Page 67 - Guitar Classics Magazine - The Les Paul Bible 2019

VINTAGE BENCH TEST

he recession of 2008 had a significant impact
on every aspect of our society and the vintage
guitar market was no different – values of
T historic instruments tumbled for the first time
in years and it meant there were great deals to be
had, if you could find them. Rob Francis was one
such clever speculator, and it’s remarkable to learn
that he managed to pick up this original 1952
Les Paul Standard for roughly the same price that
you’d pay for one of Gibson’s Tom Murphy-aged
True Historic reissues today.
Having spotted the guitar for sale in a small shop in
Virginia, Rob bought it and had it shipped to a friend
in LA where he was able to pick it up while there on
a work assignment.
As a professional photographer, Rob has learned to
be extremely cautious with his equipment over the
years, but a moment of absentmindedness could have
parted him from his prize before he even managed to
get it home…
Rob was driving back to the airport with the
Goldtop when he realised that he needed to fill his MAYBE GIBSON AND LES PAUL
car up with gas, and so he pulled over at a service
station in a rather insalubrious part of town. As the WERE A LITTLE TOO SWAYED BY THE
locals stocked up on snacks and drinks, Rob queued
for about 15 minutes to pay for his gas, oblivious SUCCESS OF THE TELECASTER. LES
to the fact that he’d left the car unlocked and
unattended with the Cali Girl case sat in plain view KEPT A ’51 NOCASTER GIVEN TO HIM
on the back seat.
BY LEO FENDER UNTIL HIS DEATH
AWKWARD MARRIAGE
On reflection, he was very fortunate that an
opportunistic thief didn’t happen by and pilfer the
guitar – or maybe the thief in question was a vintage they deviate from tried and trusted guitar-building OPPOSITE The headstock
obsessive and didn’t think it was worth the trouble practice? We may never know for sure, but a logo is a clue that this is one
for a ’52? tentative hypothesis is that maybe Gibson and Les of the earliest Les Pauls, as
This isn’t a knock on the Goldtop – it’s an amazing Paul were a little too swayed by the success of the the dot of the ‘i’ on the Gibson
logo is touching the ‘G’
guitar – but the fact is that while 50s Les Pauls are Fender Telecaster. It’s well known that Les kept a ’51
some of the most collectable instruments around, Nocaster gifted to him by Leo Fender until his death, ABOVE The original bridge has
not all 50s Les Pauls are considered equal by vintage so perhaps the intent was to give the Gibson Les Paul been replaced with a mystery
obsessives. a more Fender-like feel by levelling out the neck-to- uniit – possibly a 1967
There are two features of the 1952 models that body transition. Teisco – that its the original
mean they’re less loved than some of its brethren – Indeed, that would have been a fine idea if Gibson tailpiece studs
a very shallow one-degree neck angle and the trapeze had paired it with a new bridge design. Instead, Les
ABOVE Devil in the details –
tailpiece. As a result, the ’52 has a reputation as being Paul insisted that his guitar should use the trapeze
interestingly, the guitar has
more of a collector’s curio than a potential workhorse tailpiece/bridge unit that he had designed. Now, ‘666’ stamped into the back
instrument, and the market value reflects this. the trapeze worked perfectly with the ES-295 and of the headstock
The neck angle issue does rather beggar belief ES-225, but it was incompatible with that shallow
when you consider that Gibson had been making neck angle.
premium guitars since the 19th century – the basic As a result, players had to wrap strings under the
geometry of matching a neck to an archtop body bridge to achieve a playable action, which made
would have been well understood, so why did palm muting very hard and players would surely have

THE LES PAUL BIBLE 67