A Totally Original Early 1956 Tune-O-Matic Les Paul Standard Gold Top.

1956 Gibson Les Paul Standard Gold Top (Tune-O-Matic).

This totally original early Tune-O-Matic Les Paul Standard Gold Top weighs just 9.40 lbs. and has nice, fat nut width of 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid mahogany body with a solid carved maple top, one-piece mahogany neck with a nice, thick profile, and Brazilian rosewood fretboard with 22 original frets and inlaid pearl trapezoid (crown) position markers. Serial number "6 1136" inked-on in black on the back of the headstock. The top of the guitar has a single cream binding and the fretboard has single white binding. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo and with "Les Paul Model" silk-screened in gold. Two-layer (black on white) plastic truss-rod cover. Individual single-line "no-name" Kluson Deluxe tuners with single-ring tulip-shaped Keystone plastic buttons (stamped on the inside "2356766 PAT APPLD."). Two hot P-90 pickups with strong outputs of 7.68k and 7.96k. Cream plastic pick-up covers stamped inside "UC-452-F/1" (on the neck pickup) and "UC-452-B/2" (on the bridge pickup). Single-layer cream plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) on lower treble bout plus three-way pickup selector switch on upper bass bout. Gold plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs. The potentiometers are stamped "134 542" (Centralab October 1955) and the two original capacitors are stamped "Grey Tiger Type GT 452 .02 MFD 400 VDC." ABR-1 non-retainer Tune-O-Matic bridge with metal saddles and separate "wrap-over" stud tailpiece. This fifty-four-year-old early "Tune-O-Matic" Les Paul is in exceptionally fine (9.00) and totally original condition. There is a small amount of fine lacquer checking on the top of the guitar, a small area of wear to the top bass edge near the waist and a tiny area of gold surface loss to the top treble edge, also near the waist and a very small surface chip on the top treble horn. There is some very light belt buckle rash on the back (nothing through to the wood) and a few small surface marks on the back and sides of the body. The original frets show very little sign of wear and the Brazilian rosewood fretboard does not have any indentations whatsoever. There are a few small surface only marks on the back of the neck and on the lower top edge of the headstock. A previous owner has very lightly engraved an indiscernible ID number on the back of the guitar just below the switch cavity cover. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, this guitar is one of the best examples of an early Tune-O-Matic GoldTop that we have ever seen. There is no fading to the back or neck and no greening to the gold top. Housed in the original Gibson "Bulb Headstock" five-latch Lifton brown hardshell case with pink plush lining (9.00).

"The first Gibson Les Paul solidbody electric guitar, known simply as the Les Paul Model then but now better known by its descriptive nickname 'gold-top', first went on sale during 1952" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, p. 15).

"The new Les Paul guitar was launched by Gibson in 1952, in the summer, priced at $210, which was about $20 more than Fender' Telecaster sold for at the time…Today, a gold-finish Les Paul model is nearly always called a gold-top thanks to its gold body face…The new gold-top's solid body cleverly combined a carved maple top bonded to a mahogany base, a sandwich that united the darker tonality of mahogany with the brighter sonic 'edge' of maple. Paul said that the gold colour of the original Les Paul model was his idea. 'Gold means rich,' he said, 'expensive, the best, superb'" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, pp. 20-21).

"In 1955 the gold-top gained Gibson's new Tune-o-matic bridge. The unit had the facility to adjust individual string-length, improving intonation. Two years later humbucking pickups replaced P90s on the gold-top" (Tony Bacon and Paul Day, The Gibson Les Paul Book, p. 19).