In terms of solid body electric guitars, the Gibson Les Paul is one of the standout instruments of the guitar arena. Les Paul and the Gibson Guitar company first crossed paths in the 1940s. Les (Lester) Paul was a very prominent and well known guitarist entertainer of the time with his own radio show. But Les Paul was also interested in experimenting with the dubbing and amplification of the guitar sound.
The initial ideas around the solid body guitar were beginning to take shape in the 1940s and Les Paul began to experiment and come up with his own solid body test guitars. Les Paul was very interested in the sustaining quality of the sound that would come from a solid piece of wood as well as being able to produce a pure sound of the strings as opposed to that altered by the acoustic design of the existing instruments.
The first solid body model that Les Paul was to produce was named the log guitar. the log was a very simple instrument with nothing special to entice any sort of following in the guitar world at all. In fact it was regarded as no more than a broom and disregarded by many. In spite of this Les Paul persisted with his tinkering. He contacted the Gibson Guitar company in 1946 with his log guitar.
The guitar was initially dismissed completely by Gibson as they did not find anything serious or viable about the instrument. It would soon be a different story after Fender Guitars put out the first version of the Fender Telecaster in 1950 and it started to receive some commercial success.
The urgency of the situation for Gibson Guitars was now apparent as besides Fender there were also other Guitar production companies doing their own solid body concept work. These were National, Richenbacker and Bigsby. So in 1951, Gibson re-contacted Les Paul seeking his assistance in design and promotion of a product for them.
The collaboration between Gibson Guitars and Les Paul was a successful one as history now shows. In 1952, Paul signed an endorsement contract to have input into the design and also play Gibson's first solid body guitar and so the Gibson Les Paul was released. For his part Les Paul was to receive 5% in royalty of sales for a 5 year period.
The price of the first Gibson Les Paul Standard was $210 which placed it slightly more expensive than Fender's rival Telecaster guitar. The Les Paul Standard has a gold finish so was always to be referred to as the Gold Top. The Les Paul combined a mahogany body with a carved maple top. This combined the clean, clear sound of the maple with the warmer resonance of the mahogany.
The original Gibson Les Paul had a combined bridge and tailpiece that connected to the bottom of the guitar. Les Paul had designed this for support on his big hollow bodied guitars but it was no longer necessary on the solid body guitar so it was soon replaced in 1953. The original guitar also started with two single coil pickups, (P 90s). A volume and tone pot for each pickup was controlled by the three way selector switch. The Les Paul Standard had a mahogany neck topped with a rosewood finger board. There were crown shaped pearl inlays to mark the positions on the fret board.
In 1954, Gibson Guitars introduced two more Les Paul models. They were the Les Paul Junior, which was essentially a cheaper version designed for beginners, and the Les Paul Custom, a top end range. This began the era of the rock guitarist and the Lead Soloist. For the last 50 years, guitar players are often divided between being Fender or Gibson. The Gibson Les Paul played a unique and much loved role in the rock and roll revolution.
Author Terry Booth is very much an advocate of the Gibson Les Paul [http://www.guitarplayersworld.com/gibson_guitars/Les-Paul]. Terry has numerous examples of them currently available showing at his Guitar site for Gibson Guitars [http://www.guitarplayersworld.com/Electric/gibson_guitars].
