This one's been a labor of love that I've worked on for over a year. I've been a huge fan of the simple Gibson student guitars from the 50s ever since I bought my first vintage guitar ever - an early 1959 Gibson Les Paul Junior. There is something special about the combination of ultra resonant mahogany, the direct link between the strings/bridge/body, and a powerful P90 pickup. Interestingly, everytime I chatted with friends that have a ton of experience with vintage Gibson guitars, they all agreed that 1956/57 was the best year for the Junior.
Not wanting to spend over 10k, I decided to build one.
 
I secured an old growth, lightweight slab of Honduran mahogany that we used for the neck and body. Then, we added a very dark Indian rosewood fretboard that rung like a bell when knocked. Cut after exact '57 specs and glued together with hot hide glue, this must be the most resonant guitars we've ever built in our shop. We then sent the guitar to Randy at Karge Guitars who sprayed it for us in aged Ocean Turquoise Metallic - one of my all time favorite custom colors. He also added a sexy stinger to the back of the headstock. I mean ... come on! That's just ridiculously cool.
 
I installed a set of matched VIPots (low reading 550k in the volume and high reading 280k in the tone position) with a vintage .022 µF PIO cap that I had saved for a special occasion like this.
 
The cherry on top is the pickup. It's a real vintage 1956 Gibson P90 that was originally installed in a Gibson BR9 lab steel guitar. You'll see that the pole spacing is a tad wider than on regular P90s, but that doesn't affect the sound at all. This pickup in combination with the VIPots and the old wood is where everything's at! What a fantastic sounding and playing guitar.
 
Comes with one of our VIP hoodies.
 
Like with all guitars, you may have to adjust the setup to your liking. As of now, it is set up with D'Addario 10s and plays effortlessly with low action.

Shipping only via fully insured UPS Ground. Please make sure to select the UPS Ground shipping option during checkout.
 
Unfortunately, we cannot ship this guitar internationally. This is available only to continental US customers.