❌SOLD❌ Gibson Les Paul Special TV Yellow, 1993

Originally built from 1955 to 1959, the Gibson Les Paul Special is perhaps most famous in its ‘TV Yellow’ finish, intended to help it show up on black and white televisions. Until 1958, it used a single cutaway body, with the second cutaway added for the 1959 model year.

The construction of the Gibson Les Paul Special is simple. Mahogany is used for a slab body, and the neck. Rosewood is used for the bound fingerboard – and that’s it for wood selection. Hardware is also straightforward, with Kluson Deluxe tuners at the head – originally strip tuners, now individual gears – and at the other end, a stop bar tailpiece. Electronics include a pair of P-90 single coil pickups, pickup selector and individual volume and tone controls; the output jack is on the side.

Here we’re looking at at Gibson Les Paul Special in TV Yellow, dating to November 30th, 1993 at the Gibson Nashville plant. It is a double cutaway version reflecting the 1959 model and this version was built from 1976 to 1979, and from 1993 to 1994. The 1993/94 models were built in the Gibson Custom Shop.

This Gibson Les Paul Special in very nice condition, and all original except for the substitution of a Leo Quan ‘Badass’ type bridge. That bridge was groundbreaking when introduced in the late 1970s and combines the Stop bar with a Tune-O-Matic insert. This allows the
player to correctly set the intonation for each string, a great advance! Fret and fingerboard wear are minimal, and the finish is clean and largely unmarked though there is one small chip on the back edge of the lower cutaway. Along the fingerboard, the binding shows lines, where shrinkage has pushed the fret ends against the binding.

The Gibson Les Paul Special models are very good guitars for a number of genres. They sound great and play well.

The original Gibson hard shell case is included.