Pocket rockets
Ozzy’s Bark At The Moon guitarist Jake E Lee on why Juniors cut it as soloing machines “most of the Leads [on album Red Dragon Cartel] were done with my ’63 SG Junior. It just sounds more explosive than my ’68 SG Standard – it has a little more top end and a little more bottom end and just seems to really cut through. More so than a humbucker, although I like humbuckers for rhythms because they have more of a midrange kind of a curve to them, and tend to sit in a track better.” This was much better than admitting a crack at a competitor.
The Special was, in effect, a two-pickup version of the Junior, finished in a beige colour (but not called a TV model – a cause of some confusion since). Naturally enough, the Special required four controls and a pickup selector, but other than that and the colour, it really was the same as a two-pickup Junior. The TV and Special both appeared on a June 1956 pricelist, at $122.50 and $169.50 respectively. By now, the Junior had gone up to $110 (a Goldtop would set you back $235, a Custom $360). Also in 1956, Gibson added a Junior Three-Quarter model, available at the same list price as the regular one. It had a shorter neck, giving the guitar a scale length some two inches shorter than the Junior. Gibson explained in a catalogue that it was designed to appeal to “youngsters, or adults with small hands and fingers”.
Nobody famous played the Juniors or TVs or Specials. It seems that, quite simply, they were aimed at beginners… and were dutifully bought by beginners. No doubt there were a few budding rock ’n’ rollers scattered around here and there who made a great deal of enjoyable noise with them. But for the most part, American youth seems to have followed the Kalamazoo marketing plan, stumbling through three chords on a budget Les Paul, and then either forgetting about guitars altogether or moving up the tree to a ‘better guitar’ (for which read ‘more expensive guitar’). It was, after all, the American way. BODY DOUBLE More change was coming. Sales of the original Les Pauls reached a peak in 1956 and 1957, with the Junior hitting a then record 3,129 units in 1956. In 1958, Gibson made a big design change to three Les Pauls: the Junior, Junior Three-Quarter, and TV were revamped with a completely new doublecutaway body shape, otherwise keeping the P-90s and the generally simple vibe. Ted McCarty told this author that the redesign
was a reaction to players’ 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 those Les Pauls 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. The TV adopted the new double-cut design as well, now with that rather more yellow-ish finish (Gibson called it “Cream”).
When the double-cut design was applied to the Special in 1959, the result was not an immediate success because of a design mistake, a rarity for Gibson at the time. The company’s boffins overlooked the fact that the rout for the neck pickup in the Special’s new body weakened the neck-to-body joint, and many a neck was snapped right off at this point. The error was soon corrected by moving the neck pickup further down into the body, resulting in a stronger joint. The new double-cut Special was offered in Cherry or the new TV Yellow. However, and still causing much confusion today, the yellow Special was never actually called a TV model. Proper TV models only ever have one pickup, just like a Junior.
Gibson’s November 1959 pricelist showed the double-cut models as follows: Junior or Junior Three-Quarter (Cherry) at $132.50; TV (“Cream”) $132.50; Special (Cherry or “Cream”) $195; Special Three-Quarter (Cherry) $195. The Goldtop had morphed into the Sunburst Standard, at $265, while