As per Gibson's observations, it “lets the beauty of the natural wood grain shine through”.

However, it must be noted that no walnut has actually been used in the creation of these guitars –it’s a purely aesthetic choice. All guitars except the ES-345 serve up mahogany bodies and necks, with their rosewood fretboards comprising 22 medium jumbo frets.

For the Les Paul and Flying V models, those necks are carved into a SlimTaper profile. On the Junior, it's a ’50s vintage profile, and a more rounded contour for the SG.

The Les Paul hardware specs include ’60s-style Burstbucker humbuckers, an ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge, an aluminum Stop Bar, and Grover Rotomatic tuners with kidney buttons, and a plain maple cap.

The build “pays tribute to Gibson's Golden Era of Innovation and brings authenticity back to life”, says Gibson.

The SG's hardware differs slightly; 490R and 490T Alnico 2 pickups “provide the power to drive”, with those same Grover tuners augmented by an aluminum Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge with an aluminum Stop Bar.

A pair of ’70s Tribute humbucking pickups, hand-wired to CTS potentiometers and the same chrome hardware as the SG are the headliners on the Flying V. Its fingerboard is also bound.

The Junior, meanwhile, delivers “perfect simplicity and surprising” versatility thanks to its double-cutaway body, wraparound bridge, and Dogear P-90 bridge pickup. As is the tradition with the guitar, there is no neck pickup.

The ES-345 branches out on its own. Concocted with a three-play maple/poplar/maple semi-hollow body, it rocks a solid maple centreblock, while its rounded C-Profile mahogany neck is capped with another rosewood fretboard.

A selection of high-end appointments has been made here, including Calibrated T-Type pickups, a hand-wired control assembly with Orange Drop capacitors, and Vintage Deluxe tuners.

Its lightweight aluminum ABR-1 bridge and Stop Bar tailpiece combo is anchored with steel thumb wheels and studs with gold hardware, giving an extra classy touch.

All Dark Walnut Series guitars are Gibson Exclusives and ship with hardshell guitar cases.

Unsurprisingly, the Junior is the cheapest at $1,699. Ascending in price order, the SG Standard ($1,799), '70s Flying V ($2,499), and Les Paul Standard ($2,599) all follow. At $3,899, the ES-345 stands as the budget blower.

Visit Gibson for more information about the newly released Dark Walnut Series.

The 1957 Les Paul Junior is a guitar I really love. The most well-known user of this instrument was Mountain guitarist Leslie West, who was universally beloved for having one of the heaviest guitar tones of all time. But there are many different sounds, both ultra-clean and distorted, that this instrument can provide, making it a perfect choice for just about any type of guitar-based music.

I treat the Les Paul Junior like a Fender Esquire, in that you can get a ton of different sounds out of a simple guitar fitted with one pickup, one volume control and one tone control. In the case of the Junior, it is fitted with a P90, which is a large, high-output single coil pickup.

Like an Esquire, the Junior works well for country-style guitar, as demonstrated by the licks shown in Figure 1. This 14-bar solo begins on beats 1 and 2 with a “country approved” phrase based on the A major pentatonic scale (A, B, C#, E, F#), after which I bring in C natural as a passing tone between C# and B, as well as G, via the open G string. The G note sounds great, as it implies an A7 chord (A, C#, E, G) and lends a bluesy feeling to the lines.

In bar 4, I switch to the A blues scale (A, C, D, Eb, E, G), initiated by partial barres across the high E and B strings, as well as the B and G strings. In bars 7-9, I expand the melodic lines to include F# and F natural.

Bringing in the F# evokes the sound of A Mixolydian (A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G), and, in the phrases played here, I use C natural and F natural as passing tones moving up to C# and F#, respectively.

Bar 13 into 14 is built from a “rolling” descending line that makes use of the open G, D, A and low E strings, as I move quickly between my fret-hand index and ring fingers.

If you turn the guitar up, the sound is perfect for root-5th power chords, as I demonstrate in Figure 2. Leslie created many of Mountain’s most iconic riffs from these simple two-note chords played on a Junior, such as those in Mississippi Queen, Nantucket Sleighride and many others.

If you turn the guitar’s tone knob all the way down, as I demonstrate in Figure 3, you can emulate the “woman tone” Eric Clapton makes use of on Cream songs like I Feel Free and Sunshine of Your Love. These licks are based on A minor pentatonic played up in 12th position, transitioning down to 10th position.

Back in 1957, the instrument was only available in sunburst or “TV yellow,” so named so that you could see it on this new contraption called black and white television.

Gibson and Epiphone both make great reissues of this classic instrument, so no need to break the bank when picking up a Les Paul Junior. Armed with one, you can rule the world.

Gibson has announced the arrival of the Charlie Starr Les Paul Junior, honoring the Blackberry Smoke frontman with a signature guitar inspired by his beloved vintage Les Paul Junior.

“It’s based on my 1956 Gibson Les Paul Junior, which is a old black refinished guitar,” explains Starr in the Gibson clip. “It's beaten and it's a Frankenstein. It's got a lot of modifications and changed parts, since the ’50s, since it was born, but I think most of that stuff happened in the ’70s…”

Starr’s signature model is inspired by that mojo-laden guitar, but doesn’t give it the full Murphy Lab treatment – clearly, aiming to create a US-made player model that instead offers a clean take on the spirit and handy mods of the ’56.

As such, you still get that ’50s-style neck profile with Indian rosewood board and nitro-finished body (albeit in satin), but it swaps out the traditional lightning bar tailpiece for an adjustable wraparound with locking studs. 

Then there are Grover Rotomatic tuners, a custom overwound P-90 pickup and it all comes in a ‘Gator skin’ case, complete with Starr’s signature ceramic slide and a ‘Hey Y’all’ sticker.

The run is available in a choice of Ebony and Walnut, with production limited to just 250 guitars in color.

At $1,999, some will argue that the price point is steep for a single-pickup spec (a regular US Les Paul Junior comes in at $1,599), but it does feel like a compelling package.

The bridge mod addresses the intonation gripes many have with the Junior’s usual tailpiece, while the tuner upgrades and custom-wound pickup are also genuinely appealing. All in all, it feels like one of those signature models that could have an appeal well beyond the artist’s own fanbase.

It’s also good to see Gibson offering some collectible options to players who don’t have the means to play the market for the likes of a Custom Shop Collector’s Edition.

For more information on the Gibson Charlie Starr Les Paul Junior, head to Gibson.

The guitarist who discovered a near-unsalvageable first-year model Les Paul Junior in Kansas has completed its restoration – and the results are a sight to behold. 

Musician and YouTuber Matthew Scott first shared his discovery back in October last year. At the time, he said the build (now confirmed to be a 1954 example) was in “the worst condition I’ve ever seen”, and that was no understatement: the guitar was clinging on for dear life.

Scott traveled to Witchita to inspect the instrument, which has now been restored against all odds, purring with a gorgeously rich, smoky timbre. 

The state of the guitar upon its discovery reads like a horror story: the body had been scorched, its neck heel crudely 'repaired' with four bolts drilled straight through the body and neck, its headstock broken and the machine heads long gone. 

It’s now been carefully re-fretted with Jescar nickel frets and given a fresh set of strings. Impressively, most of the original guitar actually remains in place, including its single P-90 in the bridge. Just some electronic TLC was required to get it back in good working order.

The broken headstock has been glued back to shape, while Scott successfully removed the bolts in the Frankenstein'd neck, re-gluing it back in place using more traditional techniques.

Scott has largely completed the rebuild with vintage parts in keeping with the guitar's heritage as one of the first Les Paul Junior models produced. 

Although its original tailpiece was in good condition, Scott has swapped in a newer alternative that will better accommodate modern strings and intonate better.

The shafts of the guitar's original no-line Kluson tuners have been bent back into shape and host cream tuner buttons. Scott also sourced some original 1954 Gibson Les Paul knobs to accentuate the guitar’s authentic aesthetic. 

It’s a remarkable transformation from a guitar that looked destined for the scrap heap. One commenter on the guitarist’s YouTube video likened the revival to that of rescuing an abused animal. 

Further still, blues titan Jared James Nichols, who Scott describes as a “Les Paul Junior fanatic”, met up with Scott to spend an evening with the guitar and consequently fell in love with it. In fact, he wants to buy it.

“He played the guitar the entire night and it sounded phenomenal,” says Scott. “It really inspired me to go ahead and turn this guitar into a player.” 

Nichols is expected to become the proud owner of the restored guitar in the future, although several commenters on Scott’s YouTube have said they wouldn’t want to part ways with the relic.  

If he does end up purchasing this model, it wouldn't be the first time Nichols has got his hands on a restored early Gibson model.

Back in 2021, he made it his mission to restore 'Dorothy' – “one of the first Les Pauls ever made that was destroyed in a horrific tornado”.

Gibson is vying to make some of its standout guitars even more standout, as a total of 11 new electric guitars are unveiled in unique colorways. The range includes silver and gold sparkle ES-355s as well as Murphy Lab aged 1957 Les Paul Junior reissues, ’64 ES-335s and SGs, and an Explorer and Flying V.

Standing front and center is its reissue of the 1959 ES-355, which now boasts silver and gold sparkle heavy flake gloss finishes (see the bank account-bothering image above). Adding further glitzy luxury are diamond f-holes and a split diamond inlay on its headstock.

Its ebony fretboards, meanwhile, are emblazoned with mother-of-pearl block inlays and comprise 22 medium jumbo frets.

They’re not just about looks, though. Unpotted Custombuckers are in place to deliver “beautiful vintage-style tones” when they're not locked away in its pink, ‘50s-style Lifton hardshell case that they come with.  They both cost $8,199. 

There’s also a host of Murphy Lab-aged finishes in the range, which combines the “worn-in look of a heavily played vintage instrument with the reliability and readiness of new components.”

A Gibson custom 1957 Les Paul Junior gets this treatment. The single-cut guitar offers a ‘50s rounded medium C-neck profile and a simple but effective singular Dogear P-90. It’s available in a vintage sunburst finish.

Offering a few subtle differences is a 1958 Les Paul Junior. It sports a double cutaway body and the same neck and pickup combination and is finished in a worn a TV yellow finish. 

These guitars are complemented by Lifton Historic 'Gator Skin' hardshell cases, which are included in their $6,499 price.

It’s a one-two for its Gibson Custom 1964 ES-335 reissue models, which come in Vintage Burst or ‘60s Cherry. Both feature a custom-made Bigsby plate for a guitar that Gibson says is “brimming with character.”

Another medium C-neck is at play here, with their fretboards adorned with small block inlays. They both feature vintage-style electrics. Owning one will cost you $8,099, which includes its Lifton black and yellow hardshell case.

Inspired from 1958 are two Korina builds available as Explorers and Flying Vs. Both guitars are given Ebony finishes for that coveted ‘tuxedo’ look – something the brand has recently given to four Custom Shop acoustic guitars, with delectable results. 

The Explorer combines an ABR-1 bridge with unpotted Custombucker pickups and a two-piece body and neck. The Flying V sports the same gold-covered pickups and adds even more gold hardware for a sleek secret agent feel.

These two sharply dressed builds represent the pricier end of the range, coming in at $11,499 each. Their "historically accurate" cases feature a classic brown exterior and a plush pink interior for a Barbie's Dream House feel. 

There are two finishes and pickup combinations for its 1962 Les Paul SG Customs. Both share the same ebony Block Vibrola tailpiece, which signifies a key moment in the SG’s lineage as it began to move away from Les Paul branding, but go their separate ways when it comes to the electronics. 

The Cherry model offers two humbuckers, which are again unpotted, with the Classic White model adding in a third Custombucker.

Les Paul truss rods and Kluson tuners are common across both as Gibson looks to offer the “perfect mix of historical detail and premium quality.”

The pickup differences are reflected in their prices. The triple-humbucker Classic White finish comes in at $7,999. It's $6,199 for the Cherry model.

Last but not least, Gibson has given its Les Paul Modern Lite a striking TV Pelham Blue finish. In what it’s calling the “dark horse of the set”, it features a slimmer all-mahogany body and ribcage contour for improved playability.

There’s also a SlimTaper mahogany neck with a rosewood fretboard, which is partnered with open-coil 490R and 498T humbuckers.

Notably, this is the only guitar to come in a softshell, rather than a hardshell case. The shiny blue axe costs a far more modest $1,499.   

This isn't the only new Gibson Les Paul Modern Lite to have dropped recently. Guitar World recently sat down with two very different models with varying specs and price points. You can find out what we thought in our in-depth review. 

The humbly priced guitar rounds off a stellar-looking range with Gibson giving "Iconic classics an irresistible twist."

For more information, head to Gibson. 

A lost Gibson Les Paul Junior that is speculated to be a first-year model from 1954 has been discovered – and it might require one of the most extensive guitar restoration efforts in recent memory.

The electric guitar itself was scouted by guitarist and YouTuber Matthew Scott, who traveled to Wichita in order to size up the single-cut, which – in the words of its proud new owner – was in “the worst condition I’ve ever seen”.

Scott’s sentiments are likely to be shared by many guitar fans: the LP Jr. is borderline unsalvageable, with its original sunburst finish all but destroyed through decades of harsh exposure and neglect.

But such wear isn’t just limited to the body. The neck and headstock have had their own coats of paint all but removed by the elements, with the Gibson Les Paul decal just about legible from the flecks of finish that are clinging on for dear life.

While the scorched body will be enough to make guitar fans shudder, it gets worse: the original nut has been replaced with, erm, an aluminum foil alternative, the controls have been snapped off, and the buttons on the tuning machines have all rotted off.

The worst part, though? The neck heel. For some reason, at some point during the Les Paul Jr.'s lifetime, one of its owners decided to fix a joint problem by crudely drilling four bolts straight through the body and into the neck.

Little is revealed by way of the instrument's history, but we imagine Scott will endeavor to dive deeper into the single-cut's story as he charts the progress of his restoration journey.

Given the state of his find, Scott's new guitar was by no means a plug-in-and-play instrument, and although he manages to get some sound out of it during an initial inspection, it isn’t pleasant. 

Granted, a quick tuner replacement and restring somewhat alleviated the sound problems (that pickup still sounds surprisingly warm) it became clear rather quickly that the Les Paul Jr. was in desperate need for a systematic overhaul. The action, for instance, was measuring in at almost half an inch.

But what makes this tale particularly interesting is the guitar's provenance: Scott speculates it could in fact be an early 1950s example, perhaps even a first-year model from 1954.

The signs that this could in fact be a rare vintage guitar from Gibson’s initial run of Les Paul Juniors? Well, first, the complete absence of any sign of a serial number on the back of a headstock could indicate the number itself was once stamped, rather than impressed, onto the wood.

It’s highly possible the serial number had been wiped away when the finish started flaking, and as per Know Your Vintage, the presence of a painted serial number would loosely put it in the 1954 to 1961 bracket.

From '61, the model took on double-cut and SG-inspired body shapes, before returning as a single-cut variant in 1986. By this point, numerous changes had been made to the design.

Other signs include the real pearl dot inlays, as found in ‘54 and ‘55 models, and the single line Kluson tuners.

In reality, we won’t know for sure exactly what year the model derives from until Scott does a deep dive into the guitar, and takes it apart. That’s something he fully intends to do in future episodes, so visit his YouTube channel to keep up to date with his progress.

'Lost' vintage guitars have been turning up in increasing numbers over the past few years. In 2022, a dusty old acoustic guitar unearthed in a woman's home in New Zealand turned out to be an 1870s Martin, which was bought by an ex Fender CEO.

More recently, an unnamed resident in the UK found an old 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard that was sold to Joe Bonamassa, and a historic P-Bass, touted as one of the first to be imported to the UK, was discovered and sold at auction.

This particular model also joins a very specific school of 'barnfound guitar restoration projects', which includes a Squier Strat that had been left zip-tied to a fence for five years before being revived through a crazy guitar mod.

Green Day are set to reopen the virtual doors to their official Reverb Shop, through which the band plan to sell nearly 100 pieces of music gear that has been used on tour and in the studio across the years.

Naturally, it is Billie Joe Armstrong’s own assortment of electric guitar offerings that will be of particular interest to six-string fans, with the frontman contributing a selection of notable instruments to the sale.

There will be, unsurprisingly, a handful of Gibson Les Paul Juniors included in the event, but there are two that stand out among the rest: a bright pink model that is actually a prototype BJA signature guitar, and a one-of-a-kind, custom relic’d version that can actually be won simply by signing up for store details.

The former example, though, notably served as a test for Armstrong’s 2017 signature Gibson, and became the template for which the guitarist and his tech experimented with numerous hand cut pickguard shapes and pickup mounting options.

There is, as such, a fair few drill hotels scattered around the body of the single humbucker guitar, which also seems to be missing its two control knob tops.

The preview list also plays host to another Les Paul Jr., this time in the form of a vintage 1956 sunburst model that, according to Reverb, was purchased in 2017 during Green Day’s Revolution Radio tour and became Armstrong’s hotel and bus practice guitar.

Two final Gibsons make the store preview, including a heavily played, stage-used ES-335 that was built-to-order for the frontman specially for the 21st Century Breakdown tour, and a Sonex 180 Deluxe.

Gibsons aside, Armstrong’s personal Fender Bullet Deluxe – another one of his practice strummers during various US and European tours – and a heavily customized Gretsch Electromatic that can be seen in the music video for Back in the USA are also set to be listed.

This is only an early preview, remember, so more guitars will be added to that list when the store eventually goes live next week. A Hiwatt cab has also been teased, so it’s safe to assume some amps and pedals will be thrown in the mix, too.

The Green Day Reverb Shop will go live on October 18 and, as mentioned above, those who sign up for more information are in with a chance of winning that relic’d BJA Les Paul Jr.

Head over to Reverb to find out more.

GUITAR SHOWCASE 2023: Today, it’s harder than ever to describe the sonic characteristics of electric guitar pickup types – there are so many configurations, both stock and aftermarket, that blur the lines of each core design. 

For every classic single-coil pickup there’s a stacked noiseless unit; for every vintage-voiced humbucker, there’s a high-output face-melter for metal. However, there are a few key categories of pickup to know about.

A little knowledge of each one’s origins and uses will help you identify your own tonal requirements should you wish to swap out your axe’s pups.

Single coils

Early designs appeared in Rickenbacker lap steels, Gibson and Gretsch semis, and then later in Fender’s Telecaster predecessor, the Esquire, but perhaps the archetypal single-coil pickup is that found in the Fender Stratocaster.

The Strat’s later five-way (originally three-way) switching design has become integral to common perception of what this type of pickup should sound like, and guitarists as varied as Jimi Hendrix and Cory Wong have made the sounds of these pickups their own. HSS/HSH-style Superstrats are arguably only simple variations on the original theme.

Humbuckers

Humbucker pickups solve the problem of noise inherent in passive single coil designs. Two coils are employed in a “reverse-wound reverse-polarity” configuration that cancels out the hum. 20 or so years after the first humbuckers appeared, Gibson released its PAF unit in the 1950s, setting a much copied template for passive ’bucker design that remains essentially the same to this day.

Typically, humbuckers sound fatter, bassier and have less treble than single coils. The Les Paul tones of Jimmy Page and Slash wouldn’t be the same without ’em. 

P-90s

Designed by Gibson’s Walt Fuller in the 1940s, the P-90 is sonically distinct from other single-coil designs by virtue of a fuller-bodied sound that falls somewhere between the fatness of humbuckers and treble-rich presentation of Fender-style single coils. 

They’re most famously deployed on the Les Paul Jr (though also commonly on LP Standards and SGs), as used by Bob Marley, Leslie West and Billie Joe Armstrong,      among countless others.

Active pickups

Active (ie, battery-powered) pickup systems gained popularity in the ’80s, notably among many metal acts, but also in the hands of David Gilmour and Mark Knopfler, who, let’s face it, are no strangers to quality tone. 

The active circuitry gives higher output levels than passive units and ensures both single coils and humbuckers alike deliver next to no audible noise. Typically, these systems would have a ‘hi-fi’ style tight, crisp top-end befitting of ’80s high production value music.

Fishman Fluence pickups 

A later active innovation developed by Fishman, here the electronic gubbins is printed onto a ‘Fluence Core’ circuit board instead of being wound around a bobbin. 

The high-performance, low-noise units offer some of the ‘organic’ experience of passive pickups, plus the power, low-end clarity and low noise that only actives can give. 

Often used on seven-, eight- and even nine-string guitars, the units are well-suited to ‘modern’ styles. However, clearly not wishing to pigeonhole their tech, Fishman have also created Fluence versions of classic-voiced humbuckers, single coils and P-90s.

Okay, a guide to the best punk guitars may seem a little redundant. As we all know, with the right attitude, just about any guitar can be punk. That said, there are a few staples of the genre that guitarists looking to tear down the establishment flock to time and time again. 

From its formation in the mid-1970s to its countless sub-genre spin-offs throughout the decades, punk guitarists have long favored a no-nonsense six-string that simply gets the job done – and that looks cool slung so low it could almost touch the stage floor.

So with that in mind, for this guide to the best guitars for punk, we've curated a list of straight-shooting instruments that we believe can more than handle the harsh conditions of a rowdy basement show, as well as deliver the gut punching tone you're looking for.

So, dust off your Dickies, lace up your Vans, and allow us to count you in…
1-2-3-4!

Our top picks

Best punk guitar overall

The original Les Paul Junior was unleashed on to unexpecting guitarists in 1954, and since then, this stripped-back student model has garnered quite the following, with punks' biggest names using it to devastating effect. 

Beloved for its uncomplicated approach to tone, simplified layout, and seriously dynamic pickup, this is easily one of the best Gibson guitars in their extensive catalog. 

The modern version from Gibson's Orginal Collection does a near-perfect job at replicating the vibe and feel of the earliest models with its slab mahogany body, single dogear P-90 pickup, fat 50's-style neck profile and wraparound bridge. 

So, if you're looking for an unadorned, humble guitar that can deliver an explosive tone at the strike of a power chord, the best punk guitar for you is the Gibson Les Paul Junior. 

Best for retro punks

There are few electric guitars as famous and iconic as Johnny Ramone's beaten-up 1965 Mosrite Ventures II. Johnny was rarely seen without his leather jacket and his beloved Mosrite, with the guitar featuring on all the New York punk's 14 studio albums, as well as being his go-to guitar for every live show. 

Eastwood has managed to capture the magic of that original guitar, and while it isn't an exact clone, it's pretty damn close for the money. 

Featuring an alder body and bolt-on maple neck, rosewood fingerboard, as well as a vintage Mosrite style adjustable roller bridge, this guitar feels solid and well built – and despite its off-kilter look, it's actually very comfortable. 

Best option from Epiphone

Sex Pistol, Steve Jones, and The Clash axeman Mick Jones arguably walked with their iconic Gibson Les Paul Customs so that modern punk players such as Zach Blair could run. 

Beloved for its unprecedented sustain and fierce power, the Les Paul is a near-perfect punk guitar in every way. Now, if you're looking to harness the raw power for yourself but you don't want to spend your life savings on a guitar, then the Epiphone Les Paul is a pretty great choice. 

Featuring the traditional custom bound, all-mahogany body, thin and comfortable 60s neck profile, jet-black ebony fingerboard, and gold hardware, this guitar looks every bit as good as its USA-made big brother, while the Epiphone ProBucker humbuckers ensure it sounds pretty close as well. 

Best punk guitar from Fender

Punk guitarists across the generations have long had a fascination with heavily modified Stratocasters, so it only makes sense to feature one in our list. Whether it's Billie Joe's Fernandes copy "Blue" or Tom Delonge's single pickup tone monster, the Strat has been part of punk for a long time. 

For this guide, we've chosen to showcase the Fender Player Stratocaster HSS, as we believe it not only offers players the tone and feel they need to play hard-hitting punk but also offers superb value for money. 

Featuring an alder body, a modern C-shaped neck and Player Series humbucking bridge pickup, this affordable Strat feels effortless to play and more than delivers on tone. 

Best lightweight option

While your mind may not go immediately to Gretsch when thinking of the best guitars for punk, the retro guitar giant has actually had a long history of showing up in the hands of the genre's most notable players. Everyone from Tim Armstrong of Rancid, Flogging Molly's Dennis Casey, and Poison Ivy from The Cramps have used various Gretsch models over their careers. 

Now, while we certainly could've chosen any number of Gretsch guitars for this list, we consider the Gretsch G5210-P90 Electromatic Jet to embody the no-nonsense attitude of punk the best. 

This singlecut Gretsch features a lightweight chambered mahogany body with a maple top, a mahogany neck with a thin "U" shaped profile, a 12"-radius laurel fingerboard, and a pair of P-90E single-coil pickups.  

Best on a budget

Yes, we've already featured an interpretation of the Mosrite in this guide, but when guitars are this good and this affordable, we have to shout about it. 

The Harley Benton MR-Modern may not be as accurate as the Eastwood Sidejack featured above, but to give credit where credit is due, Thomann's version is considerably cheaper, making it easily one of the best electric guitars under $500 on the market if you want to play heavy hitting punk rock. 

The MR-Modern features a fabulously wonky offset body, a Canadian maple bolt-on neck with Macassar ebony fretboard, glow-in-the-dark neck inlays, and a duo of Artec AHC-90 Soapbar Alnico-5 humbuckers – all for a little over $/£200! 

Best offset for punk

The Fender Jaguar went from surf king in the '60s to a symbol of hope for the disenfranchised youth in the '90s, cementing itself as one of the best offset guitars in the world – so for that reason, we couldn't have a list of the best punk guitars and not include a Jag!

The Fender Vintera '60s Jaguar Modified seamlessly blends the two eras of this wonky guitar. Featuring classic '60s styling with a modern neck profile and hotter pickups, you really do get the best of both worlds here. 

Now, we have to mention that the Jaguar is a short-scale guitar, coming in much smaller than its stable mates, the Telecaster, Stratocaster or Jazzmaster. This difference in length does give the Jag its slinky feel, but if you aren't a fan of short-scale, we suggest you look at the Jazzmaster instead. 

Want to learn more? Take a deep dive into the differences between the Jazzmaster and Jaguar. 

Best for simplicity

Who needs silly extra features like a second pickup or a volume and tone control? Certainly not Descendents legend Stephen Egerton. Now, if you thought the Gibson Les Paul Junior was simple, it has nothing on this heavily modified StingRay. 

Egerton has decided to forgo all controls and the neck pickup on his version of the Music Man classic, resulting in possibly the most straightforward guitar of all time. 

Featuring a lightweight okoume body which is finished in classy Charcoal Frost, a satin maple neck and a chrome-covered custom-wound Music Man humbucker, this guitar offers a no-fuss playing experience and a tone that prove that not everything sux today. 

Best G&L for punk

Rounding off our list of the best punk guitars is the wallet-friendly G&L Fallout Tribute. This modern version of the Fallout takes inspiration from the G&L SC-2 but brings it up to date with contemporary features. 

It may share the body of the Leo Fender-designed SC-2, but the guitar has been reimagined for today's modern player with the addition of a Paul Gagon-designed humbucker in the bridge and P90 pickup in the neck position.

As you'd expect, this makes the Fallout a tonal powerhouse and ideal for high-octane riffage. If you're looking for a comfortable, slim-bodied offset that is more than capable of taking to the stage at a punk show, then the G&L Tribute Fallout is the axe for you. 

Read our full G&L Tribute Series Fallout review

Best for heavy punk

The LTD EC-01FT may be minimalist, but it’s anything but basic. Crafted from a stunning mahogany body paired with a three-piece neck, it resonates like a single slab of wood. With minimal body routing, it ensures every note rings out with clarity, while the slightly larger control cavity accommodates a battery for future active pickups if you're feeling adventurous.

Featuring a Thin U neck profile and a deep cutaway, seamless playability across the silky Macassar Ebony fretboard is a given. The recessed bridge keeps strings close to the body, making palm muting a breeze - ideal for your punk riffage. 

The Duncan Custom 14 pickup, with its high output of 14.65k ohms, pushes amps to new heights while providing a rich, articulate midrange growl. Thanks to its split function, you can enjoy single-coil tones that sit perfectly between a P-90's edge and a Tele's snap.

Read our full ESP LTD Deluxe EC-01FT review

FAQs

What makes a great punk guitar?

So, when it comes to guitars for punk, most players like to keep it simple. At the end of the day, the majority of punk or pop-punk guitarists aren't switching between various tones on stage. Instead, they are more interested in playing fast, aggressively, and with attitude. 

So, with that in mind, it's very common to see one pickup guitars with simplified control layouts and minimal features. 

Now, as you'd expect, punk guitarists like to play with high levels of gain, so you'll want to make sure your new guitar has a pickup that can handle that much noise. Of course, humbuckers are the norm, as they will not only give you the power needed to push your amp into glorious distortion, but they will also take that pesky noise in their stride. 

That said, many legendary punk players gravitate towards the clear and crisp tone of the P-90 single coil – so choose which sounds best to your ears.  

How we selected the best punk guitars

Here at Guitar World, we are experts in our field, with many years of playing and product testing between us. We live and breathe everything guitar and bass related, and we draw on this knowledge and experience of using products in live, recording and rehearsal scenarios when selecting the products for our guides.

When choosing what we believe to be the best punk guitars available right now, we combine our hands-on experience, user reviews and testimonies and engage in lengthy discussions with our editorial colleagues to reach a consensus about the top products in any given category.

First and foremost, we are guitarists, and we want other players to find the right product for them. So we take into careful consideration everything from budget to feature set, ease of use and durability to come up with a list of what we can safely say are the best punk guitars on the market right now.

Read more about our rating system, how we choose the gear we feature, and exactly how we test each product.  

Why trust us?

☑️ A global audience of 3.8 million guitarists monthly
☑️ 1,200+ reviews on GuitarWorld.com
☑️ 30+ years of product testing at Guitar World

Guitar World boasts over 44 years of expertise and stands as the ultimate authority on all things related to guitars. The magazine and website feature expertly written gear round-ups and top-quality, authoritative reviews penned by a team of highly experienced industry professionals.

Guitar World's inaugural print issue hit the shelves in July 1980, and ever since, it has been captivating players and enthusiasts with engaging lessons, insightful interviews with the biggest guitar heroes, and priceless buying advice for newbie players.

Furthermore, GuitarWorld.com continues this legacy online and serves as the hub of the world's foremost authorities on guitar playing. The site not only hosts content from Guitar World but also showcases articles from respected publications such as Guitarist, Total Guitar, Guitar Techniques, and Bass Player. With a reach extending to 3.8 million players each month, GuitarWorld.com is a go-to destination for guitar fanatics globally.

Below, you'll find more information about the expert author of this guide.

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Can it really be 69 years ago that Gibson took the wraps off its bare‑bones Les Paul Junior? Well, it is, and while it might have been aimed at students back in the day, you don’t need us to tell you it’s powered many classic recordings to which Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong has certainly contributed. He’s been a Gibson signature artist since 2006, his latest was back in 2018, and there’s already an affordable Epiphone Billie Joe Armstrong Les Paul Junior.

Billie’s take for 2023 is as much a celebration of his style as it is a viable new addition to the oeuvre in its pink plastic Protector case with leopard print interior, a stock Vintage Ebony finish or this show-off Silver Mist metallic. 

The 2018 version used a standard ’57 Classic zebra humbucker, and previous runs featured a stacked-coil P-90 design. Under the dog-ear cover of this latest signature guitar is a new humbucker created by Gibson’s Jim DeCola that’s based on the ‘sidewinder’ style Gibson actually first used on the Seth Lover-redesigned EB-2 bass pickup back in 1958.

Pickup and finish aside, this version also differs from the Original Series Junior with its ’60s-style Billie Joe Armstrong SlimTaper neck profile, individual Gibson Deluxe tuners and large strap buttons.

Now, if you want a perfectly finished guitar, you might need to look elsewhere. Although the top clear coat is perfectly flat and glossed, you can see the grain of the mahogany in numerous places and a rather obvious tooling mark where the neck joins the body. As the neck is a full-width tenon, there’s that body lip on the treble side that is much more square-edged than our ’57 vintage reference. 

It’s also not possible to confirm whether the 45mm thick slab body is one or multi-piece because the only wood we can see is the slightly orange-tinted rosewood fingerboard. The edges of the ’board are lightly rolled and the standard medium-gauge frets are cleanly installed, just lacking a final polish on their tops. 

The neck pitch is good, too, so the lightweight aluminium wraparound bridge sits low to the body, though it does tip forward a little. While the setup is fine, intonation with this simple bridge will never be 100 per cent, but it’s certainly good enough for some rowdy rock ’n’ roll.

Feel & Sounds

This one is a perfect weight, light but not excessively so, and thanks to the pretty full shoulders (which are fuller than our Les Paul Classic’s standard SlimTaper), the neck feels bigger than the measurements suggest: 20.8mm deep at the 1st fret, 22.7mm by the 12th. Acoustically, there’s an alive feeling, a crisp and ringing response.

The pickup sits pretty close to that bridge; it’s 34mm from the domed top of the bridge to the centre of the high E polepiece, so 10mm closer than our ’57. As supplied and with no overall height adjustment, the top of the dog-ear cover sits around 3mm from the strings on both sides (measured with the outer strings fretted at the 22nd fret), although you can, of course, adjust the slot-head polepieces to your taste. Our ’57 model’s dog-ear is almost too close to the strings by comparison, approximately 1.5mm on both sides.

But what we hear from this BJA isn’t a million miles from our ’57: it has slightly less output and less of the big lower midrange, it sounds a little clearer and a bit more polite, and it’s less raw. But turn up the wick and it’s certainly got some balls, and it sounds and feels quite well behaved – more standard humbucking-like than our ’57, which is both noisier and quite microphonic by comparison.

The tone control is certainly effective, and though the volume’s taper is quite fast, many will just leave things full up. And that’s where we hear maximum sizzle – pulling that volume back does round things but only very slightly.

There’s quite an upcharge for this package, so unless you want a vivid pink leopard print case, or indeed a Junior in metallic silver, you might want to go for the standard model in one of its two historic colours.

Specs

• PRICE: $/£2,199 (inc case)
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Single-cutaway, solidbody electric
• BODY: Mahogany
• NECK: Mahogany, Billie Joe Armstrong SlimTaper profile, glued-in
• SCALE LENGTH: 624mm (24.6”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech/43.3mm
• FINGERBOARD: Rosewood, acrylic dot inlays, 305mm (12”) radius
• FRETS: 22, medium jumbo
• HARDWARE: Aluminium wraparound bridge, Gibson Deluxe tuners w/ white buttons – nickel plated
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51.5mm
• ELECTRICS: Gibson P-90 DC Dogear humbucker, volume and tone controls
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.31/7.3
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISHES: Silver Mist (as reviewed), Vintage Ebony – gloss nitro-cellulose
• CONTACT: Gibson

In 2023, no young band is carrying the torch for riff-based hard rock brighter than Los Angeles’ Dirty Honey. And for guitarist John Notto, blasting pentatonics through a Marshall amp at antisocial volume, only a Gibson Les Paul will do...

How did you get into playing Les Pauls?

“By discovering Led Zeppelin, and watching [Zep’s concert movie] The Song Remains The Same. Jimmy Page’s moves, the way he played the guitar, the sound and the look of it just immediately made the Les Paul iconic for me. And then Slash, who obviously follows in that line of artistry. The two of them are my shining lights in Les Paul-dom!”

When did you get your first Les Paul?

“I got it about 10 years ago. I’d just moved to LA and I bought it on Sunset Strip, a ’58 reissue in Cherry Sunburst from 2003. Like most people, I thought thin necks are easier to play, but the tone of that guitar was just so much more woody – I just learned to play the thick neck because I liked the sound. It was a learning curve, but once I got used to it I couldn’t go back.”

What guitars do you record with?

“I look at the studio as a place to pull out the Swiss Army Knife and use whatever’s right for the mix, so the secret of our sound is it’s not always straight-up Les Paul. We’ve used a ’65 ES-335, 50s Les Paul Juniors, early-’60s SGs, and a ’50s Tele. On our album, the big moments for the Les Paul are Gypsy and Another Last Time. 

“For California Dreaming, the biggest song off the album, I think I used the Les Paul for the solo. I’m not as loyal to one guitar when I get in the studio, but live I can’t imagine using any of those other guitars.”

Is there anything else you love about them?

“It’s funny – no there isn’t! I would say that there’s such a great sound and great look that you put up with their charmingly difficult attributes. Anyone who tells you they stay in tune easily is lying – especially the G string.

“You put up with it because it’s worth it. It just has so much sustain from the thickness of the body, and so much bottom end. I also have a treble bleed on my neck pickup, so I can turn it down a little and still have a usable, undistorted tone without having to step on anything. I can be anywhere on stage and do that.

“That’s handy, but I think most of it is that when I have that guitar in my hand, it just reminds me of my heroes, so I feel like I know what I’m doing.”

• Dirty Honey is out now via Dirt Records.

At first glance, the 1959 debut Melody Maker closely resembles the original single-cut, sunburst-finished Gibson Les Paul Junior introduced earlier in 1954. Similarly constructed using a mahogany slab-body and neck with an unbound 22-fret Brazilian rosewood ’board featuring dot markers, it’s clear where this single-pickup electric guitar takes its design cues from. 

But with a depth of just 1 3/8", the body of the Melody Maker is significantly thinner than the 1 1/4"-deep Junior. Its headstock, too, is more slender than the Junior’s, with a straighter appearance it forgoes Gibson’s iconic profile.

However, it’s the PU-380 pickup that really sets the Melody Maker apart in terms of sound. Inherited from Gibson’s Skylark lap steel, this single-coil unit was simply built by winding 42-gauge wire around an Alnico bar magnet for roughly 8,500 turns to give a DC resistance reading around 7kohms. 

It’s a similar concept to the archetypal Fender pickup, the obvious difference being the PU-380 does not feature separate pole pieces. 

It was initially constructed with a grey fibre bobbin, before a moulded nylon type was introduced in 1960. For this reason, older Melody Makers have slightly wider pickup covers. PU-380s can also be spotted on Gibson’s ES-120T electric archtop, as well as the Epiphone-brand equivalents of the Melody Makers, the Olympics.

Similar to a Strat – or indeed Gibson’s ‘McCarty unit’ of the late 1940s – the Melody Makers’ pickups and electronics are attached to the instrument’s pickguard. In the case of the debut Melody Maker – and its shorter 22 3/4"-scale sibling, the Melody Maker 3/4 – this amounts to a single PU-380 positioned near the bridge, plus volume and tone controls. 

Meanwhile, the Melody Maker D/Double (listed in late ’59 and first shipped the following year) sports an additional PU-380 at the neck, independent volume and tone controls for each pickup, and a three-way selector switch.

In 1961, the Melody Makers changed from a single- to double-cutaway design, and in 1965 the body shape altered yet again to incorporate pointier horns spaced slightly further apart, while the neck join moved from the 16th to the 18th fret. At this point, the standard finish switched from sunburst to cherry red.

Full access to the upper frets was high on Gibson’s agenda, and in 1966 the Melody Maker line followed in the footsteps of the Les Paul range by converting to the iconic SG style, whereupon a choice of two regular finishes were introduced: Pelham Blue and Fire Engine Red. At the same time, the pickguard and pickup covers changed from black to white and a vibrato unit became standard.

The following year, Gibson introduced triple-pickup and 12-string versions, the Melody Maker III and Melody Maker-12. Nevertheless, come the early '70s, all five SG-style Melody Makers were dropped from the catalog. The Melody Maker and Melody Maker Double were effectively replaced by the short-lived SG 100/100-W and SG 250/200/200-W, respectively.  

The Evolution of the Gibson Melody Maker

• Early 1959Melody Maker & Melody Maker 3/4 introduced; single‑cutaway; 1x pickup
• Late 1959Melody Maker D introduced; single-cutaway; 2x pickups
• 1960Pickup cover narrows from 7/8” to 5/8”
• 1961Double-cutaway; 16th-fret neck/body join retained; compensated ‘lightning’ bar bridge/tailpiece
• 1962Vibrato optional
• 1965Sharper double-cutaway horns; 18th-fret neck/body join; cherry red replaces sunburst finish
• 1966SG-style body; Pelham Blue or Fire Engine Red finishes; vibrato standard
• 1967Melody Maker III (3x pickups) & Melody Maker-12 introduced; Pelham Blue or Sparkling Burgundy finishes
• 1969Walnut finish (exc. Melody Maker‑12); Melody Maker 3/4 discontinued
• 1971All discontinued; replacedby SG 100/100-W (MM) & SG 250/200/200-W (MMD)

Gibson’s debut solidbody electric guitar line got off to a great start following the release of the Les Paul Model/Goldtop in 1952. By 1957, however, Les Paul sales had tailed off significantly. 

Facing stiff competition from Fender, company president Ted McCarty and his design team doubled down on their efforts to come up with exciting, innovative products. Diving deep for new ideas, Gibson surfaced with a plethora of now iconic designs in 1958. 

Among them were the Explorer, Flying V, ES-335 and electric double-neck guitars (the Double 12 and Double Mandolin). Also that year, the Goldtop was revamped with a sunburst finish and renamed the Les Paul Standard. Meanwhile, the single-P-90 Les Paul Junior and TV guitars changed from single- to double-cutaway bodies.

Easy access to the upper frets was a major selling point, as evidenced on all of Gibson’s new designs. The company deemed its double-cutaway Les Pauls to be “ultra-modernistic in appearance and practical in performance”, and the dual P-90 Les Paul Special followed suit in 1959.

That year, it was renamed the SG Special (SG stands for Solid Guitar) and appeared alongside the similarly rebranded SG TV. These solidbodies were the first to receive the ‘SG’ designation, but with their rounded double-cutaways and slab bodies they appear markedly different to the archetypal Gibson SG profile that came shortly afterwards.

Consistently poor sales of the flagship Les Paul Standard and Custom models throughout the late ’50s and into 1960 prompted Gibson to cease production of the debut single-cutaway style and return to the drawing board.

Although the original Les Paul blueprint would make a return in 1968 due to demand following endorsement by the likes of Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, what Gibson wanted back in 1960 was a brand-new design – something that would make an impact and claw back the company’s success within a rapidly expanding solidbody market. 

The first of Gibson’s “new” Les Paul Standards were shipped towards the end of 1960 and were followed by the “completely redesigned” Les Paul Customs in early 1961. They appeared alongside each other in promotional literature that read, “thinner, lighter in weight and custom contoured… Combination bridge and tailpiece is a Gibson first – can be moved up or down to adjust tension.”

This Gibson ‘sideways’ Vibrola divides opinion, and many players prefer an SG sans vibrato system. Nevertheless, the firm persisted with the idea, later fitting several types including the ‘leaf & lyre’ Maestro Vibrola, the ‘short’ Vibrola (with or without a pearl-inlaid ebony block) and the Bigsby B-5 model.

In 1961, the remaining solidbody models adopted the new thin, contoured, pointed double-cutaway solid mahogany body styling. Thus, before the year was out, the full-size line-up comprised the Cherry Les Paul Standard and Les Paul Junior, and White Les Paul Custom, SG Special and SG TV (the Special was also available in Cherry). In 1963, Les Paul’s name was dropped from the Custom, Standard and Junior guitars as the entire solidbody range was designated SG.

Officially known as the SG Standard from ’63, this classic guitar has been famously played by some of the biggest names in rock including Eric Clapton, George Harrison and Angus Young.  

The evolution of the Gibson Les Paul/SG Standard

• 1958 Rounded double-cutaway Les Paul Junior & TV; Les Paul Model renamed Standard
• 1959 Rounded double-cutaway Les Paul Special; Les Paul TV & Special renamed SG
• 1960 Pointed double-cutaway Les Paul Standard supersedes single‑cutaway design
• 1961 Pointed double-cutaway Les Paul Junior & Custom and SG TV & Special
• 1963 Les Paul Standard, Junior and Custom renamed SG
• 1965 Nickel-plated hardware switches to chrome; nut narrows from 1 11/16” to 1 9/16” or 1 5/8 ”
• 1966 Large ‘bat-wing’ pickguard (no pickup surrounds)
• 1971 Superseded by SG Deluxe; semi-circular control plate; small block markers
• 1972 SG Standard reintroduced; ‘harmonica’ bridge; small block markers
• Mid-1980s SG-62 (first Les Paul/SG Standard reissue)

The Gibson Les Paul was launched in 1952 with a multi-section maple top, mahogany body and neck. Gold-finished top (a few had gold back and sides also), twin soapbar P-90s, trapeze tailpiece. Shallow-angle neck-set means strings have to wrap under bridge, preventing palm muting, to make setup geometry work – turning a good bridge design into a flawed one. 

Shallow neck-set also made later conversion to stopbar tailpiece or Tune-o-matic problematic. Single-ply cream binding – though very earliest models omit neck binding. Single-ring Kluson tuners with no brand name. Tall ‘barrel’ control knobs. Silk-screen ‘Les Paul Model logo on headstock’. 

1953

Goldtop Les Paul upgraded with single-piece wrapover bridge and new raked-back neck-set geometry, with trapeze tailpiece discontinued – though some guitars produced in early ’53 still made to 1952 spec. Neck-set angle increases slightly up to 1954. Serial number on reverse of headstock. Gold ‘barrel’ control knobs reduced in height.

1954

Les Paul Custom launched with mahogany carved top, neck and body. Alnico V pickup at neck and P-90 at bridge, black covers. First appearance of ABR-1 bridge. Low ‘fretless wonder’ frets, bound ebony fretboard. Black finish and multi-ply binding, gold-plated hardware, split diamond inlay on headstock.

Les Paul Junior launched. Single-cut, slab mahogany body, 24.75-inch scale and one P-90. Two-colour sunburst finish. 

Les Paul TV model launched: essentially yellow-finish Junior but very early models had maple body and ¾-size scale length.

1955

Adjustable ABR-1 bridge replaced wrapover bridge on goldtop Les Paul Model in autumn. Gibson logo moved up headstock. Control knobs changed to familiar ‘top hat’ shape with curved sides. 

Les Paul TV model increased to 24.75-inch scale. Mahogany body from late ’55.

Les Paul Special launched featuring a mahogany body and neck, two soapbar P-90s, rosewood ’board and wrapover bridge. Available in TV Yellow.

1956

Sprague ‘Bumble Bee’ capacitors replaced earlier Sprague ‘Grey Tiger’ caps in wiring looms of goldtop Les Paul Model. 

Les Paul Junior pickup moved forward slightly to stand clear of bridge posts.

1957

Humbucking Patent Applied For (PAF) pickups replaced soapbar P-90s on Les Paul Model with DC resistance typically within a 7 to 9kohms range. Some examples built with dark back and sides finish (and yellow serial for legibility), but the majority have natural mahogany finish back and sides. 

Earliest PAFs fitted to Goldtops feature stainless-steel covers before moving to nickel-plated ones. Early humbucking Les Pauls feature black plastic parts, including M-69 pickup rings, pickguard and so on (typically with matching black back and sides on the guitar), though cream plastics replaced these relatively quickly. 

Les Paul Custom switched to three humbucking pickups. 

1958

Sunburst-finish Les Paul Standard introduced (note the name change from ‘Les Paul Model’). Two-piece, centre-seam maple top, cherry-tint back and sides, and the Cherry Sunburst finish features a more vibrant red tint than 1959 examples. 

Relatively few were made with notably figured tops (circa 15 per cent) and around the same proportion were factory fitted with Bigsby B-7 vibrato.

Les Paul Junior body changed to rounded, double-cutaway design (as does TV Model). Pickguard now tortoiseshell instead of black. Cherry finish.

1959

Fret size increased on Les Paul Standard, neck profile slightly less chubby than 1958 examples, red of sunburst subtler – some examples in Tobacco Sunburst made. 

Pickup bobbins white or ‘zebra’, though if the latter the bobbin with adjustable poles always black. Square-cornered jack plate fitted, along with small changes to plastics including ring around pickup selector, which becomes thinner, with different font. 

Les Paul Custom fitted with Grover Rotomatic tuners.

1960

Sunburst finish changed due to introduction of new red dyes less sensitive to light damage, assuming a now-famous ‘tomato soup’ hue. Control knobs changed to ‘reflector’ type with metal cap, replacing the earlier top-hat knobs with clear plastic tops. 

Neck profile became slimmer. White bobbins on pickups phased out. Note, the earliest 1960 Les Pauls were built to same spec as 1959 examples. 

1961

Model changed completely to ‘Les Paul/SG’ type double-cut design featuring thin mahogany body and bevelled edges plus ‘sideways’ Vibrola. Les Paul’s name still appeared on truss‑rod cover, however. 

Les Paul Custom line also changed to SG-style body with white finish.

1963

Les Paul Standard model officially discontinued, but, in reality, the then-current SG-style Les Paul Standard simply became the ‘SG Standard’.

1968

Single-cut Les Paul Standard model reintroduced as a reissue of the 1956-spec P-90 Goldtop, though with numerous alterations. Metal parts now chrome instead of nickel-plated, fingerboard Indian rosewood not Brazilian, serial number stamped not inked on headstock reverse. Sprague ‘Black Beauty’ or brown-disc capacitors. 

Les Paul Custom also reintroduced with two humbucking pickups ‘amplifier’-style control knobs, shallower headstock back angle (14 degrees instead of 17 degrees), maple top on mahogany body and long-tenon neck joint. 

1969

Les Paul Deluxe introduced. Features four-piece ‘pancake’ body construction comprising a maple top, a thick upper section of mahogany, a thin layer of maple then a thick lower section of mahogany, arranged pancake-wise. Two mini-humbuckers instead of P-90s, goldtop finish. Three-piece mahogany neck with volute. 

Les Paul Custom also received ‘pancake’ body construction and three‑piece maple neck with volute.

Les Paul Standard reissued in 1954 spec, with wraparound tailpiece and two P-90s with ‘Gibson’ on the covers. No volute.

1971

Les Paul Deluxe offered in Cherry Sunburst and Cherry Red finishes.

1976

Les Paul Standard built with four-piece pancake construction (maple/mahogany/maple/mahogany), three-piece maple top, two humbuckers, Tune-o-matic bridge. Offered in Wine Red, Natural, Tobacco Sunburst and Cherry Sunburst finishes. 

1978

Two-piece body with maple top. Goldtop finish now also available.  

What is it about Gibson’s Les Paul Junior that – some 68 years on – continues to inspire both guitar makers and guitar players? For that matter, the good ol’ Fender Esquire shares an equally blue-collar appeal and vibe. Pared down with just a single pickup, both designs can be huge tone machines with a very seat-of-your-pants drive.

We’ve seen plenty of contemporary makers focusing on either of these benchmark designs, but combining the two is what’s at play with PJD’s latest electric guitar, the Carey Apprentice – a special run of just 12 pieces in either 3 Tone Tear Drop Burst, as here, or Butterscotch. 

For this fast-rising UK maker, the Carey was the design that put the company on the map. While that guitar features twin pickups, typically a humbucker at the bridge with a P-90 single coil at neck, the Apprentice strips that down to one soapbar single coil. So what?

Well, anyone who’s been lucky enough to get their hands on a Carey will know that PJD’s recipe is a little unique, combining the scale length of a Fender with a Les Paul-style single-cut slab body that’s chambered and can be ordered with or without an f-hole.

The ones we’ve played, not least the start-up Carey Standard, combine light weight with plenty of character and depth. The Carey range starts with that Standard model, which includes a logo’d Hiscox case and Cream T pickups, and is priced the same as this special run.

However, the Apprentice signals a few firsts for PJD Guitars. It’s the brand’s first single-pickup guitar and the first of its models to use obeche – solid, not chambered. There’s a new Cream T soapbar on display here, too, and the hardware, untypically, is aged. 

The ones we’ve played, not least the start-up Carey Standard, combine light weight with plenty of character and depth. The Carey range starts with that Standard model, which includes a logo’d Hiscox case and Cream T pickups, and is priced the same as this special run.

Feel & Sounds

The Apprentice is a very vivid example of the PJD recipe, stripped back to its simple ingredients. It centres on a lightweight platform that, just like the chambered Carey Standard, has a big and ringing unplugged response. The guitar feels very alive as if the stiff, rather big neck is driving the body.

The neck has very little taper dimensionally: at the 1st fret its depth is 22.3mm and at the 12th it’s only marginally deeper at 22.9mm, although it obviously feels bigger as the neck widens out. 

There’s quite a full feel to the ‘C’ shape and – combined with that subtly compound 254mm to 305mm (10- to 12-inch) radius fingerboard, medium gauge frets with a good height, not to mention the satin nitro finish on the back and face – it feels like a slightly modernised vintage Telecaster.

The response is subtly different from the Carey Standard, even though the character is very similar. Its modern-style wiring is very familiar and direct, though it doesn’t match our ’57 Les Paul Junior; A/B’ing the guitars, well, they’re certainly different in response. 

But even in quite a dense track the PJD sounds – perceived or actually – a little more mid-scooped, as opposed to the throatier mid-pushed voice of the Junior. And yet that’s the point.

While the body finish and that P-90 might nod to the Junior, as we’ve said, there’s a real old Tele feel at play here but with a thicker, more powerful and slightly smoother voice without losing that string separation. It’s very responsive and yet very balanced, sound-wise. 

There’s nothing one-dimensional here, which is reflected by just how well it works across the styles: stinging and snappy old‑style blues at one extreme, with big cleans that drive your pedalboard at the other, and a vibrant roots rock rhythm machine in between.

Messing with the classics will always have the purists up in arms, but when it’s done as well as this it’s hard to argue with. It’s a simple recipe that uses high-grade material and components, and is faultlessly constructed. 

The light weight and neck feel really chase a vintage vibe – enhanced by the cracked nitro finish – but with none of the issues of older instruments.

Specs

• PRICE: £1,950 (inc case)
• ORIGIN: UK
• TYPE: Single-cut, solidbody electric
• BODY: Obeche
• NECK: Quarter-sawn roasted 3A figured maple, standard C profile, bolt-on
• SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Bone/43mm
• FINGERBOARD: Quarter-sawn roasted 3A figured maple, rectangular acrylic inlays, compound 254-305mm (10-12”) radius
• FRETS: 22, medium (Jescar FW55090)
• HARDWARE: Gotoh Strat-style hardtail bridge with block steel saddles and through-body stringing, vintage-style split-post tuners – aged nickel-plated
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52.5mm 
• ELECTRICS: Cream T Apprentice 59 P90 soapbar single coil, volume with Mars-Tronic Treblemaker and tone control
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 2.88/6.34
• OPTIONS: Finish only
• RANGE OPTIONS: Carey Standard (£1,950), Carey Elite (£2,399) and Carey Limited (£2,699)
• LEFT-HANDERS: To order, £1,950
• FINISHES: 3 Tone Tear Drop Burst (as reviewed), Butterscotch Blonde – high-gloss aged nitro to body and headstock face; satin nitro to neck back
• CONTACT: PJD Guitars

The Gibson SG design, officially launched in 1961, was a radical departure for the solidbody electric guitar, almost as if a sculptor had been at work rather than a guitar maker. 

The body was a stylish blend of bevels and points and angles, and the relatively lightweight instrument invited players to reach its topmost frets with ease and speed thanks to a pair of pointy cutaways. It was unlike anything any company had produced before – even if the shadow of Fender was evident across some of its ideas.  

Gibson’s motivation to introduce this new design seems almost beyond belief in retrospect. The idea was to replace the original single-cutaway Les Paul. That’s correct. 

Managers at the firm saw sales dipping, so to them the solution was obvious: ditch the earlier Les Paul design completely and bring in a new Les Paul design. And that’s correct, too: a new Les Paul design. Because at first, most SGs were called Les Pauls. Confusing, isn’t it? We’ve hit on a major headache for anybody interested in the story of the early SG, so let’s get it out of the way before we proceed. 

The fact is that, despite the big switch to an almost entirely different guitar, Gibson kept the Les Paul name for the first few years on many of the new SG-design models. To understand how this unfolded, we have to consider the three broad changes leading up to the introduction of the new SG design.

First, the budget Les Pauls were changed from their original single-cut style to a rounded-double-cut style (not the SG shape). The Les Paul Junior and TV moved in ’58, the Special in ’59. Second, Gibson gradually renamed ‘Les Paul’ models as ‘SG’ models. The company started removing Les Paul’s name from guitars in 1959 because it felt the association had become less valuable commercially.

So the rounded-double-cut Les Paul TV and Les Paul Special were renamed the SG TV and SG Special in ’59. Finally, there was a shift of all the Les Paul models to the new SG shape: the Les Paul Standard late in 1960, the Les Paul Custom, Les Paul Junior, SG TV and SG Special in ’61.

It’s hardly surprising that players and collectors have since tried to simplify this information. It’s become easier to call a Les Paul-shape guitar a Les Paul and an SG-shape guitar an SG.

And an SG-shape guitar with the Les Paul name somewhere on it – which means one made between late 1960 and late 1963 – is usually called an SG/Les Paul (or Les Paul/SG). Got all that? However, towards the end of 1963, thank goodness, the new SG-shape Les Paul Junior, Les Paul Standard and Les Paul Custom were renamed the SG Junior, SG Standard and SG Custom. Headache over, once and for all. Hopefully.

Thinner & Double-Cut

Several trends of the late 50s at Gibson fed into the new solidbody intended to take the 60s by storm. That launch of a new rounded-double-cutaway body for the budget Les Pauls, for example, was a practical and apparently humble design change, made because it was becoming apparent to Gibson how useful double-cutaways were.

The ES-335 was a major launch in 1958, a development of a stylistic change in the hollowbody electric lines that had started a few years earlier with the Byrdland, ES-225T and ES-350T. They had a new slimmer ‘Thin Body’ style that aimed to be more comfortable than the existing deep-body cutaway electrics, combining solidbody leanness with hollowbody tradition.

Also, the Byrdland and 350T had slimmer necks, and that idea began to spread to a few other models, including the revised single-cut Les Paul Standard, which since ’58 was finished in Sunburst and during 1960 shifted to a slimmer neck profile.

The 335 is mentioned in guitar histories mostly for its revolutionary centre-block body, but it had another notable feature. “It’s a double-cutaway,” said Gibson in ’58, “for nothing less than complete accessibility to the fingerboard.”

And the same year, for that new rounded-double-cut body on the low-end Les Pauls, Gibson said this provided “maximum access to all 22 frets. This is a feature every guitarist desires – to reach full chords down the entire length of the neck. All music becomes easy and effortless with the new double-cutaway.”

Beyond the Gibson factory, some guitar fans started to wonder if the brand was falling behind the times. Those mavericks at Fender over on the West Coast were selling more and more of their bright, modern Stratocaster. There was a growing impression that Fender had the style and attitude needed to make the guitars of the moment.

Gibson wanted to compete, but its first attempts, the oddly shaped “Modernistic” Flying V and Explorer of ’58, famously failed to grab guitarists at the time.

The firm was still searching for a solidbody design to rival Fender’s contoured, body-hugging Strat. In 1960, with Les Paul sales flagging despite the changes, Gibson’s managers got together and decided to stop messing around and instead devise a completely new solidbody design.

A Solid Guitar Is Born

There’s no evidence to tell us who chose the new name to replace ‘Les Paul’, but whoever it was, they went for simplicity.

The new name was ‘SG’. It stood, modestly enough, for ‘Solid Guitar.’ Maybe it was Larry Allers, who supervised and co-ordinated the work on the new design? He’d worked at Gibson since the 1930s and was made chief engineer in woodworking after the success of the Les Paul Goldtop in 1952.

For this project, the team took on several of the recent trends at Gibson, including thinner and double-cutaway bodies, new finishes, slimmer-profile necks with full access to the highest frets, and humbucking pickups. Also, they leaned on some of Gibson’s established features and methods.

Eventually, a finished prototype appeared. It was tested by a few guitar-playing employees, and Gibson’s sales people were consulted, too. The official announcement of the first two new models, the Les Paul Standard and the Les Paul Custom, came in 1961, although the new Standard had started to roll off the line at the very end of 1960.

By the time the July ’61 NAMM trade show was held in Chicago, Gibson had its full set of brand-new SG-style solidbodies to show off: the Les Paul Junior, Standard and Custom, and the SG TV and Special.

The firm’s price list noted the Junior, Junior Three-Quarter and TV each at $142.50, the Special at $195, the Standard at $265, and the Custom at $395. Gibson had dropped the original-style single-cut Les Pauls – the Sunburst Standard and Black Custom – as well as the rounded-double-cut Cherry Les Paul Junior and Junior Three-Quarter, and the rounded-double-cut ‘limed’ SG TV, Cherry or Cream SG Special, and Cherry SG Special Three-Quarter.

Features & Specs

The Les Paul Standard in its thoroughly new SG guise was an attractive addition to Gibson’s catalogue. The Cherry-finish body was a solid piece of mahogany fashioned into a slim, handsome shape. There was a large cutaway on the bass side and a slightly smaller one on the treble, and the horns were shaped to graceful points. It made for a lighter guitar than a single-cut Les Paul.

The edges of the body had bevels (aka scarfs or facets) of around 22 degrees – along the edge of the bass side, front and back; the same inside both cutaways; and along the forward part of the edge of the treble side, front and back, following the line of the pickguard. The bevels, which made the body seem even thinner than it was, formed a recognisable, useful and attractive feature of the SG design.

The thin neck was also mahogany, but the position of the neck-pickup rout and the thinness of the body meant there was little of the neck tenon to secure, and this proved a weakness, with cracks and breakages around the neck joint relatively common. Gibson tried to remedy this as the 60s wore on, the efforts visible where the neck met the body at the back: sometimes the joint was relatively smooth; more often there was an evident step.

Another weak area on early models centred on the output jack behind the control knobs, where there was little wood to support it, and cracks had a habit of appearing around here, too. There was a separate vibrato tailpiece, which Gibson called a Vibrola and everyone else called a sideways vibrato (or, very often, something much less polite). A Gibson catalogue said it “operates in direction of pick stroke; swings out of way for rhythm playing”.

A foldable arm was connected to a mechanism (under a cover with handsome deco-style ornamentation – one of the nicest things about this Vibrola) where the strings fastened to slots at the top. When the arm was rocked sideways, rather than the usual up-and-down vibrato action, two large springs moved the string anchor. The Vibrola’s shortcomings soon became apparent, mainly that it often failed to return the strings to correct pitch.

The foldable arm turned out to be a useful feature, though, because after some initial stumbling, many players folded it out of the way and left the vibrato untouched. The Standard’s new high-end neighbour, the Les Paul Custom, kept the upper-crust qualities that had always marked it out as something exceptional in earlier single-cut days.

Now it had a gleaming white finish (including the neck), gold-plated metalwork (including the arm and cover of the sideways vibrato), and three of those lovely humbuckers. The Custom’s pickguard matched the white finish, and, like the Standard, it had a little strip between the neck pickup and neck.

The Standard had the Les Paul name on its headstock, but the Custom had it on this strip. Gibson’s customary indications of a top-end model were present: a split-diamond inlay at the headstock; an ebony fingerboard with block pearloid markers; and Grover Rotomatic tuners with metal kidney-bean buttons.

The Custom looked as if it had the same four controls and selector switch as the Standard, but this was a three-pickup guitar. Looking down as you played, the three-way selector offered neck pickup alone (switch left), bridge and middle pickup together (centre), or bridge pickup alone (right).

The two nearest knobs were for neck pickup (volume on the left, tone to the right), and the two below for bridge or bridge-and-middle, depending on the selector position (and again, volume on the left, tone to the right). Like some other three-pickup guitars that co-opted a two-pickup control layout, it was something of a compromise, but once you got your head around the combinations it worked reasonably well.

The new-shape Special, Junior and TV sat at the lower end of the SG-style list, with one (Junior, TV) or two (Special) P-90 single-coils. At first, all three came stock with Gibson’s wrapover stopbar, an angled bar-shape combined bridge-and-tailpiece, but an optional version was offered with a separate six-saddle bridge and vibrato tailpiece.

At first, this vibrato was Gibson’s simple Maestro Vibrola, with a rounded rectangular frame, curved string mount and, usually, a nameplate. Double-neck SGs followed in 1962, replacing the thinline hollowbody models first offered in ’58. Like those, they were custom-order only, and very few were ever made.

There were three variations, with the EDS-1275 Double 12 having a six-string and 12-string neck. While, the EMS-1235 Double Mandolin had a regular six-string neck plus a short-scale neck with eight strings in four courses, like a mandolin. Although a few had a short neck with six strings tuned an octave higher than a guitar, supposedly to mimic the sound of a mandolin.

Lastly, the EBSF-1250 or EBS-1250 Double Bass paired a regular six-string with a four-string bass neck (and, unlike the other two models, there had been no equivalent in the earlier hollowbody line). At first, the EBSF variant came with a built-in Maestro Fuzz-Tone.

Amending The Templates

Gibson made some alterations to the SG-style models following their launch at the start of the 60s. There were moves to try to overcome the problems associated with the sideways vibrato originally fitted to the Standard and Custom.

A few guitars around ’62 had a ‘short’ Vibrola, with regular up-and-down vibrato action and an inlaid black ebony block attached under the base of the tailpiece. A few others from that time came with a Bigsby B5 tailpiece (the short horseshoe-shape variety).

During ’63, Gibson settled on the Deluxe Vibrola (or ‘long’ Vibrola) for the Custom and Standard. It was more or less the same as the short Vibrola, but with a long metal plate rather than the smaller ebony block. The plate was decorated with a lyre-and-leaves motif and a Gibson logo.

As we’ve seen, the Special and Junior/TV started life as standard with a single wrapover stopbar (combined bridge-and-tailpiece) or an optional Maestro Vibrola, but that soon shifted to a short Vibrola (without block) plus bridge, which became the standard fitting for those models around ’65.

There was also a continuing effort to improve the strength and stability of that rather weak neck joint. The changes had worked reasonably well, and by 1966 the neck joint was the strongest so far, with a distinctly higher overlap of the body wood at the rear.

Also at that time came a major visual change with the arrival of a much larger pickguard – which, in hindsight, proves useful to identify original instruments from this later-60s period. Until the change, the pickguard had been a relatively small one that sat, in traditional fashion, between the pickups and the lower edge of the body (sometimes called an ‘angel-wing’ pickguard). the shape.

The new pickguard of ’66 completely surrounded the pickups, sitting either side of them, in the process disposing of the small separate strip that some models had between the neck pickup and the end of the neck. The new big ’guard is often called a ‘batwing’, again for the shape.

The large pickguard was fitted to all four SG models: Custom, Standard, Special and Junior/TV. Also, for the Custom and the Standard the factory now usually made a larger all-purpose rout in the body with space for up to three pickups – a sizeable hole usefully hidden by the new batwing.

There was a move in the later 60s to chrome plating, plus a small decrease in the nut width, and the addition of a volute, a triangular lump just below the point where the neck rear becomes the headstock, designed to reinforce another notoriously weak spot.

A slight decrease was made in the angle at which the headstock tipped back from the neck, aiming to minimise problems in the same area. Such practical changes did nothing to enhance Gibson’s reputation among those who had started to think that older guitars might be a better bet than the firm’s current offerings.

70s Styles

After a peak in SG sales in ’65 and then a pretty sharp decline, mirroring the industry’s general woes, there was a surge in ’69 and ’70, with 6,677 SG Standards shipped in that latter year. 

This was almost as many as the previous four years combined, and a figure that would remain unmatched for the rest of the 70s. Gibson, owned since 1969 by Norlin, made big changes to the SG line in the 70s. In ’71, the company stopped using the Standard and Special names, although it kept the Custom name.

For the Pro (a revised and renamed Special), Deluxe (revised and renamed Standard) and Custom, the most obvious visual ID was a move to a semi-circular plate on which the controls and jack were mounted. The big pickguard of ’66 was replaced by a regular-size guard slightly raised from the body. The bevels had gone from the inside of the cutaways and the headstock was slightly larger.

Gibson boasted the new models had three-piece laminated mahogany necks, a volute, and what it called “90 degree neck pitch” – meaning the plane of the neck was parallel to the plane of the body, rather than the earlier style where the neck leaned back slightly, and the fingerboard was higher off the body. The neck had been shifted further into the body and the bridge was shifted a little further down. It all added up to a different and sometimes awkward feel.

In 1972, the SG Special and Standard names reappeared, and by ’73 the line had settled into a new-look Special, Standard and Custom, dropping the parallel neck construction and the semi-circular control plate and returning the bevels in the cutaways, providing a rather more traditional feel and look. The Special would be dropped in ’77, which left the Standard and the Custom as the sole mainstream SG models in the Gibson line in the remaining years of the 70s.

Onward With The SG

It wasn’t until the 80s and 90s that Gibson began to acknowledge the greatness of the original SG design through the release of reissues and vintage-vibe recreations, and SGs started to regain their position in the Gibson line as strong solidbodies alongside the Les Pauls, which had been back in the Gibson catalogue since 1968.

In 1961, when Gibson introduced its dealers to what the company called the “completely redesigned” Les Paul/SG models, it summed up the attractions of the new guitars. It said the Standard was “now offered with completely new styling… thinner, lighter in weight, and custom contoured. A wonderfully designed solid body, perfectly balanced for playing in a standing position.”

And for the Custom, too, Gibson’s pride was evident: “A new, revolutionary body design, exquisite craftsmanship and deluxe features,” ran the blurb, “ultra thin, hand contoured, delicately balanced design … Players rave about the extra slim neck with the low, smooth frets that is such a joy to play – the action is so easy, players also refer to it as the ‘Fretless Wonder’.”

Throughout its long eventful life, the SG has almost always had to contend with the dark shadow cast over it by the Les Paul. Of course, it’s impossible to think about the SG as just one guitar. Today, there’s a whole range of contemporary feature combinations and vintage periods to choose from. Just cast aside any notions of the SG as some kind of also-ran. Long live the Solid Guitar!

While Sweep It Into Space, Dinosaur Jr.’s first album in five years, ticks all the boxes fans could hope for, it might just surprise a few longtime listeners, due to its upbeat feel. 

Frontman J Mascis agrees: “I suppose it was a fairly positive feeling doing the record, although the pandemic hasn’t agreed with me – and I haven’t been too happy myself. 

"We started before lockdown but had to finish it once it kicked in, which was pretty weird as I had to learn how to do a lot of things, engineering-wise, at home. I’m very happy with the record – although it will take me some time before I can really decide how it stands in relation to the rest of my work.” 

Although Mascis’ guitar parts sound enormous, his guitar is actually not that loud in the studio. 

“We always use smaller amps when we’re recording, like a [Vox] AC15 or a Tweed Deluxe. I like a lot of effects that really change the sound of the guitar; they often tend to be vintage units or newer models designed to sound like old pedals.

"Live, I still use the Marshall and Hiwatt stacks. I’ve not had my hearing tested lately, but I definitely have tinnitus; I’ve always worn earplugs, though. I just like the feeling of the guitar kind of hitting you in the back.” [Laughs] 

Guitar-wise, there’ve been a few recent additions to J’s arsenal. “I used a Les Paul Junior TV model, and Ernie Ball gave me a St. Vincent guitar, which I hadn’t played before. I use a capo a lot, and a lot of my old guitars don’t play very well with a capo on them. 

"Live, I’m going to be using one of my signature Jazzmasters, which I’ve modified by installing a humbucker in the neck position. I’ll be tuning that down to C# and using a capo for four songs on the album. It’s really just to find the best key to sing with.”

Going forward, Mascis plans to continue releasing solo records as well as work with Dinosaur Jr. 

“I’ve started working on a solo album already, and I’m in the middle of mixing a Heavy Blanket album, an ongoing side project that’s all instrumental with a lot of solos. We’ll also be celebrating the 40th anniversary of [Dinosaur Jr.] getting together in a couple of years, which is a bit surreal. I think we’ll do something special to celebrate that.”

• Sweep It Into Space is out now via Jagjaguwar.

Gibson has announced its new Mod Collection – a lineup of unique electric guitars, acoustic guitars and bass guitars comprising rare, exclusive and special one-off models.

A number of striking, eye-catching axes have been unveiled to usher in the news, with a fresh collection of guitars set to join Gibson’s newest family of instruments every Wednesday.

Each guitar promises to be a special one-of-a-kind offering by way of either unconventional features or unorthodox aesthetic appointments and, if the first slew of instruments are anything to go by, there is potential for some seriously intriguing Gibsons.

The Mod Collection will cater to solidbody and semi-hollow fans alike, with the brand’s iconic Les Paul, SG and ES shapes all being represented in the wacky-and-wonderful stringed emporium.

Though build specs and appointments are nothing out of the ordinary – the Les Pauls and SGs all feature mahogany bodies and necks, ebony or rosewood fretboards and standard control layouts – there are a number of intriguing aesthetic modifications on display that set these instruments apart from their contemporaries.

Highlights from the Les Paul division include a Standard ‘50s, which sports an out-of-this-world, non-standard Intergalactic Crackle colorway and comes equipped with a pair of P-90s. 

A more sleek – but by no means less intriguing – offering arrives in the form of the Mod Collection 2020 Les Paul Axcess Custom, kitted out with an ebony finish, ebony fingerboard and black Floyd Rose tremolo.

A trio of SGs is also currently available, with the snazzy, Metallic Pine, pearloid pickguard-equipped ‘57 Classic Tribute taking center stage next to the P-90 loaded Vintage Sparkling Burgundy-finished Special and Gunmetal Grey Standard.

In the unplugged department, a lone J-45 Standard flashing an elegant Cherry Sparkle finish is on the roster, the only acoustic to join the Mod Collection thus far.

Further additions include a Sixties Cherry ES-345 – modded to have block fingerboard inlays – and a Les Paul Junior Tribute Double-Cut bass, supercharged with a tortoise pickguard, nickel-covered pickup and Witch Hat knobs.

As previously mentioned, this is only the first of many Mod Collection instalments, so who knows what’s in store for us. Keep your eyes peeled for the arrival of more quirky, new-look Gibsons as they make their way onto the internet and into the new lineup.

In the meantime, you can browse the current crop of modified guitars over at Gibson. 

The history of Gibson’s Custom Shop is cloaked in mystery and intrigue. In Walt Carter’s book Keeping The Flame Alive he states: “In the early 90s, the Custom Shop didn’t really exist. It was an undefined group within the regular production facility at Gibson’s Nashville division. The R9 debuted at the January 1993 NAMM Show. Tom Murphy painted the finish on the first 25 sunbursts and the first 15 Goldtops.”

Of course, as is always the case with Gibson, the story is more complicated than that. There had been Custom Shop designated instruments for many years prior, but the Custom Shop as we know it today started as a separate facility back in 1993, with its own craftspeople and its own front door.

At Guitarist, we’ve been reviewing such examples as they’ve come and gone, and it seems every time we’d say something like, “…with this one they’ve come even closer to the originals”. Will the same be said of the three reissue guitars we have here: a Murphy Lab 1959 ES-335 in Ebony, a 1957 Les Paul Junior Single Cut in TV Yellow, and a 1959 Les Paul Standard in Lemon Burst? 

The ES-335 is ultra-light aged, the Junior is heavy aged, while the ’59 Standard gets the top-level ultra-heavy ageing. As you’ll see in our Murphy Options box later in the review, the heavier the ageing, the higher the price. Time is money. The Murphy Lab, of course, refers to the aforementioned Tom Murphy. 

We’ve reviewed instruments hand-finished and aged by Murphy before (this reviewer owns a ’57 Goldtop with Tom’s initials deftly secreted among the lacquer cracks). And you’ll learn all about how the Murphy Lab works in our interview with Gibson’s brand president, Cesar Gueikian, elsewhere in this feature. As Cesar tells us, the Murphy Lab receives ready-built instruments from the Custom Shop, where they are then finished and aged by the small team under Tom Murphy’s guidance.

Finish

There’s little doubt, then, that the talking point and the initial engagement with these guitars is all to do with these aged finishes. Our dot-neck ES-335 is finished in Ebony, perhaps a strange choice when the model is so well known in its Sunburst, Cherry Red and Natural incarnations (there’s so far no sunburst available). That said, this one has an impressive ‘tuxedo’ vibe about it, and its exceptionally dark-grained Indian rosewood fingerboard looks great against the black nitro lacquer. 

The ’59 Les Paul on the other hand is Lemon Burst and has, in this writer’s opinion, the perfect colour and flaming – not fine, ruler-drawn violin stripes or perfect, wide train lines but slightly haphazard and in no way over the top. In this faded finish with a hint of cherry toner remaining, it looks incredibly authentic. Our Junior is only available in TV Yellow and there’s no doubt it looks well gigged and pretty authentic.

The ES-335 is more or less a new-looking guitar but with large lacquer cracks running across every surface. These are primary cracks, with none of the secondary or ancillary lines running between them. There’s no playing wear and only the mildest hint of tarnish to the nickel work. Like the ’59 Les Paul, none of the plastic parts are aged, but here they don’t sit too awkwardly against the mild ageing elsewhere on the guitar.

However, this situation is quite different with the ’59 Standard, which comes with the Lab’s most extreme ageing. So pristine humbucker rings, pickguard, knobs, jack socket surround, and so on, do seem somewhat at odds. 

It’s the same with the ’57 Junior, where the classic shape of the single-piece plastic pickguard on this TV Yellow guitar really plays its part in the guitar’s appearance – much more than it does on a sunburst variant. The P-90 sits under the dog-ear cover and, unlike the rest of the guitar, these plastic parts, including the rear backplate, are unaged in contrast to the finish and hardware. It’s a glaring oddity in this Murphy Lab concept.

Continuing with the ’59 Les Paul, its lacquering and ageing is mostly excellent. Gibson hasn’t fallen into its old trap of dulling the finish, nor leaving the dreaded ‘orange peel’ of some VOS instruments. 

This is very well done. Other than that the bare wood sections on the mahogany back and neck look a little unnatural. The grain pores are open and clearly visible, and on the neck these would have been filled by 60 years of finger grease, salty sweat, or solidified grain filler – and had a belt buckle taken that much finish off the back, surely the wood itself would have been a lot more pitted and compressed. And are those lacquer dings on the back just a bit too uniform? It’s the same with the Junior’s heavy ageing. As evocative as it is, details like those bare wood patches are simply less believable.

Yes, we’re being extremely picky, but don’t forget this ’59 costs over £9k. Our Junior, well, you could probably buy a ‘player’s grade’ original for a similar £5.5k amount. But Tom Murphy does mention that the whole ageing process is in a constant state of flux and that they are learning new tricks all the time. So perhaps moans like this will be addressed further down the line.

Construction

As for the guitars’ construction, they follow tradition as regards timbers. Hence the ES-335 features a three-ply maple/poplar/maple laminated body with a centre block of solid maple, a Fijian mahogany neck and Indian rosewood fingerboard. The ’59 Les Paul has a solid Fijian mahogany back and neck, with flamed maple top and Indian rosewood ’board.

The Junior sticks closely to the original stripped-down recipe: a one-piece 45mm thick slab mahogany body, while the full-width of the mahogany neck slots into the body, resulting in that lip in the cutaway. Unlike the ’59 Les Paul Standard, the fingerboard is unbound and, of course, just dot-inlaid.

As you’d expect, hide glue wood joins prevail, and shapes, contours, et cetera, have been slavishly scanned from actual vintage examples. All of Gibson’s latest plastics, although unaged, conform as closely as possible to vintage specs, so there’s a lot to admire here.

Electrics-wise, both the ES-335 and ’59 Les Paul feature Gibson Alnico 3 Custombuckers, and these now come unpotted. This is said to offer a more transparent and open sound than when the coils are buried in wax. The Junior, of course, comes with its lone P-90 single coil in its ‘dog-ear’ cover, which first appeared on this model when it was introduced in 1954. 

As it’s simply classed as a Custom Dogear P-90, we have little to go on, and obviously here we just have a volume and tone control. All our guitars use CTS 500k audio taper pots, while capacitors are traditional paper-in-oil. Toggle switches and jack sockets are by Switchcraft.

Feel & Sounds

Over the years Gibson has built on the accuracy of earlier reissues, constantly learning and improving, and arriving at a set of neck dimensions that now hits bullseye. Most players that we know, including all the Guitarist team, agree that the ’59 medium C profile, with not too much ‘shoulder’ on the carve, is the most player-friendly. So, how pleasing it was to pick up the ES-335 and ’59 Les Paul and find ourselves completely at home.

Juniors are known for their chunky neck shapes and if that’s your preference you won’t be disappointed here with this ‘Chunky C’ shape. That said, while the profile is a big clubby C with plenty of shoulder, the heavily aged neck back does give a slightly uneven feel.

Our guitars come perfectly set up with Gibson’ s standard 5/64th-inch (1.98mm) and 3/64th-inch (1.19mm) bass and treble action heights at the 12th fret. The necks are buzz free and the medium-jumbo frets do everything we always say they do – namely, provide enough fretboard clearance for string bending or squeezing out a tasty vibrato.

Naturally, the ES-335, with its double cutaways and 19th-fret neck join, allows for better top-fret access than the much more restricted Les Pauls, which provide no ‘thumb over the top’ facility past the 16th. But – again, as we say almost every time – this limitation hasn’t prevented a host of amazing players bringing us dazzling dusty end solos. The Junior’s higher-position access is further hampered by that body lip in the cutaway, but after quite a few decades of playing the real thing, it’s really never bothered us.

So, while the softly rounded necks of the ES-335 and ’59 Les Paul both clock in at 22mm at the 1st and 25mm at the 12th fret, give or take a hair’s breadth, the ES-335’s seems slimmer due to its perceived extra length and the guitar’s much bigger body. But in reality there’s all but nothing in it. Our Junior’s neck is marginally deeper, but it’s the fuller shoulders that really provide the added girth.

The guitars’ fingerboard edges are beautifully rolled, but the corners of the top nuts are left a little sharp, and if anything the edge rolling on the Junior is slightly less uniform. You can’t help thinking that a little more time fettling these would really make a difference. Other than that, they offer a delightful and fuss-free playing experience.

With our trusty Blues Junior fully warmed up and a classic drive pedal (Analog Man King Of Tone) in line, it’s time to hear what these can do. First up is the ES-335. Played clean and with just a hint of reverb, it’s a gloriously rewarding set of tones. Every switch position offers a distinct voice and all the old clichés slip smoothly off the tongue: crisp and nicely nasal for the bridge, quacky and chiming for both, and smooth and plummy for the neck. 

Turning down the volumes there’s a dip in treble response but in a really pleasing way; the taper is remarkably smooth and, while the volume itself doesn’t drop significantly until below 7 or so, we could find a place for every single sound – on every single switch setting. Particularly sweet was both pickups on, bridge up full and neck at about 7. Fruity! A guitar like this gives its best when its voice is left to breathe, so a hint of King Of Tone simply ramped up what we already had by a few notches. This left bends free to sing and vibrato sounding very musical.

Swapping instruments and running through the same sequence of settings, everything about the ’59 Les Paul seems tighter, that big lump of mahogany and maple perhaps lending a bit more muscle. The tones are darker, too, but not by much – the Les Paul makes the ES-335 seem more ‘scooped’ overall, and it’s that extra kick of middle that provides the punch. At extreme volumes, we’d guess that where the 335 might lose control and start banshee howling, the Les Paul would simply stay calm and carry on screaming.

On to the Junior and, even before we plug in, there’s noticeable power to its acoustic response with a quickly rising sustain tail. It’s very similar to our original ’57, which simply sounds a little more mature and slightly smoother with less ‘youthful’ attack. With its controls full up, there really is nothing wrong with the new Junior’s voice. It’s nicely mid-focused and edgy, raw and really quite ballsy. 

Our real example does sound very similar, with a few exceptions: it has a sixth gear – the new ’57 sounds like the real thing with the volume just slightly pulled back. Adding a touch more gain, not least from any simple boost/overdrive, and you really do get close.

However, the way the controls work is noticeably different. The new ’57 model has slightly less range and lacks the ability to produce the surprising clear and clean tones of the original with the volume pulled back, not to mention the tone. It’s this interaction that’s less pronounced on the new guitar. But even if some of the finer details might be lacking, there’s little doubt that this is a very, very good example of the Junior style. It’s also one of the closest legal ‘clones’ of the original that this writer has ever experienced.

Verdict

To sum up a brand-new artisan-made guitar that sits north of the five grand mark is easy enough. Is it perfectly built? Are the materials, electrics and hardware of superlative quality? Does it play brilliantly and sound amazing? Simple! However, when it comes to guitars such as this that have been artificially aged to recreate various levels of use and abuse, at serious cost, it’s rather more tricky.

So, is the ageing authentic looking? Is that really how a guitar goes after a number of gigs? And by the standards of whichever style of player – aggressive, careful, cleans the instrument after every show, or just chucks it in the trunk?

The ultra-light aged ES-335 is an odd one. We think we’d rather see either a totally new guitar or one that’s an ageing grade or two above. This one, while a truly super ES-335 in every other respect, sits uncomfortably in no-man’s-land, the big cracks spoiling an otherwise cared-for ‘vintage’ guitar. At the moment, only a ’61 Cherry model in a heavy age is available, or a ’59 ultra heavy aged Vintage Natural version. And they are roughly two-and-a-half to four grand more!

The Junior has the same dilemma. The light aged version of the same thing comes in £1,700 cheaper than our heavy aged review model, and while it really is a very good Junior, unlike our other two historic models here, you could buy a ‘player’s grade’ real thing for that amount of cash. 

There’s also those unaged plastic parts to consider (also present on the ’59), which do give the impression that the Murphy Lab ran out of time in creating these fetching illusions. Nevertheless, despite those caveats, the Junior not only looks beautifully antique but it really captures the essence of this raw rock ’n’ roll classic.

Finally, the ’59 Les Paul. It’s a particularly fine example of its breed and one that’s been made to look as though it’s lived a pretty tough life. Most of the distressing is exceptionally well done and perfectly plausible, but we’re not convinced by some of the bare wood areas on this model. 

We will admit that we’ve all seen reliced guitars and commented that “you’d never see ageing like that in real life…” only for a guitar with exactly that look to turn up the next day. What’s more, Tom Murphy really does know his onions, and Gibson has many more originals at its disposal for reference than we’re ever likely to see.

The Murphy Lab is in its infancy. We’d guess that Gibson will see which models fly and which ones tend to hang around, and then amend the line-up accordingly. With that in mind, we’d probably wait for the right ES-335 to come along. As for the ’59 Les Paul, this one really is closer to an original than we’ve ever seen before. In fact, from the front we’d be hard-pressed to tell it apart from a genuine ’59. 

It’s important to remember that what you get here is a vintage-style guitar with no issues of provenance or originality. Pots are crackle-free, there are no fret issues and, to be frank, a few more minutes on a setup bench – as with virtually any new guitar – would raise their game even further. Expensive and not quite finished they may be, but you could also argue that they’re the closest most of us will ever get to the real thing.

Specs

Gibson Murphy Lab ’59 ES-335 Reissue Ultra-light Aged

• PRICE: $5,799 / £5,099 (inc Lifton pink-lined case)
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Double-cutaway, semi-solid electric
• BODY: Laminated maple/poplar/maple with f-holes and solid maple centre block
• NECK: Mahogany, 59 ‘medium C’ profile with hide glue join 
• SCALE LENGTH: 624mm (24.57”) 
• NUT/WIDTH: Nylon/42.85mm 
• FINGERBOARD: Bound dark Indian rosewood, pearloid dot markers, 305mm (12”) radius 
• FRETS: 22, medium/jumbo 
• HARDWARE: Nickel-plated ABR-1 tune-o-matic bridge, lightweight aluminium stopbar tailpiece, Kluson vintage, single line, single ring deluxe tuners 
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51.5mm
• ELECTRICS: 2x Gibson Custombucker Alnico 3 pickups, 2x volumes, 2x tones, 3-way pickup selector; CTS 500k pots with paper-in-oil capacitors WEIGHT ˜kg/lb°: 5.55/7.82 
• RANGE OPTIONS: See Murphy Options box
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISH: Ebony (as reviewed). Vintage Natural and Watermelon Red are also available (see Murphy Options) – ultra-light aged nitrocellulose

Gibson Murphy Lab ’57 Les Paul Junior Single Cut Reissue Heavy Aged

• PRICE: $6,299 / £5,499 (inc Lifton pink-lined case)
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Single-cutaway, single pickup solidbody
• BODY: 1 mahogany
• NECK: 1 mahogany, ‘Chunky C’ profi le, glued-in
• SCALE LENGTH: 624mm (24.57”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Nylon/42.85mm 
• FINGERBOARD: Rosewood, pearloid dot inlays, 305mm (12”) radius
• FRETS: 22, medium 
• HARDWARE: Wrapover bridge/tailpiece Kluson strip tuners with white buttons – Murphy Lab heavy aged nickel
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 50mm
• ELECTRICS: Custom Dogear P-90, volume and tone controls. CTS 500k pots with paper-in-oil capacitors
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.42/7.5 
• RANGE OPTIONS: See Murphy Options box. The standard Custom Shop non-aged 1957 Les Paul Junior Single Cut Reissue VOS (in TV Yellow or Vintage Sunburst) costs £3,299
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISH: TV Yellow (as reviewed) – heavy aged nitro-cellulose

Gibson Murphy Lab ’59 Les Paul Standard Reissue Ultra Heavy Aged

• PRICE: $10,499 / £9,199 (inc aged Lifton pink-lined case)
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Single-cutaway, solid body electric
• BODY: Solid mahogany with flamed maple cap, hide glued 
• NECK: Mahogany, 59 ‘medium C’ profile with long tenon and hide glue join
• SCALE LENGTH: 624mm (24.57”) 
• NUT/WIDTH: Nylon, 42.85mm 
• FINGERBOARD: Bound dark Indian rosewood, cellulose nitrate trapezoid, 305mm (12”) radius 
• FRETS: 22, medium/jumbo 
• HARDWARE: Heavy aged nickel plated ABR-1 tune-o-matic bridge, lightweight aluminium stopbar tailpiece, Kluson vintage, single line, single ring deluxe tuners, authentic profi le pickup covers 
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 51.5mm
• ELECTRICS: 2x Gibson Custombucker Alnico 3 pickups, 2x volumes, 2x tones, 3-way pickup selector; CTS 500k pots with paper-in-oil capacitors 
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 5.55/7.82 
• RANGE OPTIONS: See Murphy Options box
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISH: Lemon Burst (as reviewed). Various colours available (see Murphy Options) – ultra-heavy aged nitro-cellulose
• CONTACT: Gibson

Let’s get the obvious out of the way right here: these are some of the coolest-looking electric guitars ever made. There’s no debating that fact, so let’s quickly move on…  

The Coronet, Wilshire and Crestwood were released in 1958 (Crestwood) and 1959 (Wilshire and Coronet) as Epiphone’s answer to the Gibson Les Paul Junior and Special. Epiphone had been part of the Gibson family since the two companies came together just the year before. 

But the once rival firm became vital to the parent brand in that it allowed Kalamazoo-made instruments to be sold to retailers that, due to territorial restrictions in Gibson dealers’ contracts, were otherwise out of bounds. As was so often the case with new models that emerged around this time, all three underwent changes – big and small – in the five or so years post launch. 

And without presenting you with a comprehensive and almost certainly tedious list, some of the most obvious changes include: slimming the body down from the original 44.45mm (1.75 inches) to 35mm (1.375 inches) as here, and rounding off the squarer Tele-style edges; losing the kitsch-but-cool metal nameplate seen on our guitars and switching from this short double-sided headstock to the famous ‘batwing’ six-a-side design; and lessening the lower horn and replacing the launch models’ asymmetrical pickguards with the ‘butterfly’-style and large ‘E’ logo, again as here. 

Possibly most notable of all was that, when they ran out of the single-coil Epiphone New York pickup, Gibson wisely fitted its more powerful P-90 to the Coronet and Wilshire, and its new mini-humbucker to the Crestwood – which became the Crestwood Custom a year after launch. Phew!

So, even with that stripped-down version of events, you can see it was a complicated if not turbulent time for the range, and, in a way, what we have here is the most pleasing visual and working compromises of all the above versions.

Clearly there’s a hierarchy present, with the flashier two-pickup Crestwood Custom sitting at the top of the pile and the simplest of the three, the single-P-90 Coronet, at the bottom. Snuggled in the middle sits the Wilshire, a sort of ‘Special’ to the Coronet’s ‘Junior’.

All three guitars are finished in lustrous polyester, and all feature nickel-plated hardware and the stylised Epiphone ‘E’ in gold foil in the centre of their ‘butterfly’-style pickguards. And just to show the level of thought that’s gone into the new range, they all come with Graph Tech NuBone fingerboard nuts, where Epiphone could have easily insinuated cheapo plastic.

Spot The Difference

Actually, Epiphone has made the demarcations very clear in these new models. And, while they all sit on the same double-cutaway body, they’ve been designed as specific propositions in their own right, each one bringing something specific to the table.

Going from bottom to top of the range, we begin with the delightfully basic Coronet. Checking the spec on Epiphone’s website it’s clear that, despite these instruments’ entry-level price points, the company has not stinted with the quality of materials or parts.

We don’t know what genus of mahogany this is, but it’s stated as that fabled guitar tonewood in the spec, while the fingerboard is Indian laurel. Also known as Indian walnut, this timber (which other makers, not least Gretsch, have also employed in certain recent models) is grown in both that country and Myanmar and is not on the CITES list of endangered species.

With its dark streaky lines on a medium-brown background it looks like a super alternative to the scarcer rosewood. The body is centre-jointed while the glued-in neck is a single piece, save for the added headstock wings that you’ll find even on Custom Shop Gibsons. So, no scarf joints or stacked heels here.

The Coronet’s single pickup is a dog-ear P-90 Pro, which we already know is a great-sounding, fat-toned single coil, here mated to quality CTS pots and heavy-duty output jack. The wrapover bridge/tailpiece is the same compensated ‘Lightning Bar’ that Gibson fitted to certain SGs in the 60s, and is a preferable alternative to the basic stopbar that lacks individual string intonation.

Moving up a rung we come to the Wilshire. Essentially a double-P-90 version of the Coronet, it’s based around an identical platform but with two ‘soapbar’ style P-90 Pros linked to twin volume and tone pots. The three-way pickup selector toggle and jack socket are located in the same cluster.

Here, the pickguard is single-ply faux tortoise and we find a regular tune-o-matic style bridge that Epiphone calls the ‘LockTone’, with standard stud tailpiece. The finish is black, and just like the Coronet’s classic Cherry, is perfectly buffed to a bright gloss. Moving on up to the top-of-the-range Crestwood Custom, this is the most different of this trio.

Visually, what one notices first is the clear plastic pickguard with large white centre stripe – actually painted onto the underside so the top is perfectly smooth. On this Cherry finish you might think it looks a little odd – perhaps a touch too busy – but check out the Polaris White version and it makes instant visual sense. Here, the pickups are Epiphone Pro mini-humbuckers.

Gibson has used mini-humbuckers in various forms on a variety of instruments, from Les Paul Deluxes to Firebirds and, of course, on the Epiphone Riviera and Sheraton models – even jazz guitars like the Johnny Smith.

So, as you can see, it’s a fantastically versatile pickup with a sound all of its own – that narrow footprint providing a brighter, clearer voice than that of its bulkier siblings. Control layout is as on the Wilshire, but the big departure here is that interesting-looking vibrato tailpiece.

The ‘Tremtone’, as Epiphone titled it (we love all those corny monikers the electric guitar and amp companies dreamt up), naturally evokes thoughts of Paul Bigsby’s classic unit, and there are certainly elements of that in how it operates.

However, unlike the former contraption, which is notoriously tricky to load (with the strings’ ball-ends having to hook onto tiny posts on a wrap-around bar), here the strings simply load through rearward-facing holes and pull up and over without the ‘popping off’ problem that afflicts regular-style Bigsbys (some recent versions have addressed this, of course).

What also sets this tailpiece apart is the Indian laurel insert, with the attractive Epiphone ‘E’ emblem making a second appearance. And check out the two extra holes in the vibrato arm: these are for relocating its pivot point should you prefer it shorter for a more positive action – simple but cool, and just the kind of clever hack that our own Trev Wilkinson might dream up.

Feel & Sounds

The guitars all came with slightly different setups out of the box, mostly a little on the high side for this particular player. But a few minor tweaks soon brought them into line – and bear in mind we often do the same on instruments far higher up the food chain.

All three necks are exactly the same medium C profile, thickening slightly from approximately 21mm at the 1st fret up to 23mm at the 12th. Scale length is a uniform 628mm (24.72 inches) and nut width is a ubiquitous 43mm (1.69 inches).

Frets are medium jumbo – pretty much par for the course these days and likely to provide a fuss-free playing experience on the 305mm (12-inch) radius fingerboard. The necks join the body at the last of their 22 frets, leaving the entire fingerboard available for your explorations.

On a strap it’s a little like a Gibson SG with its strap button also located behind the heel, so there’s a tendency for the necks to drop when not supported. The popular fix was usually to add another button on the top horn, as on a Strat, and that might be worth doing if this top-heaviness offends.

Otherwise, each guitar’s neck is an enjoyable playground, and the Gibson-style scale length makes for easy string bends, while the medium jumbo frets and laurel ’board do indeed contribute to that comfortable and familiar feel.

Sonically, the Coronet’s bridge P-90 Pro is a killer. Even with the tone wide open it’s fat but very present, cleaning up a treat when you knock the volume back to 3, or even 2.

With the power cranked back up and the treble tamed, the sound is huge – like Clapton meets Leslie West and, really, what more could you want? Swapping to the Wilshire its bridge pickup offers more of the same ballsy fare, while the neck unit kicks out smooth, fruity tones that never get too muddy, even when pushing the gain. Kind of like a really fat Strat.

Select the middle position on the three-way and things get distinctly ‘quacky’, in the nicest possible way – sort of ‘country meets Crossroads’ if you will, and the kind of tone Joe Walsh often goes for with The Eagles. The Crestwood Custom is the big surprise.

The Pro mini-humbuckers are spectacularly good. Clean, they retain an open clarity that’s bright but never piercing. Add a nice drive pedal and it’s one of the most musical sounds around; that lovely high-end remains but the voice becomes incredibly expressive.

Each position on the switch sounds great, and the nearest player whose sound you might recognise in it is Johnny Winter, whose Firebird pickups were, of course, close relations to these. Try some dirty slide with both pickups on – it’s Texas blues-rock heaven!

Verdict

At the top of this piece we asked whether guitars at this entry-level price point could impress a gnarled old Guitarist reviewer. Well, the answer is a resounding yes! Of course, these are not Honduran mahogany and Brazilian rosewood marvels, but modern-day versions of 60-year-old Epiphone entry models using today’s available materials. 

That Epiphone has done it so well, and employed such great-sounding pickups and even bothered with quality pots and nut material, is a testament to the brand’s clear desire to get it right. And if you go back to the days of the company’s original Coronet, its parent marque’s LP Junior and, yes, even the Fender Duo-Sonic, it’s exactly what they did all those years ago. 

“Get them playing your brand at the start and they’ll stay with you forever; put them off with an unplayable, cheap-sounding plank and they’ll go elsewhere,” is what a fairly high-up Gibson man told this reviewer back in 1978. How right he was. And on the basis of these three lovelies, we’d certainly stick with Epiphone.

Specifications

Epiphone Wilshire

• PRICE: £399 / $449
• ORIGIN: China
• TYPE: Double-cutaway solidbody electric
• BODY: Mahogany with rounded edges
• NECK: Mahogany, medium C profile, glued-in
• SCALE LENGTH: 628mm (24.72”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech NuBone/43mm
• FINGERBOARD: Indian laurel, unbound with pearloid dot inlays
• FRETS: 22, medium jumbo 
• HARDWARE: Epiphone LockTone tune-o-matic bridge and stud tailpiece, Epiphone Deluxe tuners with ivory buttons
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52mm
• ELECTRICS: 2x Epiphone P-90 Pro ‘soapbar’, twin volume and tone controls, 3-way selector
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.1/6.82
• OPTIONS: Colours only
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISHES: Cherry, Black (as reviewed)

Epiphone Coronet

• PRICE: £349 / $399
• ORIGIN: China
• TYPE: Double-cutaway solidbody electric
• BODY: Mahogany with rounded edges
• NECK: Mahogany, medium C profile, glued-in
• SCALE LENGTH: 628mm (24.72”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech NuBone/43mm
• FINGERBOARD: Indian laurel, unbound with pearloid dot inlays
• FRETS: 22, medium jumbo
• HARDWARE: Epiphone Lightning Bar compensated wraparound bridge/tailpiece, ‘3 On A Plate’ tuners with ivory buttons and press in bushings
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52mm
• ELECTRICS: Single Epiphone P-90 Pro ‘dog-ear’, single volume and tone controls
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3/6.6
• OPTIONS: Colours only
• RANGE OPTIONS: Wilshire and Crestwood Custom, as reviewed
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISHES: Cherry (as reviewed), Black

Epiphone Crestwood Custom

• PRICE: £489 / $549
• ORIGIN: China
• TYPE: Double-cutaway solidbody electric
• BODY: Mahogany with rounded edges
• NECK: Mahogany, medium C profile, glued-in
• SCALE LENGTH: 628mm (24.72”)
• NUT/WIDTH: Graph Tech NuBone/43mm
• FINGERBOARD: Indian laurel, unbound with large oblong inlays
• FRETS: 22, medium jumbo
• HARDWARE: Epiphone LockTone tune-o-matic bridge w/ nylon saddles, Tremotone vibrato tailpiece with Indian laurel insert, Epiphone Deluxe Vintage tuners with ivory buttons
• STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 52mm
• ELECTRICS: 2x Epiphone Pro mini-humbuckers, twin volume and tone controls, 3-way selector
• WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3.2/7.04
• OPTIONS: Colours only
• LEFT-HANDERS: No
• FINISHES: Cherry (as reviewed), Polaris White
• CONTACT: Epiphone

Single pickup guitars occupy a strange space; limited? Misunderstood? Well, they look certainly cool. There’s something utilitarian, no-nonsense but self-assured and classic about a Junior.  

The Gibson Les Paul Junior may have been designed as an entry-level model back in 1954, but it’s won favour for good reasons. One P-90 pickup can do a surprising amount of things with the right tone and volume – and player, of course. There’s no doubt that is where Harley Benton’s SC-Junior is drawing its influence. And at a price to tempt even those who have hesitated to travel down One Pickup Avenue before. 

But how good can it be for £177? Well, it’s light. For a mahogany single cut guitar 6.8lbs is good news. And the general build standard here is testament to Harley Benton’s Indonesian manufacturing. 

The exception is the fretboard dye merging with the black gloss finish at the top of one side. That ’board is amaranth (aka purpleheart) and it feels akin to ebony to our hands. Most importantly, the frets are polished and level with no sharp ends.

There’s Vintage Sunburst and even a Silver Sparkle option in the SC-Junior range (the Thomann brand’s double cut DC-Junior range offers even more spec choice) but there’s something about the black / red tortoiseshell contrast here that has a punk rock vibe we love.

The neck profile is very much a slimmer C as opposed to a clubbier vintage 50s affair, and after a quick truss rod tweak we find the action surprisingly fast and springy in all the right places.

We’re pleased to see an angled neck heel for improved upper fret access and though we’d prefer a satin finish at the back of the neck for speed, that would be an easy fix with a couple of minutes, some care and 0000 ultra fine steel wire wool. It’s nice to see a combination wraparound bridge here, too, as, unlike the ‘lightning’ variety, the saddles allow you to intonate the individual strings.

But there’s a rub; the bridge profile and those saddles raise the strings a little too far above the Roswell (another Thomann brand) P90D pickup for our liking. Nevertheless, it gives a good enough account of itself, even if we don’t get to judge it at its clearest capacity.

It’s a good introduction to a P-90 and shows off the resonance of this guitar, too – single notes sear with sustain, chord work can be beefy; but back off on the volume and it cleans up well. There’s room for upgrading here on a good guitar build that’s worth that investment, but the remarkable out of the box value is undeniable. Bravo to Benton!

Specs

• PRICE: $200 / £177
• ORIGIN: Indonesia
• TYPE: 22-fret electric guitar
• BODY: Mahogany
• NECK: Mahogany (set)
• SCALE LENGTH: 628mm (24.72”)
• FRETBOARD: Amaranth, 305mm (12”) radius
• FRETS: 22, medium jumbo
• NUT: 43mm, graphite
• PICKUPS: Roswell P90D Alnico-5 dog ear single coil
• CONTROLS: 1 x volume and 1 x tone
• HARDWARE: WSC wrap around with adjustable saddles, Wilkinson vintage-style tuners with 15:1 gear ratio
• LEFT-HANDED: Yes (Vintage Sunburst only)
• CASE: No
• FINISH: Black (reviewed), Vintage Sunburst, Silver Sparkle
• OPTIONS: Harley Benton DC double cut available in standard and FAT interactions (latter has 50s neck profile and stacked P90D humbucker with coil split)
• CONTACT: Harley Benton; available via Thomann

Short-scale bass guitars are definitely an important aspect of many modern bass players’ gear arsenal, thanks to their lesser string tension, the relief they give to your fingers, shoulders, and lower back, and possibly their airplane cabin-friendly dimensions. 

We’ve road-tested quite a few shorties in recent years, and there’s no sign of the flow of shorts letting up any time soon. Gibson have sent us their recent Les Paul Junior bass for review, subtitled Tribute in homage to the company’s original EB-O from 1959, so let’s see how it matches up.  

Build Quality

As an American-made bass with a pricetag in the high three figures, we’re expecting a pretty flawless playing experience. While that’s definitely what we get, note that this is a bass with its own character, its own mission, and no apparent need to cater for players’ more delicate sensibilities.

Looking for a nice, abdomen-friendly chamfer on the body? Forget it – this one is a slab, with corners to suit. Interested in lots of pickups? Nope. That’s not what this bass is about, so if you need multiple tone options, look elsewhere.

Keen on doing a nice upper-register solo? Good luck with that – you’ve only got 20 frets and a 30.5” scale to play with. What you do get, though, is a resolutely old-school look and feel, loaded with modern expertise.

Take the hardware, for example. Those tuners may look like the machine heads from that cheap bass you had at school, but they’re deceptive; smooth, silky Hipshot units, they move fast and feel solid. As for the bridge, this is a weighty unit anchored to the mahogany body with three chunky bolts, as opposed to the usual tiny screws that you instantly lose behind the sofa when you take them out.

The body itself is authentically retro; Gibson describe it as having a ‘worn’ finish, but this shouldn’t be construed as meaning relic-ed or with chunks taken out of the paint. Instead, it’s a relaxed shade of cherry that allows the feel of the lumber grain to come through. The vintage aesthetic goes as far as the set neck joint, rarely seen these days, and the two plastic tone and volume controls, numbered one through 10.

A minor complaint is that they feel a touch insubstantial, given the cost of the bass, and also that most of their effect suddenly rolls on after you reach eight. Of course, that’s exactly how a lot of instrument potentiometers used to work back then.

Sounds And Playability

The LPJT has a single, massive humbucker with a coil tap plus a single tone control, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the tone range. The tap scoops the mids, so although you don’t actually have more top and bottom when you deploy it, a quick roll of the volume pot gives you the impression that you do. 

As a matter of fact, the tapped tone is a useful addition, giving you some useful clank that you might not otherwise achieve, given the lower string tension of short-scale basses.

Untapped, and with only the tone control to play with, you can easily find an impressively thunderous bottom end for soul and blues lines.

Mids and top end are there, but not in huge quantities for obvious reasons; slapping is totally doable, for instance, but if that style is the main card in your pack, consider other basses. Again, that tone range is not what this bass was designed for. Instead, play with a range of dynamics and picking positions – just like they used to do in 1965 – and you’ll maximize your options.

Fortunately, the LPJT has been engineered for a very comfortable ride. The rear neck finish hits that sweet spot between slippery and grippy, and the action is low but not overly so. You can play with subtlety, or downpick as hard as you want; the bass will respond either way.

A consideration is that this is a small bass, which may not suit bassists of generous proportions. It feels great to play and the neck hugs your hand, but at the same time you may prefer some extra weightiness under your fingers. Your personal preferences will guide you here.

Conclusion

The Les Paul Junior Tribute does one job very well indeed: it looks, plays, and sounds like a 60s bass, but with modern production and engineering. It makes very few concessions towards today’s versatile player, although the tone options are more sophisticated than first appearances would indicate. Either way, you’ll have a hell of a lot of fun playing it.

Specs

• PRICE: $999 [MAP]
• MADE IN: USA
• BODY: Mahogany, choice of Worn Cherry, Worn Ebony, Worn Brown, Blue Stain finishes
• NECK: Maple, 30.5” scale
• Neck Joint: Set neck
• NUT WIDTH: 40mm
• FRETBOARD: Rosewood, 20 frets
• PICKUP: Les Paul Bassbucker
• CONTROLS: Volume (push/pull for coil-tap), tone
• HARDWARE: Hipshot tuners, Gibson bridge
• WEIGHT: 7.7 lbs
• CASE / GIGBAG INCLUDED: Gigbag
• LEFTHANDED: No
• CONTACT: Gibson

This interview with Leslie West is from the January 1987 issue of Guitar World, which featured Yngwie Malmsteen on the cover. The original story by Gene Santoro started on page 22 and appeared with the headline, “Leslie West: A Sleeping Giant Comes Alive.”

“You can't get more basic and efficient than this,” croaks Leslie West as he gestures at his brand-new Les Paul Junior. Gibson has given him the first of their re-issued line, in honor of all he did for that model by playing it to death-his earlier ones literally fell apart from use – in Mountain and West, Bruce & Laing.

“It's just a hunk of wood with one pickup and a tone control – ya gotta have a tone control to get that bassier sound Clapton calls The Woman Tone – but that's all you need.”

Kinda like the axman's style itself, his guitar. At the beginnings of the hard rock era, West opted for a leaner approach that combines that fat-beyond-fat distortion, a blues-derived vibrato and a pentatonic sense of melody that could make his solos sing even while they rock-and-raunched.

“I'm no great guitarist technically,” he shrugs. “I only play with these two fingers [index and ring]. But you wanna know why people remember me? If you take a hundred players and put them in a room, 98 or 99 of 'em are gonna sound the same; the one who plays different, has some of his own, that's the one you're gonna remember.”

In Leslie's case that memory reaches back a long way, to a place called Long Island in the early '60s.

“Why'd I pick up the guitar? To get laid,” he laughs. “When? I'll tell you when. My uncle used to write for Jackie Gleason, and my grandmother used to take me to all the tapings. So one summer she took me to see Jackie Gleason's American Scene Magazine, but there was a replacement – Tommy Dorsey and Jimmy Dorsey had the stage show instead. 

“I started crying 'cause I wasn't gonna see Gleason – he was my hero, with the carnation and the sharp suits, the whole bit. But you know who was the guest on the show? Elvis Presley.

“That's when I started playing guitar – saw that son of a bitch come out and go [mimics Elvis], 'Well it's one for the money,' and thought, 'I gotta play this thing.'”

After a couple of ukulele lessons from a cousin studying at Juilliard, West got the ax to play: “A '58 sunburst Strat – I got it with my bar mitzvah money [laughs].” He went right to the sources to learn how to play it, copping licks off records by his favorites: “B.B. King, Albert King, Eric Clapton, man.” Then in 1964 came the Vagrants, a local band formed by West and his bass-playing brother, which built quite a New York-area rep.

“You know what happened with that Strat?” he grins. “When the Vagrants started we all wanted new guitars, so I traded it in for – get this – a Kent, a red Kent with three pickups – it was disgusting, man.”

Equally disgusting were some of the toilet-sized clubs the Vagrants played, though they managed to put out one sorta-semi-local-hit single, a four-piece rock cover of Otis Redding's Respect.

“Our manager was greedy,” is how he tells it, “and he put out the B-side of Respect as a single because he had the publishing rights on it. Then Aretha cut Respect and Jerry Wexler put hers out and it was a hit.”

That became one of the last in a series of setbacks that finally fractured the group: “We'd done two singles with Felix Pappalardi, and we were gonna do an album at the time when Wheels Of Fire [the second Cream LP Pappalardi had produced] was Number One. 

He had two weeks to produce an album for us, and we had no songs; so [laughs] we tried to write some. That's when we broke up. We couldn't record, man; we just couldn't get on tape what we were live.”

Back to the drawing board, and on with the beginnings of a new group: “I'd put Mountain together with an organ player who played bass pedals and a drummer, and called Felix immediately – he'd told me to call him as soon as I had anything going. This was after he did Goodbye by Cream. So I played him some of the stuff: yeah, great, went into the studio with these two guys.

“Well, the drummer wasn't good enough; he threw us out of the studio again [laughs]. So Bud Prager, my manager at the time, said, 'You can't throw Leslie out again – he'll kill himself.' I mean, I'd practiced my ass off for this session. 

“So I conned Felix into playing bass, and that's how we did my album. How'd I con him? I said, 'There's never been a fat and a skinny guy onstage; we can't miss.' I was terrified, but he bought it hook, line and sinker. That's how it all started.”

“It” being the real Mountain, of course, whose short lifespan (1969-73) produced one of the raunchiest tracks ever to clock in at Number One, Mississippi Queen.

That cut, as well as their albums, helped define the riff-based harder rock emerging at the time-a trend that would evolve into heavy metal. West himself sees his role in that transition with typically good-natured candor.

“I just took over where Clapton left off when he quit. To make up for my lack of speed I added in a lot of vibrato from the blues guys like a chef adding ingredients to a stew, you know -- and worked on my squeals and pig grunts,” he laughs, referring to the octave-harmonic scream he used to stab home many a riff and solo.

“You gotta have the Junior to do 'em right, because of the single pickup – see the way the string can bend down when you hit 'em? If there was a neck pickup it'd be in the way. You bury the pick with your thumb and you have all the room you need. 

“And the tone – well, it was fat just like me, right? It was just two Sunn stacks with the Colosseum PA heads. They were Hendrix' old amps, re-tolexed and re-coned. See, the PA heads had those four inputs and a master volume, which started the distortion thing for me: I'd turn the mic volume all the way up and the master all the way up, and overdrive the thing like crazy.”

After a debut gig at the Fillmore East – not a bad venue for a band nobody had seen before – he got to overdrive the thing at one of the biggest gigs ever.

“Woodstock was 17 years ago now – can you believe that?” he muses. “Man, I was so nervous that night. I remember getting in the helicopter – we had to rent our own helicopter to get up there, with the traffic and all – and the helicopter pilot was a wise guy, man; said he wouldn't take all of us at once 'cause I was too heavy [laughs].

“We were getting five grand for it, which was incredible money for your third gig in '69. Our agent was Hendrix' agent too, Ron Terry; they were hiding Hendrix at Woodstock because whoever was seen went on. They told me to hide, and naturally I found where the bagels were – they had bagels, believe it or not, except that Janis Joplin ate 'em all, so there were none left [laughs].

“Anyway, they grabbed us and we went on; Hendrix wound up closing the show and there was nobody there – it was a damn shame, 'cause he played great."

As West got to observe close up on occasion: “I played with him the night before he died. We met at a club called Ungano's, then jumped into his limousine, went to Mountain's loft, got some Marshalls, came back to Ungano's and played until three in the morning. 

“He played bass, and this idiot from the East Village Other [an underground newspaper of the time] who reviewed the thing complained that I played louder than Hendrix – he didn't even see Hendrix was playing bass.

“Next day, I went to Detroit, he went to England; pulled into the Sheraton Cadillac in Detroit and the lady there said, 'Another one of you longhaired freaks kicked the bucket, black guy.' Felix and I looked at each other and knew who it was.

“Y'know, Jimi was working on Band Of Gypsys at the Record Plant when we were finishing Mountain Climbing!, and he was the first guy to hear it mixed. There's a little stop in the beginning of the lick for that tune, like a horn thing, that he really liked. 

“I've thought about it sometimes: with all the locking nuts and tremolo bars now, I don't think he'd be sounding good with 'em, 'cause his whole thing was stretching the damn strings back into tune.”

For the two-and-a-half years or so after Jimi's death, Mountain burned up road and studio alike, until bassist/producer Pappalardi pulled a move of his own. “He told everyone he was deaf,” is how West tells it, “and that he had to go into the hospital, but it was for drug withdrawal, really.

“So he wasn't able to go on the road any more and Corky and I weren't gonna stop; it came down to 'Who am I gonna ask?' I had two choices: I was gonna ask Joe Cocker for a bass player and a keyboard player, or else ask Jack Bruce and have one guy who could do the whole trip. He was the greatest, man.

“I mean, I idolized Cream, and here was a chance to play with one of the best musicians in rock 'n' roll. And one of the best writers, too: Theme From An Imaginary Western is a great song. I'd love to have us do it again and put it out now, as a single, 'cause Mountain never did and should've. 

“You know what it's about Cream going on the road. 'When the wagons leave the city / The sun is in their eyes' – it's all about stardom and the fights and everything. Jack had it written in Cream but Clapton didn't want to do it, said it was too complicated. Now, it's not a regular blues progression, there are a lot of changes in it, but it changed my life.

“Why? Because I found out I could use a relative-minor scale over the changes; it's in the key of A, but when it came time for the solo I went to F-sharp minor and pretended I was playing blues. That's why it sounds so sweet, it's almost like country.”

Life on the endless road grind was not so sweet, however, and claimed West as a casualty. “I've done 17 albums and I don't know how many tours now,” he declares, “between Mountain, West, Bruce & Laing, and myself, but all the stuff with Mountain and West, Bruce & Laing was done over such a short time – four years, man. It seemed like a helluva lot longer than that.

“We worked about 285 jobs a year, one-nighters; it was killin' man, really stupid. I didn't enjoy myself, got too concerned with being famous – and got into drugs."

And so it was that he found himself in Milwaukee in 1977, shedding the heavy junk habit he'd developed and about to change his musical life via a chance contact.

“I'd stopped playing, didn't even want any guitars around,” he says. “But while I was there I went to see two shows. One was because Neal Schon said to me, 'Leslie, you gotta check out this kid who's opening for us; he plays guitar like an organ, like a Bach organ fugue. 

“I was totally taken aback – it was Eddie Van Halen, and he impressed me the way Clapton impressed me. And then the next night I went to see Sammy Hagar. What a co-inky-dink, eh?"

That coincidence brings us up to the present, where it has extended to find West opening for the second leg of Van Halen's current tour. Besides co-writing two songs with the young whammy master – one of them a moving description of life behind bars over a hooky and hard-rock riff, whose lyrics were penned by a group of prisoners – Mr. Mountain has been having a blast offstage as well as on.

"Alfonso Johnson, Carlos Santana, Eddie and me were playing in a hotel room one night for an hour-and-a-half without stopping at all. Man, I had the time of my life with those guys. And I've learned how to write by myself, too; I spent two years, '77-'79, working hard with Corky Laing in that, and he was a terrific help."

Whatever else may have changed, though, his approach to his ax remains pretty much the same as ever: “Felix used to tell me, 'Don't think, just play.' You know, most guys when they pick up a guitar, if they play lead they start playing leads right away.

“I learned that you should think about the song, think about the chords you're playing behind, and so most of my solos come right out of those chords. You play the notes within the chords and try to pick a melody from there. For a solo I'll have a theme in my head to start, 'cause it's like Keith Moon said: 'Your entrance and your exit should be devastating, and everything in the middle is filler.'”

You can hear that fierce attack at work as he plays through the photo shoot at the Collector's Choice studio. West's reissued Junior played through Peden's vintage amps sends scraps of tunes spinning past in that creamy thick tone and wide, warm vibrato: Beat It, Mississippi Queen, Crossroads, I Feel Fine, Outside Woman Blues, Foxy Lady, The Wind Cries Mary, various squalling, screaming blues from the string-bending school of Albert King.

His eyes close, his mouth works in mime to the raunch erupting from his amp, he sways his bulk gently – and Leslie West is back.

There are few players in punk who wield an electric guitar like Billie Joe Armstrong. He's rocked them, he's smashed them, he's even had them custom-built only to give them away to fans onstage.

He's had his share of signature models. But which guitar do you think of when you hear Billie Joe's name? Is it Blue, the Fernandes S-style that was with him since the early days, since before the early days? Or is it the Gibson Les Paul Junior? 

You could argue that Billie Joe Armstrong single-handedly brought the Junior back into style, with Gibson launching a signature model in 2018 to consecrate this feat. 

Maybe it is all of the above and more. The funny thing about a player's guitars is that you can tell the story of their career through them. That's why number one in our top five Billie Joe guitars just had to be "Blue."

1. Fernandes S-style, aka Blue

One of the most iconic guitars in punk-rock history, ‘Blue’ was a gift from Billie Joe’s mum on his 10th birthday. 

It appeared in most early Green Day videos, including Basket Case, Longview and Welcome To Paradise, as well as countless tours. 

Since its beginnings as a Fernandes Strat copy, it’s had the neck and middle pickups disconnected and the bridge pickup changed to a Seymour Duncan JB humbucker.

2. The White LP Junior

For American Idiot, Armstrong reinvented his guitar sound, switching from Blue to primarily Les Paul Juniors. The raw, spiky sound of P90 pickups propelled some of the angriest lyrics Green Day had recorded to date. 

His white Junior is immortalised on the Bullet In A Bible live DVD, featuring Green Day and 130,000 of their closest friends. Billie Joe also used a pair of 1950s Juniors, each worth more than the entire recording budgets for Green Day’s first two albums.

3. Gibson Billie Joe Armstrong Signature Les Paul Junior 

In 2018, Gibson launched a guitar with elements of both Blue and the Billie’s signature Les Paul Junior. The single humbucker threatened a return to Dookie-style beefier tones, while keeping the look and playability Armstrong has favoured since 2004. 

The finishes were a nod to Green Day’s 50s rockabilly influences – maraschino cherry, ebony and (of course) sonic blue.

4. Fender Blackout Telecaster Custom

The guitar itself isn’t special – based on a Blackout Telecaster, it has a custom scratchplate and a Duncan JB. Green Day’s tech has built dozens of them as backups for Blue. 

What’s cool is that Billie Joe keeps giving them away. A quick YouTube search turns up videos of fans being invited on stage to play with the band and going home with one of these Teles. Now that’s punk rock!

5. Gibson "iHeartRadio" Les Paul Junior Doublecut

The TV yellow Les Paul Junior doublecut is infamous mainly for its destruction at the 2012 iHeartRadio festival. 

On learning that Green Day only had four minutes left to play, an aggrieved Armstrong launched into a spectacular rant before taking vengeance on his undeserving Gibson. 

Videos of the event quickly went viral online. In the aftermath, Billie Joe checked into rehab, his tech rebuilt the guitar, and Gibson’s shrewd marketing department spied the opportunity for a new signature model.

Throughout the 1950s, Gibson continuously revisited and reworked its Les Paul range. One of the most significant changes occurred in 1958 when, in response to customer requests, Gibson modernised its single-cutaway Les Paul Junior, TV and Special models with double-cutaway body designs. 

Featuring rounded horns, the revised Junior and TV guitars began shipping that year, followed by the Special in early ’59. Then in late ’59 Gibson rebranded the Les Paul Special and Les Paul TV; renamed the SG Special and SG TV respectively, it marked the beginning of the end for Gibson’s original Les Paul range of solidbody electrics that began in 1952 with the Les Paul Model (Goldtop) .

By 1961, these rounded double-cutaway guitars, along with the Les Paul Standard/ ’Burst and Les Paul Custom’s classic single-cutaway form, had been superseded by a profoundly different design sporting a thin bevelled body with pointed double cutaways. 

Although this unmistakable profile is commonly referred to as an ‘SG’, it wasn’t until 1963 – following the expiration of Les Paul’s endorsement contract in 1962 – that the Junior, Standard and Custom joined the TV and Special in receiving their official SG model designation.

It was a notably creative period in the electric guitar building industry. As the market gathered momentum in the wake of rock ’n’ roll, Gibson president, Ted McCarty – acutely aware of the continued success enjoyed by competitors Fender and Gretsch – responded to the booming demand by testing the water with innovative designs.

Still, despite being highly coveted today, many of these formative instruments were not considered successful by Gibson at the time and were therefore subject to ongoing modifications and/or discontinuation.

“If you go through Gibson’s history and look at their electric guitars, they rarely got it right the first time,” points out Well Strung Guitars’ David Davidson. As a vintage-guitar-dealing veteran with over 40 years’ experience and the current COO and curator of the Songsbirds vintage guitar museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee, David answered our call to his shop in Farmingdale, New York, to help us gathersome pearls of SG wisdom.

“Gibson were constantly playing catch-up with their competitors,” continues David. “Every guitar Fender had churned out was an instant hit that didn’t need to be modified. When they made the Stratocaster, it was great; when they made the Esquire, it was great; when they made the Broadcaster, it was great. They were just great right out of the box. Whereas Gibson took years.

"When you look at the Les Paul, they were always trying to make it better because they failed the first time. When they made the Les Paul Model [in 1952] they had the silly trapeze [tailpiece]. Then they had the stud tailpiece. It wasn’t until they had the ABR-1 [Tune-o-matic bridge] and PAFs [by 1957] that they got it right. But then they come and remodel the guitar again!

“They needed to make the [SG-style] Les Paul Standard and Custom fancy to compete with Fender, so they put a sideways Vibrola on, but they kind of over-engineered the whole thing. They went on to try several different types of tailpiece, but I think the only one that ever really worked well for Gibson generally was a Bigsby.

"Most people took the Vibrolas off and put a stop tailpiece on. That’s why there are so many guitars that’ve been converted over the years. It would’ve been a great guitar if they did it that way from the beginning. Those early years are important because the model’s reputation gets solidified very quickly. If a guitar comes out and it’s not a great player straight out of the box, people tend to move on to what plays well.”

“Gibson experimented with many vibrato systems, especially in the early 60s,” agrees vintage guitar expert Mat Koehler. After spending years running a vintage guitar store, Mat teamed up with the Gibson Custom Shop prior to his current role as head of Product Development. 

He speaks to us directly from Gibson’s headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee.

“There was an almost manic sense of trying to find a vibrato system that worked,” he says. “There were at least half a dozen different trem systems Gibson used in the 60s. The reason was to compete with Fender who had the Stratocaster; the Strat had a tremolo system and Gibson thought that it needed to have one. 

Arguably, they never did find one that worked even remotely as well as the one on a Strat. “Looking back, it wasn’t the best solution to compete with a Stratocaster, but I will say that when set up well, a long Maestro [Vibrola] on an SG feels right at home. 

"I like the balance better with a Vibrola, but there’s a reason why a lot of players modified their SGs to have a stop bar: it offers great tuning stability and a little bit more sustain. The SG Junior and SG Special have wrap-around tailpieces, but even though those guitars are killer, I don’t think that’s how [the SG] was originally intended; I think it was originally designed with the side pull trem in mind, as a way to balance the guitar.”

A double-cut feature

Originally, the key concepts of the SG were most likely presented by the Gibson sales team who tended to keep a close eye on the competition while receiving feedback from dealers and musicians. By 1960, they’d become convinced that double-cutaway electrics were the way forward.

“The Les Paul Special and Junior were already modified into a [rounded] double-cutaway design, and they knew they wanted to modify the Standard and Custom in a similar way,” explains Mat. “As regards the design of the SG itself, all the old-timers from the factory point to a guy called Larry Allers. 

"Larry was a woodworker. He was a foreman of the woodworking area and was promoted to an ‘engineer’. That was Gibson’s way of promoting you – to call you an engineer. He became a project manager and if any highly specialised custom orders came along, Larry would often end up with the job. I think they just compiled all their notes from the sales team, gave them to Larry, and he came up with the SG [design].”

Initially, sales of the new design were encouraging: “We know that Ted McCarty thought Les Paul’s popularity was waning, and we know that sales of the single-cut Les Pauls were not going well,” Mat tells us. “But according to the shipping numbers, the new SG was received very well. It helps that Gibson went to the ’61 NAMM Show without any single-cut solidbody guitars – just their newly redesigned line of sleek, streamlined double-cutaway instruments.

"That clearly helped sell them to dealers. Sales were off the charts in the first couple of years, but it did decline steadily throughout the 60s. It’s no coincidence they reintroduced the single-cutaway Les Paul [in 1968]. By this time, the SG was not necessarily out of favour, but it didn’t have the same kind of success as in the early 60s.

“I think it all circles around what the famous players were using. Eric Clapton and Keith Richards were using singlecutaway Les Pauls, but it took years to catch on. The same goes for SGs. With the exception of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, there weren’t that many famous players using an SG when they first appeared in the early 1960s, but it gets going years later with Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton/The Fool.

"George Harrison also played SGs, but there aren’t that many artists you can point to before the mid-60s. Gibson was struggling to find its identity, especially with the rise of Fender on the West Coast.

"Automotive design was a major influence across the industry – the colours and exaggerated features mimicking automotive trends – but I think Gibson still thought of themselves as an archtop building company, even throughout the 60s. I mean, look at their endorsements and advertisements: it was all jazz players and archtop guys.”B

Beyond the custom colours

“Back in the old days, I’m sure if you wrote a letter to Gibson asking for a colour from the [Firebird] chart on such-and-such a guitar they’d make it for you,” concurs David. “Also, I think custom colour guitars would sometimes be made and displayed at a trade show then sold on. 

"The earliest [SGs] I’ve seen in colours are always Customs, not Standards – I have one in Cherry Red, one in black, and I also have a sunburst from ’63. When it comes to Standards, I have an Inverness Green, a Pelham Blue, a Sparkling Burgundy, a Cardinal Red and one in black. 

"We also have a custom-ordered ’64 SG Standard in Cherry Sunburst at the museum. I think ’64 to ’66 was the crest of the wave. Custom colour SGs are pretty darn scarce from the late 60s and are pretty much done by the beginning of the 70s.

“Throughout the [70s] Norlin period and beyond, they tried to make the SG into the cheaper guitar – ‘the affordable Gibson’. I think they were trying to reinvent the wheel and the SG really suffered: the necks got really thin, the quality of the workmanship went way down, and they tried to make many models that were unsuccessful – like the SG-200. They lost their way, but Gibson are doing the best thing now by going back to their roots and making them correctly.”

“The Norlin era is a different animal altogether,” says Mat. “Having access to the engineering archive, I think the pity about it is that they were a lot more proactive about things than people often think. They were always problem solving. But that was to the detriment of everything. 

"They were basically over-steering and over-engineering solutions. That’s evident from the ever-changing SG designs to the bracing on the acoustic guitars. That’s not to say they didn’t make some great instruments; it’s just the process was a lot different in that era than it was earlier. SGs were a much easier guitar for Gibson to build in all of their forms, compared with single-cutaway Les Pauls because they don’t have maple tops and binding – they’re easier to make and easier to get through production.

“In the 60s, I think Larry [Allers] was steeped in the Gibson tradition of building set-neck instruments and with the SG he was just trying to build a solid-bodied modern-looking guitar. I don’t think he was that intent on changing the way production operated at the time, which is something I can relate to now. 

"We have very specific ways of hand-crafting set-neck guitars. It’s a process. To do that right you have to build the neck tenon a little bit larger than the area that accepts it, and you kind of chisel away as you go while being mindful of the neck angle. It can take up to an hour just to set the neck of one guitar.”

Today, Gibson is returning to its roots with a fresh perspective under new leadership. “On the one hand we’re returning to our roots in terms of design,” says Mat, “and on the other we’re being more mindful of how we are perhaps stuck in our ways on the manufacturing side. 

It’s not like a Norlin situation: we are just finding ways to modernise our production. That’s where the real work comes into play. We’re asking not only what makes it the best instrument, but what’s the strongest, smartest and most historically accurate instrument we can make. It’s about finding ways to modernise production and go back to what made our instruments great in the first place.

“We still have the same goal, but we have fresh, new ways of thinking about it. And we’re definitely not having machinery take the place of people, because try as we might to modernise to that extent, the answer to most of our problems is usually: find an expert. There’s usually a human being who can get us the result we’re looking for.”

• Guitarist would like to thank Paul Tucker, Vintage ‘n’ Rare Guitars of Bath, and the Songbirds Guitar Museum

Earlier this month we wondered whether Epiphone’s Inspired by Gibson Collection could yield some of the company’s best guitars yet. And judging by the rollout of new electric guitars, as well as a few acoustic models, we can say that it’s looking very likely to be the case.

The Original and Modern Inspired by Gibson guitars boast a host of classic and new features, including the more Gibson-like Kalamazoo headstock, as well as upgraded electronics and finishes. What's more, the word on the street is that every Gibson model will now have an equivalent Epiphone version.

There’s a lot on offer here, with specs and features to satiate discerning Gibson players new and old.

But don’t just take our word for it – check out all the mouthwatering models below.

Epiphone Inspired By Gibson - Original Collection

Dot ES-335

Epiphone’s version of the ES-335 “Dot” features a laminated maple body, mahogany neck with a 1960's SlimTaper D-shape profile. There’s also a LockTone Tune-o-matic bridge and Stopbar tailpiece, Grover tuners and Alnico Classic humbuckers.

The guitar is offered in a choice of Cherry and Vintage Sunburst finishes for $449.

Dot Deluxe

The Limited Edition Dot Deluxe boasts a Flame Maple Veneer top and body in new Aquamarine and Blueburst color finishes. Other features include a mahogany neck with a SlimTaper D-profile, Alnico Classic humbuckers and Grover Rotomatic tuners. The guitar is available for $499.

ES-339 PRO

Similar in shape to the ES-335 or Casino but with a reduced body size, the ES-339 PRO features custom wound Alnico Classic PRO humbucker pickups with coil-tapping plus Epiphone Deluxe tuners. There’s also a laminated Maple body with solid center block, maple neck and pau ferro fingerboard.

The guitar is available in Cherry, Pelham Blue and Vintage Sunburst finishes for $499.

Les Paul Junior

The Epi Les Paul Junior is based on the 1950s classic design. The guitar features a mahogany body in Vintage Tobacco Sunburst finish, a single dog-ear P-90 PRO single coil pickup, a Lightning Bar wrap around bridge and Epiphone Deluxe Vintage tuners. Available for $379.

Thunderbird Vintage PRO

An accurate reproduction of the electric bass first introduced in 1963, the Thunderbird Vintage PRO features ProBucker bass humbuckers and a vintage-styled ‘60s Thunderbird Tune-o-matic bridge and Claw tailpiece. Available in Alpine White, Ebony and Tobacco Sunburst for $699.

Flying V

The Epiphone Flying V recreates the 1958 original with an Ebony finish, ProBucker humbuckers with CTS electronics, a Flying V string- thru tailpiece and Epiphone Vintage Deluxe tuners. There’s also a mahogany body and neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. The V is available for $599.

Firebird

A recreation of the original 1963 Firebird, the new Epiphone model features a mahogany body in a Vintage Sunburst finish, Grover 18:1 ratio mini tuners and Epiphone ProBucker humbuckers with CTS electronics. There’s also a mahogany body, mahogany/walnut neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. The Firebird is available for $599.

Les Paul Custom

The Epiphone Les Paul Custom “honors” the 1954 “tuxedo” version of the model. Features include a traditional Custom-style mahogany body and Ebony fingerboard, gold hardware, ProBucker humbuckers with CTS electronics, Grover machine heads and a Custom-style inlay. The Les Paul Custom is offered in Alpine White and Ebony finishes for $799.

Les Paul Standard 50s

Based on ‘50s-era Les Pauls, the Les Paul Standard 50s features a mahogany body with a maple cap and mahogany neck with long neck tenon. There’s also ProBucker humbuckers with 50s style wiring and CTS electronics, LockTone ABR Tune-o-matic bridge and Stopbar tailpiece and Epiphone Vintage Deluxe 18:1 ratio tuners. The guitar is offered in Metallic Gold, Heritage Cherry Sunburst and Vintage Sunburst finishes for $599.

Les Paul Standard 60s

Based on ‘60s-era Les Pauls, the Les Paul Standard 60s boasts a mahogany body with a maple cap, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also ProBucker humbuckers with CTS electronics, Grover tuners and a LockTone ABR Tune-o-matic bridge and Stopbar tailpiece. The guitar is available in Ebony, Bourbon Burst and Iced Tea finishes for $599.

Les Paul Special

Designed to recreate the sound of the single cutaway ‘50s-era Gibson Les Paul Special, the new Epiphone model features a mahogany body with a reproduction of the classic TV Yellow finish, a mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also P-90 PRO soapbar single-coil pickups and CTS electronics, Lightning Bar Wrap Around bridge and Vintage style Deluxe tuners with ivory buttons. The Les Paul Special is available for $399.

SG Custom

The SG Custom recreates the 1960s-era SG with “LP-Custom” style binding. Features include a mahogany body, mahogany neck and ebony fingerboard with a Les Paul Custom style inlay. There’s also Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers with CTS electronics, gold hardware, a LockTone ABR Tune-o-matic bridge with Stopbar tailpiece and gold hardware. The SG Custom is available in Ebony for $579.

SG Special (P-90)

The SG Special (P-90) features a mahogany body, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard, and is loaded with Epiphone P-90-PRO single coil pickups. There’s also a Lightning Bolt Wrap Around bridge and Epiphone Deluxe tuners. The guitar is available in Sparkling Burgundy and Faded Pelham Blue for $399.

SG Standard

The SG Standard features a mahogany body, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard with trapezoid inlays. There’s also Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers with CTS electronics, Epiphone Deluxe tuners and a classic “batwing” pickguard. The guitar is available in Heritage Cherry, Ebony and Alpine White for $449.

SG Standard '61

The SG Standard ’61 recreates the Gibson SG from its first year of production. Features include a mahogany body in a Vintage Cherry finish, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also ProBucker humbuckers with CTS electronics, a LockTone ABR Tune-o-matic bridge and Stopbar tailpiece and Epiphone Deluxe Vintage tuners. The guitar comes in a Vintage Cherry finish for $449.

SG Standard '61 Maestro Vibrola

Similar in spec to the SG Standard ’61, this model also boasts a newly-designed ‘60s-style Maestro Vibrola. The guitar comes in a Vintage Cherry finish and is available for $549.

Epiphone Inspired By Gibson - Modern Collection

AJ-100CE

This advanced jumbo style acoustic boasts a select spruce top with cutaway and a mahogany neck with 1960's SlimTaper D-shape profile. There’s also a NanoFlex pickup system, premium die-cast tuners and a pau ferro reverse-belly bridge. Available in a Natural finish for $249.

AJ-45ME

Boasting a J-45 round shoulder dreadnought body, the Masterbilt AJ-45ME features a solid Sitka spruce top and mahogany back and sides, a mahogany neck and a pau ferro fingerboard. There’s also an active preamp system, imitation tortoise pickguard and Grover Sta-Tite 18:1 ratio tuners. Available in a Vintage Sunburst Satin finish for $699.

Hummingbird PRO

This acoustic/electric features a solid spruce top, mahogany neck and body and pau ferro fingerboard. There’s also Grover Rotomatic 18:1 ratio tuners, traditional binding, a historic Hummingbird pickguard and a Fishman Sonitone pickup system. The guitar is available in Faded Cherry.

Les Paul Modern Figured

The Les Paul Modern Figured boasts a weight relief mahogany body with a figured top, a mahogany neck and an ebony fingerboard. There’s also ProBucker pickups with coil-splitting, phase switching and a treble bleed circuit, Grover Locking Rotomatic tuners with Tulip buttons with an 18:1 ratio and a Graph Tech nut. The guitar is available in Caffe Latte Fade, Magma Orange Fade and Caribbean Blue Fade for $699.

SG Modern Figured

The SG Modern Figured features a Mahogany body with a AAA Flame Maple Veneer top in a Trans Black Fade finish. There’s also a mahogany neck, ebony fingerboard, ProBucker humbuckers with coil-splitting, phase switching and CTS electronics and Grover Locking Rotomatic tuners with Tulip buttons with an 18:1 ratio. Available for $549.

Les Paul Classic

The Les Paul Classic features a mahogany body with a plain maple cap, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also open-coil “zebra” Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers with CTS electronics, coil-splitting and phase switching and Grover Rotomatic tuners. Available in Ebony, Honeyburst and Heritage Cherry Sunburst for $499.

Les Paul Classic Worn

Similarly-spec’d to the Les Paul Classic, the Les Paul Classic Worn features new “worn” finishes. Options are Worn Ebony, Worn Heritage Cherry Sunburst, Worn Purple and Worn Gold Top, for $449.

Les Paul Modern

The Les Paul Modern features a weight relief mahogany body with a maple cap and contoured heel, mahogany neck and ebony fingerboard. There’s also ProBucker pickups with coil-splitting, phase switching and a treble bleed circuit, Grover Locking Rotomatic tuners with Tulip Buttons with an 18:1 ratio and a Graph Tech nut. Available in Vintage Sparkling Burgundy, Graphite Black and Faded Pelham Blue for $649.

Les Paul Studio

The Epiphone Les Paul Studio is a modern version of the classic ‘80s no-frills design. Features include a mahogany body with a plain maple veneer top, mahogany neck and pau ferro fingerboard. There’s also Epiphone-designed Alnico Classic humbuckers, Grover tuners and a LockTone ABR Tune-o-matic bridge and Stopbar tailpiece. Finish options are Alpine White, Ebony, Wine Red and Smokehouse Burst, for $449.

SG Classic Worn P-90s

The Epiphone SG Classic Worn boasts a mahogany body with a "worn" open grain finish, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also Epiphone P-90-PRO soap bar single coil pickups, a LockTone ABR bridge and Stopbar tailpiece and black “batwing” pickguard. Available in Worn Cherry and Worn Inverness Green for $379.

Les Paul Muse

The Les Paul Muse boasts a lightweight chambered Okoume body with a maple cap, Okoume neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also high-output Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers with coil-splitting and phase controls plus a treble bleed circuit. The guitar is available in new metallic finishes including Radio Blue Metallic, Wanderlust Green Metallic, Purple Passion Metallic, Jet Black Metallic, Smoked Almond Metallic, Pearl White Metallic and Scarlet Red Metallic for $499.

SG Muse

The SG Muse features a mahogany body, mahogany neck and Indian laurel fingerboard. There’s also high-output Alnico Classic PRO humbuckers with coil-splitting and phase controls plus a treble bleed circuit. The guitar is available in new metallic finishes including Radio Blue Metallic, Wanderlust Green Metallic, Purple Passion Metallic, Smoked Almond Metallic, Pearl White Metallic, Jet Black Metallic and Scarlet Red Metallic for $429.

For more information on all the new Inspired by Gibson guitars, head to Epiphone.

“Bring me the usual, plus surprise me.”

That’s what Keith Richards would generally tell his longtime guitar tech, Pierre de Beauport, before the start of a session for 2015's Crosseyed Heart.

It was de Beauport’s enviable job to visit Richards’ equipment storage locker and fill his car with a selection of guitars and amps to provide a basic, “go to” setup, while also throwing in a few more “out there” options for experimentation.

With nearly a thousand guitars in Richards’ collection, there’s quite a lot from which to choose. “The usual” will invariably include several of Richards’ iconic Fender Telecasters such as the 1953 model he calls “Micawber” and the ’54 named Malcolm. Both of these are set up in the guitarist’s trademark five-string open G tuning (low to high: G, D, G, B, D, with the low E string removed).

There are also always a few Teles set up in six-string standard tuning, such as Richards’ ’59 with rosewood neck. Note that Richards has been using Ernie Ball strings for several decades; the company even makes a custom five-string set (.11 .15 .18p .30 .42) for the guitarist. The electric guitar selection for the Crosseyed Heart sessions always also included one of Richards’ vintage black Gibson ES-355s and at least one of his vintage Les Paul Juniors. Richards’ guitar and amp choices all tend to be vintage. A Danelectro electric sitar is heard on “Suspicious.”

And as Richards played bass on all but one of the album’s tracks, another key electric instrument was a 1962 Hoffner hollowbody bass guitar used throughout the album sessions. Richards’ stock guitar amp setup in the studio is a tweed Fender Champ with an eight-inch speaker, combined with a tweed Fender Harvard modified with a 6L6 output stage tube and a 12” speaker, nicknamed “One Love.”

The modification makes the Harvard a single-ended or Class A amp, like the Champ. “The Harvard adds a little bottom end and clarity,” de Beauport explains. “And Keith is always plugged into Input 2 on the Champ, not Input 1. We turn the Champ up to about 4, no higher—to where it’s just starting to break up.” Amps for overdubs included a tweed Fender Bandmaster with three 10-inch speakers and an early-Sixties Watkins Joker. Less well known than the popular Watkins Dominator, the Joker is truly bizarre.

“It’s a four-channel amp with a Watkins Copicat tape delay build in,” says de Beauport. “It has this other effect that isn’t really reverb, called ‘Halo.’ I think that’s only on channel 4. And it has a mic stand that pulls out of the top. It’s one of the most whacked-out amps of the Sixties. There aren’t a lot of them. Finding one that works has been fun. They’re red.” Richards’ main acoustic guitar for the sessions was his 1958 Martin 00-21. But as the album delves deeply into his folk and country roots, many other acoustics came into play.

“Goodnight Irene” features a truly historic Keef guitar: his 1963 Harmony 1270 12-string acoustic, heard on classic Stones tracks from the Sixties such as “Good Times Bad Times,” “Play with Fire,” “Not Fade Away” and "Tell Me.” Also heard on “Goodnight Irene” is a cavaquinho, a small, guitar-like instrument used in Portuguese and Brazilian music. Richards’ guitar solo on “Robbed Blind” was played on a 2008 Vicente Carillo classical guitar. And the acoustic mix on “Just a Gift” includes one of Richards’ Martin tiples.

“A tiple is a four-course, 10-string ukulele with two triple courses and two doubles,” de Beauport explains. “But I changed the spacing on the nut to make it five double courses and tuned it to open G.” So, in essence, it’s an acoustic, short-scale counterpart to Richards’ open-G Telecasters—a completely unique instrument. As de Beauport notes: “You walk into the studio and it’s not just a room full of Teles. It’s everything…all over the place.”

Aerosmith’s mid-Seventies albums Toys in the Attic and Rocks are virtual encyclopedias of awesome hard rock guitar tones. The rhythm guitar tracks have balls of steel and Joe Perry’s solos are as fat as a Cajun master chef with twice as much badass attitude. Awesome riffs abound on both albums, including the galloping pummel of “Back in the Saddle” and hypnotic swagger of “Sweet Emotion,” but the ne plus ultra riff of these efforts is undoubtedly the raunchy low-down funk of “Walk This Way.”

Joe Perry and Brad Whitford’s guitar tones on this song have bewildered guitarists for years. Many assumed that the guitarists used Sixties Marshalls or Fifties Fender tweed combos, but there’s a very distinctive midrange honk and percussive crunch prevalent on the guitar tracks that a Fender or Marshall can’t deliver on its own. Perry gave a hint about what he used in an interview with Steve Rosen in the March 1979 issue of Guitar Player, where he said, “When I’m at the Record Plant in New York City I use some Ampegs they have there — really hot Ampegs that sounds a lot like Fender Dual Showmans.”

For “Walk This Way,” Perry plugged into an Ampeg V-2, a 60-watt tube head with several unusual features, including a pair of 7027A power tubes and an EQ section featuring a Baxandall circuit for treble and bass along with an active midrange section with a selection of three different center frequencies: 300, 800 and 3000Hz. This was a house amp at the Record Plant that was used on numerous notable sessions.

For Perry’s main rhythm track (which can be heard by panning to the left; Brad Whitford’s parts are panned hard right), he used a double- cutaway Gibson Les Paul Junior (pictured below) with a single P-90 pickup and boosted the V-2’s midrange — set to 800Hz — to provide the proper grit, growl and howl. He also used the Les Paul Junior to overdub the first solo, but for the second solo and outro he switched to a late-Fifties Fender Stratocaster. He begins the second solo on the Strat’s bridge pickup, but starting at the outro’s fat, sustained note bends (around 2:45) he switches to the Strat’s neck pickup and engages a Seventies Maestro FZ-1S Fuzz-Tone (a.k.a. Super Fuzz) to further thicken the midrange and make the guitar “sound like an electric razor.”

GET THE SOUND, CHEAP!

• Reverend Sensei Jr.
• Fender 68 Custom Princeton Reverb
• MXR Six Band EQ

• TONE TIP: No other amp truly sounds like an Ampeg V-series head, but the MXR Six Band EQ can replicate some of the V-2’s distinctive midrange character by boosting the 800Hz slider about 10 to 12dB.

ORIGINAL GEAR

GUITAR: 1960 Gibson Les Paul Junior, volume: 10, tone: 10; 1959 Fender Stratocaster with rosewood fretboard (bridge pickup for solo 2, volume: 10, bridge/middle pickup tone: 10; neck pickup for outro solo, volume: 10, neck tone: 9)

AMP: Ampeg V-2 head (Input 1, Volume 1: 6, Treble: 6, Midrange: 8, Bass: 3, Reverb: 0, Sensitivity 1 switch: 0dB, Ultra Hi switch: off, 1/2/3 switch: 2); Marshall 4x12 cabinet (speaker type unknown, probably Celestion G12M25)

EFFECTS: Maestro Fuzz Tone FZ-1S (Fuzz 1 setting, Volume: 10, Balance: 10, Sustain: 8; used for outro solo only)

STRINGS/TUNING: Ernie Ball Super Slinky (.009, .011, .016, .024, .032, .042), Standard

PICK: G\Fender Medium

Yes, I know, the Les Paul, Explorer and Flying V, and of course, even the SG will always be considered the “sexiest” models in Gibson’s roster of iconic instruments for rock and roll. As they should be, because these guitars and the very famous players associated with them have created some of the most desirable electric guitar tones on countless recordings. And then there’s the Les Paul Junior and Melody Maker: two stripped-down guitars that kinda get overlooked and often relegated to the back of the class as “student models.” And that, my friends, is where you’d be wrong. Johnny Thunders, Joan Jett and so many more legendary artists have made these “beginner” models sound downright ferocious — the scrappy junkyard dogs of guitars, if you will — and not to mention, look pretty cool.

Epiphone makes just about every one of the aforementioned models and more, and have always been my go-to company when someone asks me for guitars that not only are precisely set up but also give you the most bang for your buck. Here, Epiphone have merged the Les Paul Junior and Melody Maker into one seriously kick-ass model called the Les Paul SL, which goes to the head of the class as a new breed of “student model” guitars — and as their most affordable Les Paul.

FEATURES Epiphone touts the Les Paul SL as a “slim lightweight guitar,” and they aren’t kidding. Its poplar body is light as a feather but still has all the substantial heft of a Les Paul Junior without feeling cumbersome. My model came in a vintage sunburst, offering up classic looks from the Fifties — but don’t fret, Epiphone is also smart in offering the SL in other very hip solid finishes like sunset yellow and pacific blue, among other colors. The most distinguishing feature of the SL is its custom single-ply pickguard that surrounds the two Epiphone 700SCT (bridge) and 650SCR (neck) ceramic single-coil pickups. Outside of that, the SL is very much a typical single-cut Les Paul Junior with no binding, a mahogany neck, a slim-taper D-profile neck shape, 22 medium jumbo frets, an adjustable intonated “wraparound” stopbar tailpiece, “tophat” master volume and tone controls with a three-way toggle switch and premium die-cast 14:1 tuners.

PERFORMANCE I know what you’re thinking: single-coils and not P-90 pickups in a Junior?!? Trust me, I thought the same thing — until I plugged it in. Epiphone voiced the SL’s ceramic pickups with plenty of body and roundness, which gave these plump single-coils a great deal of touch-sensitivity. Even more remarkable is how balanced and defined they sound overdriven from a cranked amplifier. My first thought is this guitar would be perfect for slide since it has the adjustable wraparound bridge and a flat 12–inch radius on its fingerboard, but after auditioning it with a number of classic Fender, Marshall and Vox amps, I felt the SL could stand on its own as guitar that is poised for rock and blues, with a distinctive tone that cuts on its own terms. What’s even better is how flawlessly the guitar plays, thanks to Epiphone’s consistent textbook setup on its instruments.

STREET PRICE: $119
MANUFACTURER: Epiphone, epiphone.com

● The Epiphone ceramic single-coil pickups sound surprisingly muscular and clear, thwarting any notion this is a wimpy “student model” guitar
● The SL is incredibly lightweight and easy to play and can be setup for any number of purposes, from slide guitar to a howling blues-rock beast
● THE BOTTOM LINE The Epiphone Les Paul SL is more than just an entry-level model that’s affordable. It’s a solid guitar with playability and pickups that give it larger-than-life swagger

• Explore our pick of the best electric guitars under $500
• ...and the best beginner electric guitars

I’ve been a huge fan of Lollar Pickups and in fact, I have Lollar Special T Series pickups in both my custom Telecaster and Esquire guitars because these pickups breathe depth and transparency into my tone. I also own a Les Paul Junior that could use an upgrade to better pickups.

So, when I heard Lollar introduced the P-90 Staple pickup, a neck pickup specifically, I just had to try it out.

The Lollar P-90 Staple is a direct replacement neck pickup only that fits almost any soapbar P-90 routed guitar. Based on the original “staple” neck pickup found in mid-Fifties Gibson Les Paul Customs and their high-end archtop guitars, its design employed six rectangular pole piece Alnico V magnets (similar to single coils) instead of dual bar magnets beneath the coil like a P-90 pickup.

Here, Lollar hand-bevels the rectangular Alnico V pole piece magnets, which are non-adjustable, for the P-90 Staple pickup. It has an output of 8.9K, and also features 42 gauge coil wire, braided shield wire and is available in black, white or cream soapbar style covers.

Using a Collings 290 guitar with the Lollar Staple in the neck and a Lollar P-90 in the bridge, I plugged into a Supro Black Magick amplifier and fired away. The Lollar bridge has all the desirable snarl, rounded bass and biting treble, and sounded ferocious. But there’s no comparison, the Lollar Staple just sounds glorious in the neck position. The Staple is louder, woody to the point of sounding flute-like, and so incredibly articulate and full that I found myself using it more than the bridge because the note-definition is spot-on. It’s such a stunner of a pickup that I’m hoping Lollar will create a Staple for the bridge position.

STREET PRICE: $145
MANUFACTURER: Lollar Pickups, lollarguitars.com