A lost first-year Gibson Les Paul Junior has been brought back to life against all odds
The guitarist who discovered a near-unsalvageable first-year model Les Paul Junior in Kansas has completed its restoration – and the results are a sight to behold.
Musician and YouTuber Matthew Scott first shared his discovery back in October last year. At the time, he said the build (now confirmed to be a 1954 example) was in “the worst condition I’ve ever seen”, and that was no understatement: the guitar was clinging on for dear life.
Scott traveled to Witchita to inspect the instrument, which has now been restored against all odds, purring with a gorgeously rich, smoky timbre.
The state of the guitar upon its discovery reads like a horror story: the body had been scorched, its neck heel crudely 'repaired' with four bolts drilled straight through the body and neck, its headstock broken and the machine heads long gone.
It’s now been carefully re-fretted with Jescar nickel frets and given a fresh set of strings. Impressively, most of the original guitar actually remains in place, including its single P-90 in the bridge. Just some electronic TLC was required to get it back in good working order.
The broken headstock has been glued back to shape, while Scott successfully removed the bolts in the Frankenstein'd neck, re-gluing it back in place using more traditional techniques.
Scott has largely completed the rebuild with vintage parts in keeping with the guitar's heritage as one of the first Les Paul Junior models produced.
Although its original tailpiece was in good condition, Scott has swapped in a newer alternative that will better accommodate modern strings and intonate better.
The shafts of the guitar's original no-line Kluson tuners have been bent back into shape and host cream tuner buttons. Scott also sourced some original 1954 Gibson Les Paul knobs to accentuate the guitar’s authentic aesthetic.
It’s a remarkable transformation from a guitar that looked destined for the scrap heap. One commenter on the guitarist’s YouTube video likened the revival to that of rescuing an abused animal.
Further still, blues titan Jared James Nichols, who Scott describes as a “Les Paul Junior fanatic”, met up with Scott to spend an evening with the guitar and consequently fell in love with it. In fact, he wants to buy it.
“He played the guitar the entire night and it sounded phenomenal,” says Scott. “It really inspired me to go ahead and turn this guitar into a player.”
Nichols is expected to become the proud owner of the restored guitar in the future, although several commenters on Scott’s YouTube have said they wouldn’t want to part ways with the relic.
If he does end up purchasing this model, it wouldn't be the first time Nichols has got his hands on a restored early Gibson model.
Back in 2021, he made it his mission to restore 'Dorothy' – “one of the first Les Pauls ever made that was destroyed in a horrific tornado”.
