Here’s a great Gibson Les Paul Deluxe Goldtop from 1976.
The Gibson Les Paul was first released with this finish – metallic gold top and clear on the rest of the guitar. Over the years, the gold top finish has been available but by the 1970’s was mostly seen on the Deluxe model, featuring two mini-humbucker pickups (from Gibson’s Epiphone stock) in P-90 sized routes.
Here is a very nice Gibson L-4C from 1952. The L-4C was a cutaway version of the L4, and while this guitar was originally fully acoustic the pickup has been added to the pickguard so the body isn’t modified. The L-4 and L-4C feature a fully hollow body with a carved spruce top coupled with maple laminate back and sides. The L-4 was produced from 1912 to 1956 and the L-4C was produced from 1949 to 1971.
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Now THIS is a rock guitar! Here’s a Gibson Les Paul Junior Lite from 1999, looking remarkably like a Les Paul Special. The Les Paul Special was introduced in 1955 as a sincle-cutaway guitar to provide a lower cost model in the Les Paul line, and it immediately took a place in the rock arsenal. In 1958, it received a major makeover with the double-cut (DC) body design, which provides unrestricted access to all the frets. However, the DC model was discontinued during 1960, in favour of the new body design that became known as the SG.
Over the years, the Double-Cut body shape has been reissued. From 1999 to 2002, Gibson produced the guitar shown here, is a Special with P-100 hum-cancelling soapbar style pickups and mini trapezoidal markers, and called it the Junior Lite.
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The Gibson Byrdland was originally a custom built version of the L-5 and based on suggestions made by Billy Byrd and Hank Garland, two prominent Nashville session players in the mid to late 1950’s (Hank Garland played on many Elvis and Roy Oribison sessions that produced hit records).
The Byrdland was the first ‘thinline’ body and has a 23.5″ scale length, so really ‘wide’ chord voicings are easier. In production since 1955, this is a 1975 example. It’s in great playing shape and it has been played.
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Gibson introduced what became the SG during 1961 as a Les Paul model. With the end of the Les Paul endorsement deal for this guitar, the guitars were renamed to SG, though this process didn’t end till 1963 when Gibson finally ran out of the ‘Les Paul’ branded parts! The first production models carried ‘PAF’ pickups and a unique (and quickly discontinued!) side-pull trem. Various configurations of pickups, pickguards, bridges and tailpieces followed.
The 1968 SG Standard featured a larger ‘batwing’ pickguard, two humbuckers, Kluson tuners and the Maestro Vibrola.
This example is in good playing condition but was repaired long ago.
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The Gibson SG has been a workhorse since its introduction. Versatile and capable, it has been used in pretty much every style of music.
This 1974 example shows a fair amount of wear, which really means that the guitar has been used for its intended purpose and has proved it can really do the job!
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