One of the Very Earliest Double-Cutaway Les Paul Juniors.

1958 Gibson Les Paul Junior.

This super little guitar weighs in at just 6.60 lbs. and has that great thick 1958 neck profile with a nice, fat nut width of 1 11/16 inches and a standard Gibson scale length of 24 3/4 inches. Solid mahogany body, one-piece mahogany neck, and rosewood fretboard with 22 original 'thin' frets and inlaid pearl dot position markers. Headstock with gold silk-screened "Gibson" logo and "Les Paul Junior." Serial number in black ink on back of headstock. Closed-back single-line Kluson Deluxe strip tuners with white plastic oval buttons. One black P-90 pickup with an output of 7.94k. Tortoiseshell plastic pickguard with four screws. Two controls (one volume, one tone) on lower treble bout. Black plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs. The potentiometers are stamped "134 808" (Centralab February 1958). Single original "Bumble-Bee" capacitor. Combination smooth "wrap-over" bar bridge/tailpiece. This totally original first generation slab-bodied double-cutaway Les Paul Junior (with the noticeably sharper body edge, like the edge on the single-cutaway Junior) is in excellent (8.50) condition. The top of the guitar and the back of the neck are a little faded (this is most noticeable when the pickguard is removed), there is some fine finish checking on the top of the guitar, a fair amount of belt-buckle wear on the back, as well as some good old edge wear and a few surface dings here and there. But overall, this forty-nine-year-old baby is in really great shape, with a lovely '58 profile neck and the earlier style frets -- quite a bit smaller than the usual jumbos found on the '59s or later. And as for the sound -- this featherweight little Junior wails like a banshee…and stings like a bumble-bee! Housed in a later (eighties) black hardshell case with gray plush lining (8.75).

"In 1958 Gibson made a radical design change to three of the Les Paul models, and a cosmetic alteration to another. The Junior, Junior 3/4 and TV were revamped with a completely new double-cutaway body shape. Ted McCarty explained the re-design as a reaction to player's requests. 'They wanted to be able to thumb the sixth string,' he said, 'but they couldn't do it if the only cutaway was over on the treble side. So we made them with another cutaway, so they could get up there. We did things that the players wanted, as much as anything.' The Junior's fresh look was enhanced with a new cherry red finish" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, pp. 33 and 36).

"Even in double-cutaway style, the Junior retained its charming simplicity. It is, if you like, the Fender Telecaster of the Gibson line: the guitar for the player who is fed up with all those over-complicated instruments out there and instead seeks heads-down no-nonsense boogie" (Tony Bacon, 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul, p. 31).

"Mid 1958 Gibson 'Les Paul SG' Junior guitar specs: body style change to symmetrical rounded double cutaways, thick slab mahogany body, cherry red finish around serial number "8 49xx" (but note that single cutaway Junior have been seen as late as 1959). The peghead still says 'Les Paul Junior', but often this body style is referred to as the 'Les Paul SG' body style. The first few batches of 1958 and early 1959 double cutaway Les Paul Juniors had a noticably sharper body edge, like the edge on the single cutaway Junior. By early 1959 the edge became more rounded… With the double cut body style the pickguard changes to single ply tortoise, but either a black pickguard or a tortoise pickguard can be seen until late 1959/early 1960. The serial number color changed from a yellow inkstamp to a black inkstamp on the cherry red models, but some early 1958 cherry Juniors still had a yellow serial number… The Les Paul TV Model also changed to a double cutaway format by mid-1958" (http://www.provide.net/~cfh/gibson5.html#lpjr).