A Totally Original 1955 Tune-O-Matic Les Paul Standard Gold Top.

1955 Gibson Les Paul Standard Gold Top (Tune-O-Matic).

This totally original early Tune-O-Matic Les Paul Standard Gold Top weighs just 9.30 lbs. and has nice, fat nut width of just over 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 rosewood fretboard with 22 original frets and inlaid pearl trapezoid (crown) position markers. Serial number ("510685") 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 very hot P-90 pickups with outputs of 7.74k and 8.01k. 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 "134 522" (Centralab May 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-one-year-old "first" of the "Tune-O-Matic" Les Pauls is in exceptionally fine (9.00) and totally original condition. On the back of the headstock, just by the G tuner, a tiny sliver of mahogany (measuring approximately 3/4 x 1/8 inch) has chipped off. There is the bare minimum of finish checking and a couple of tiny surface marks on the top of the guitar, a small amount of belt buckle rash on the mahogany back (only through to the mahogany in one small area measuring 3/8 x 1/4 inch), and a few very small marks on the edges and on the top edge of the headstock. There is very little wear to the original frets. Overall, this guitar is one of the best examples that we have ever seen. There is no fading to the back or neck and no greening to the gold top. The only 'issue' with this guitar is that the tuner buttons have been (inevitably) changed for "Uncle Lou" premium tips. Housed in the original Gibson "Cali-girl" four-latch Lifton brown hardshell case with pink plush lining (9.00). Complete with the original hang-tag.

"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).