Gibson USA Les Paul Jr Doublecut Exclusive

The Les Paul Jr was the budget Gibson guitar back when Epiphone was its own brand. The guitar had and has very simple construction. These guitars sold for less than 100 dollars back in the day. They had the simplest electronics and construction available at the time. It has a slab body made of mahogany. A thick mahogany neck with the long neck tenon. The fretboard is rosewood with 22 frets. It has a master volume and master tone knob connected to a single P90 pickup.

UTILIZATION

You wont be shredding on this guitar. It has a 50s profile boat neck on it. Lots of people call these necks baseball bat necks. From the front the upper fret access looks alright but when you try to play up there you will realize how hard it is to reach the upper frets. The large neck and the even larger neck joint are very vintage to put it nicely. The guitar is lightweight and relatively comfortable to play. The bridge is the super crude wrap around design which was designed to save money. Intonation is never perfect but for general rock music it is fine.

SOUNDS

The tone is what saves this guitar. The P-90 is my favorite vintage pickup. The P-90 was around for about 10 years before the PAF and once the PAF came out the P-90 was regulated to budget guitar usage. You could get a cheap Gibson with a P-90 in it up until the 70s. These pickups typically have an output of 7k but the way they deliver this output is what makes them great. They have a mix of single coil twang with the smoothness of a PAF. Its like a crispy humbucker. The PAF has a more refined and sofisticated sound since it came out 10 years later but the raw sound of the P-90 is something special. Not many vintage hardware pieces have been able to stay useful for so many decades. In the early days these were used for jazz and from the 60s onwards people used them to get great hard rock and early metal tones. Tony Iommi used P-90s for decades and all the classic WHO tunes were done with a P-90 SG special. In that era you do not get much heavier than that. They have a really aggressive tone and delivery more so than that of a PAF. Many of the heaviest records of the time were done on P-90 guitars. You will be surprised how aggressive this guitar can sound.

OVERALL OPINION

When this guitar came out it was one of the cheapest Gibsons you can buy. This is no longer true. This guitar is pretty expensive actually. It lists at around 2k and sells for like 1100. You can get an SG standard for that and it will have a ton more features and play many times better. I cant really recommend this guitar to anyone. you have to want to have a Les Paul Jr. If you want a Les Paul Jr. here it is.