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I would have thought the estimated value would be a lot more than 100k-150k, but what do I know?
The first-ever Gibson Les Paul – owned by the man himself – is going up for auction | Guitar World
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08-19-2021 09:42 AM
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Hmm, did they miss a zero.... or 2?
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Nice!
I think I'll buy it and put a nice Pegasus set. Maybe a Floyd.
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Interesting that it has the "Les Paul" script on the headstock. Did Ted McCarty do that after he showed the guitar to Les? Or before, to get him to sign on? The Duchossoier book (Gibson Electrics) does not say, and the book curiously does not have a picture of the guitar.
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I'll be watching for serial number ' 2 ' , which will suddenly, miraculously appear in a year or so......It'll be discovered by a neighbor in LP's rented garage / storage area, where it was rumored to have been etc etc etc........to be followed by serial number ' 3 ' the following year......
Hey it worked for Carroll Shelby, and his assigned serial number Cobras, etc etc
" Wink wink, nudge nudge "
: )Last edited by Dennis D; 08-19-2021 at 06:00 PM.
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It's definitely not the first.....it has a bound neck. The first ones, including Les Paul's own, had unbound necks.
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The auction house estimates are always low, to attract bidders and to create a spectacle when the lot sells for a much higher amount.
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Well it wins the ugly stick for guitars worth more than $100,000 for sure.
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It WILL look nice in someone's guitar showroom. The ad does say it's the first "Production"model.
I recently played John D'Angelico's first arch top. It is a nice guitar. As a player instrument, I would never pay the price its value would dictate. It needs to be played.
I think it was modeled after the early L5's.
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that 1st DA was mine until a couple of months ago. Indeed from 1932-1936 Dangelico s were copies of the16” L-5. Then in 1937 he introduced the Style A,B, Excel and New Yorker models.
Originally Posted by Jimmy Mack
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I had two very early 50's LP customs with the huge magnet neck pups, I didn't like either... though I did keep the lead pups and exchanged them with late 50's junior pups. I've had those pups is a lot of gits, noisy as hell but wow!
Last edited by GNAPPI; 08-23-2021 at 09:28 PM.
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As a big fan of Les Paul, that's about as cool as a guitar gets.
I don't think there was any one who modified guitars in a less sympathetic way than him. Brutal!
I have a 1973 Les Paul Recording, I sort of see it as the electric guitar as he wanted it to be. A fine jazz guitar.
In a way it's a shame some of the innovations (i.e. the low impedance pickups etc) never caught on. They sound beautiful.
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Les treated guitars as they should...Tools. I always loved that he wasn't caught up in anything superficial about his numerous inventions. Every modification, adjustment or tinker had a functional purpose. I bet he drove the marketing folks nuts when he approached them with his latest 'improvement' to the Les Paul.
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It's kind of weird that the guitar has a Kauffman Vibrola on it. Kauffman Vibrolas (which were developed by Doc Kauffman - yes he's that Kauffman who partnered with Leo Fender in 40s to form K&F) are mainly found on some Rickenbackers from the 30s through the 60s. They're awful for staying in tune (it's why John Fogerty ditched the Vibrola that was on the Ric 325 he used during his CCR days, and replaced it with a Bigsby), and considering that Bigsbys had been around since the 40s, it makes me wonder why Les ever put a Vibrola on the first Les Paul. Ditto for the Dynasonic neck pickup - a great pickup from my personal experience with Dyna loaded guitars, but kind of out of place on a Gibson. Were these two items put on the Les Paul, due to Les' propensity for using leftover guitar parts on his guitars that he modified?
Last edited by EllenGtrGrl; 08-24-2021 at 06:25 AM.
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Not sure about the Kauffman, but regarding the Dynasonic, I wouldn't be surprised if Les didn't like the regular P90. He was into very hi-fi sounding pickups, even back in the 1940s. Apparently he was already using low impedance pickups back then. A P90 is the total opposite of hi-fi in many ways. Originally Posted by EllenGtrGrl
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Les used the Dearmond pickup on more than one of the goldtops given to him by Gibson because:
- he preferred the sound;
- was pissed off that Gibson stopped using his one-piece bridge/tailpiece, depriving him of some royalty money;
- thought it would be hilarious to give the finger to Ted McCarty by using an electric pickup from one of Gibson's direct competitors;
-one, some, or all of the above.
In response, Ted instructed Seth Lover to copy the Dynasonic but make it look different enough so that Gertsch/Dearmond couldn't sue Gibson, so he came up with the AlNiCoV pickup, which is ridiculously similar but uses rectangular magnets instead of round magnets. That pickup was then used on the Les Paul Custom from '54 to '57, when it was replaced with the new humbucking pickup. Once Gibson delivered the newly designed Customs to Les, the goldtops were retired for the most part from public use.
Les responded by chopping up all of these guitars and installing his own mad science experiments in them.
Must have been an interesting relationship between those two guys.
I always liked the pre-production goldtop shown below, and rolled my own version:
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True, but I had a late 1953/early 1954 Gretsch Country Club (I should have hung onto that guitar), and the early 50s Dynasonics it had were pretty hot pickups output-wise, even compared to today's Dynasonic pickups. They are also definitely not low impedance pickups. I checked the Dynas in my Country Club with a multimeter, and the DC resistance was about 11,000 ohms - that's more than an early PAF pickup's DC resistance, and much more than the 8,000 ohm DC resistance that modern Dynas and P90s typically have. So, in some ways, Dynas are just as "not hi-fi" as P90s are. I will admit though, Dynasonic pickups are nowhere near as quacky sounding, and midrange heavy as a P90 can be - though if the pole piece height is set too close to the strings, they can sound a bit too steel guitar-like IMO. Originally Posted by entresz
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I agree! Although I did read Les rewound that pickup so who knows what lurks under the cover! Originally Posted by EllenGtrGrl
I've got Dynasonics in my main gigging archtop, they are very hot in terms of DC resistance. I have them backed quite far away from the strings, almost 1/4 inch away. They sound heavenly like that, but if they're too close to the strings, they can be very clangy sounding.
They're also extremely sensitive with polepiece adjustments.... it took me ages to dial them in right. I found having the actual body of the pickup low and the poles a little higher gave me the best results.
Compared to P-90 they are a lot clearer sounding, I would imagine Les would have liked that extended top end.
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The Bigsby Vibrato wasn't available until 1951, and there wasn't one that was really usable on an LP guitar (break angle) until 1956, at which point Les Paul started using them. In the 1990s, when I saw him play, the Bigsby on the guitar that was playing was a unit from 1956. Originally Posted by EllenGtrGrl
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