The Gibson SG Les Paul Junior
My First Guitar
-Alan Arnell
There are many firsts in a person’s life. First kiss, first love, first car, et cetera. Getting that first thing you wanted so bad for so long is a memorable thing. Although, that is not why I remember my Les Paul Jr. I have many memories of my SG, because I have played it and loved it since I was 12 years old. This blog post is about my first guitar.
My first guitar and my first musical instrument was a Gibson Solid Guitar (SG) Les Paul Junior. My guitar was made at the Kalamazoo Plant, USA in the year 1962. At that time Gibson labeled the solid body guitar at a Les Paul. Not until 1963 when, Les had a falling out with Gibson, was the guitar renamed the SG. I will refer to my guitar as a SG in this post as most people know it as that name and I'm too lazy to keep typing out Les Paul.
The SG was eight years old when my mother purchased it and a amp for me at a neighbor’s garage sale for $200. The amp was a Gibson Amp that my parents sold in 1982, because I did not have a place to store it in my apartment. At that time; I told them to sell the amp, because it had tubes that I did not want to mess with them. Little did I know, right!
The year the SG became mine was 1970. Before the SG became my first guitar I had gone through years of wanting a guitar. Maybe the SG was not the best guitar to learn to play at 12 years of age, but the SG was exactly what I wanted. The SG was and still and is still a great guitar to play. I can tell you, that I have had dozens of guitars since I received my Les Paul Junior and that she still plays as well or better than the other guitars have play regularly. I still play my SG. The tuning pegs are in bad shape, I bent the D peg when it fell over once. With weather changes and time make the guitar to loose proper tuning, yet the old girl will stay in tune through a hour playing session. I know the pegs can be replaced, however I just can’t part with the ones I have that are the original pegs.
My SG was adult owned when I go it and then it grew up with me. I have put a great deal of wear on the old girl. The neck shows were I have run the back of my hand up and down the frets over 40 years of playing. Along with the D tuning knob being bent from when the guitar was knocked over, I have wore down the frets with years of enjoyable play. Just like all first loves, I still love my first love, warts and all!
My SG has a 60” neck profile with 22 frets and has a rosewood fretboard. The scale is 24.75”. The neck and body are both mahogany. It has a cherry finish and the iconic devil horn double cutaway. The bridge is a fixed stoptail. The Les Paul Junior only has one pickup which is a IP90. I have never been happy with the sound of my SG when plugged in to an amp. I have never been able to master a sound that makes me happy with just the one pick up that the guitar was equipped with when made by Gibson.
Though, handicapped with a single pick up, still I feel she produces a clean sound with plenty of reverb. I enjoy its rich bright sound that works well with any classic Jimi Hendrix or Pete Townsend riffs. If you are a ZZ Top or AC/DC kind of guy the SG gives good overdriven distortion despite its has single pick up.
The hardware has stood up well considering the abuse and the amount of use I have given the guitar. The cherry finish has lost only a little of it glossy cherry-red color. The only gripe I could give about the finish is that it has developed a multitude of horizontal hair line cracks. The cracks have been there since the early 70's and in the last few years the finish has faded as a faster rate that in its first 40 years of life.
From personal experience, I will tell you this guitar has withstood years and years of being often played, which is the best kind of abuse. There is no pitting or corrosion on any of the hardware. The strap buttons are solid as a rock. The neck is more solid than other guitars of the same style that are a fraction of the SG’s age.
My overall impression of my Gibson Les Paul Jr. SG is one of love and respect. I have been playing that guitar for 46 of its 54 year old life. If (God forbid) that guitar were stolen, lost or destroyed, I would be devastated. Some people say, ‘Well, it is just a guitar.” I say, “Is a mother just a mother?”
Gibson SG Les Paul Junior HIstory
The Gibson SG Junior is a solid-bodied electric guitar manufactured by Gibson from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. Like its earlier sister, the Gibson Les Paul Junior, it had been created for sale at a lower price. It is known for its single P-90 treble pickup, and the single piece 'wrap-around' bridge instead of the two-piece tune-o-matic bridge and tails-stop arrangement found on the SG Standard. From 1961 to 1963, it was branded with the "Les Paul Junior" name. In 1963, "Les Paul" was removed from the headstock and it was officially called the SG Junior. From 1965 to 1971, it had a generic SG pickguard with a soapbar P90 rather than the original dog-ear. It was discontinued in 1971. The late 1960s version has been re-issued by Gibson since 2003. In 2011, Gibson re-released the Junior closer to its early 60s incarnation.[1]
Introduced in 1954 The Les Paul Jr. was a student model version of Gibson’s now famous solid body Les Paul Goldtop. The Junior offered a budget version of the Goldtop and the newly released ornate Les Paul Custom. The Junior utilized a very basic slab body design with one P-90 pickup, a simple wraparound stop tailpiece, lower end open back Kluson strip tuners dot fingerboard inlays and a standard sunburst finish. Due to the growing popularity of television Gibson developed an alternate finish option for the Les Paul Jr, a pale yellow that would show up as bright white on a TV screen, the finish was dubbed “TV” Yellow. The Les Paul Jr. utilized a single cutaway in the body on the treble side of the body similar to its predecessor, the Les Paul Goldtop. It retained this feature until 1958 when Gibson introduced the double cutaway body style. The new double cutaway body style retained all the other features of the Les Paul Jr. but two new finishes would emerge. The Standard finish for the Les Paul Jr. from that point on would be Cherry Red and the TV finish was changed from a light wheat color to a bright banana Yellow. The new body style was initially slab cut like its predecessor but the edges would gradually become more rounded. In 1961 Gibson once again redesigned the Les Paul model across the board and the SG was introduced. The Les Paul Junior followed suit and took on the SG styling. In early 1963 Les Paul’s endorsement signature was removed and it was simply be called the “SG Jr”.
In 1960, Gibson Les Paul sales were significantly lower than in previous years.[citation needed] The following year, the Les Paul was given a thinner, flat-topped mahogany body, a double cutaway which made the upper frets more accessible, and a contoured body. The neck joint was moved by three frets to further ease access to the upper frets. The simpler body construction significantly reduced production costs, and the new Les Paul, with its slender neck profile and small heel was advertised as having the "fastest neck in the world". However, the redesign was done without knowledge from Les Paul himself. Although the new guitar was popular, Les Paul did not care for the new design (nor did he have anything to do with it), and requested the removal of his name from the new model. He remained under contract to Gibson, and was photographed with the new model several times.
Gibson honored Les Paul's request, and the new model was renamed "SG", which stood for "Solid Guitar'". Les Paul's name was officially deleted in 1963, but the SG continued to feature Les Paul nameplates and truss rod covers until the end of 1963.
In the early-to-mid 1960s Gibson's parent corporation, Chicago Musical Instruments, also revived the "Kalamazoo" brand name for a short time. Later models of the Kalamazoo KG-1 and KG-2 featured a body style similar to the Gibson SG, effectively creating a budget-line model until the brand was dropped in the late 1960s. Gibson currently releases lower-cost, internationally sourced versions of the SG through their subsidiary, Epiphone.
Because of its ease of play, holding comfort, popularity and vintage heritage, the body style of the SG is often copied by other manufacturers, although much less frequently than the Les Paul and the Fender Stratocaster.
The SG generally has a solid mahogany body, with a black pickguard. The 24.75" scale mahogany neck joins the body at the 22nd fret.[2] The SG's set neck is shallower than the Gibson Les Pauls. The SG features the traditional Gibson combination of two humbucker pickups or P90 pickups and a Tune-o-matic bridge assembly, wraparound bridge, (or vibrato tailpiece, depending on the model).
The SG Standard features pearl trapezoid fretboard inlays, as well as fretboard binding and inlaid "Gibson" logo; the SG Special omits these features, instead using white dot inlays and a silk-screened logo. The Standard has a volume and a tone control for each individual pickup, and a three-way switch that allows the player to select either the bridge pickup, the neck pickup, or both together. The SG does not include switching to coil split the humbuckers in stock form.
Some models use body woods other than mahogany; examples include the Swamp Ash SG Special and SG Voodoo, the 2009 Raw Power, and some walnut bodied 1970s models. High-end models, including the Diablo, occasionally sport decorative maple caps, carved tops, and gold hardware
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