The older I become, the more necessary simplicity and good quality materials and build become.

P90 - The king of pick-Ups!

This is my favourite video showcasing a Les Paul Junior. The guy said he's not saying his hands are the right hands, but I think they are.

The two dudes in this look like the same guy at different stages of life.

I own a 57 Gibson Les Paul Junior and a 59 fender Vibrolux with a Celestion Alnico Blue 12” speaker and a vintage 59 Fender Bassman they sound fantastic together

maybe this whole video goes a little more in-depth than most would need, but the comparisons you make and the production quality of this video are both super awesome. nice work.

Who's here following the passing of Leslie West. RIP

Ok, that’s the first time I’ve heard an electric sound acoustic with no fancy pedals, it is very versatile

to this day still one of the best sounding guitar I have ever heard

Duane allman’s first axe was a double cut single p90 Les Paul JR . He’s got it sitting in his bedroom closet at his house in Macon along with a funky ass pair of shoes from the 60s.

This makes me want a vintage Jr even more. That tone is absolutely unmatched.

That was a truly original guitar mini documentary / round up. I enjoyed that, thanks.

What a tone with the '57 Junior! I'm dreaming night and day about that guitar! The Vox amp makes that junior sound so amazing! Thanks a lot! Really nice videos by the way! Love from France!

I could watch an hour of this stuff. I don't think my wife gets it though, that the tonal differences between vintage and modern P90s is very important.

Where's the Hello Kitty Stratocaster?

Great video review of these instruments. Sound quality/recording is awesome too. Congrats for such a pro job and thanks for uploading.

This is an absolutely excellent video! Thanks for bringing two excellent guitarist to this demo, it makes a difference.

A few years ago my wife bought for me a Les Paul TV Model reissue single cutaway with a P90 dog ear and yellow jacket caps. It's amazing how many tones you can get when just volume and tone pots are adjusted and playing between pick and fingers and moving around the picking area. Luv it. Nice video.

I wonder if in 50 years they are gonna talk about the cheap student guitars of today like this. "Yeah, back in 2006 they had it all figured out with the squier bullet strat, thinner for more control....bass wood for excellent sustain and single magnet ceramic pickups for that honoust and authentic squier tone...".

You really cover it all! Love your sensitive and discerning analysis of this wonderful instument. I'm sorry the LP Junior isn't yours' too.

Best review I have seen so far, professional - really really good job. Great instruments. Subscribed

Great video review. In the past I used to like complicated guitars, 3 or 4 pickups, whammy bar, switches, etc... But today I'm leaning towards more simple guitars, and explore the different posibilites they have. As you show in this video, less is more. Thanks for sharing.

Favorite bit is Neville turning the Jr into a pretty nice sounding Acoustic guitar. Beautiful review thanks team.

Great tip in here, about bringing the volume and tone knobs down, to sound like an acoustic guitar. You can apply this idea to any multi-pickup guitar, as well! (Note: I am just a hobbyist, a bedroom rock star who enjoys playing for my own self-enrichment. I've played acoustics on park benches, haven't gone electric in front of people for quite a while.) Go to whatever your own sort of home base pickup setting is. (For me, it would be the middle pickup on a Strat.) Then bring the volume and tone controls down to that 3 or 4 setting. Then, you set the AMP to respond to the guitar so that it will sound like an acoustic. From there, you can then use the pickup selection and the volume and tone knobs, to get just about anything you want.

I play the bridge pickup very often, so I get the concept. If you can't play, then even 3 pickups won't help you.

Happy to see this back to roots !

Fantastic video, thanks for this. More like this please!

Specifically the P90 single pick up would better describe this piece. As far as I'm concerned it is and was the best pick up made. As far as blues and country go and it can hold its own in rock. So really an all around great guitar. And I just didn't mention jazz but it'll work in that field as well. My next favorite is the telecaster.

I have a 25 year old 1960 re issue Les Paul standard I've had from new and it's been my main guitar all that time, also use a Tele for twangy stuff, chillis etc but until recently I had an SG Special as back up for the Les Paul but sold it and bought the new 2015 Les Paul Junior, forget all the logo, neck width etc rants, it's a revelation. The P 90 is a fabulous pickup and its rapidly becoming my go to guitar, I love using the tone and volume which I kind of ignored on twin pickup guitars, and it's a tremendously versatile instrument, I would recommend any serious guitarist to try one, never judge a book by its cover as they say, great vid by the way, professional as always.

Both of these guys are very well spoken without over doing the explanation, love the demo simple version. Neville is just pure class

i love gibson lespaul junior, either with double cutwat or the single one ... Esquire always has place in my heart

Loved this review! I'm even considering a LPJ now =)

Good vid! I am the proud owner of a Les Paul Junior and I love it!

I own the classic series Fender Esquire and it's the nicest, clearest sounding guitar I own. Kind of want an SG Junior now! Great vid.

Have had a GS1 for about 20 years. Love it!!!

What an awesome review, and some seriously beautiful guitars. Demonstrated brilliantly by both guitarists. I would love to get my hands on a real vintage Gibson, now! :)

Leo Fender had the right idea from the start, he felt simplicity/the Tele was the way to go. Of course much has changed concerning amplification/pedals, etc., but, The Tele has changed little (w/out getting too pedantic) and is still a must have for any picker.

Awesome video, learned a lot

P 90 pick ups just sound so great! As well I agree whole heartedly about the difference in tones you can get with just your fingers or the volume and tone knobs. I love seeing posts about how, say a Les Paul is so one dimensional, yet Joe Bonamassa has a great video on all the different tones you can get out of one just by adjusting tone and volume controls. In any case enjoyable video here.

I have a nice resonant Gibson TV yellow Les Paul jr. Made out of Spanish cedar too ! Thanks for reminding me of that with you Gordon Smith.

Gotta say this, RIP 🙏 Leslie West, Amen. Thanks so much for turning us on to Les Paul Juniors!❤

hi there first of all learned allot:) second: the distortion is from a crancking amp or some distortion pedal ? thanks allot :)

I just picked up a GS1 which is an absolutely fantastic little guitar. Certainly a keeper, and easily stands up with far more expensive guitars that I own. One thing they didn’t mention with the GS though is that they are all coil tapped, which then opens up a new range of sounds and tones getting well towards that flat out Tele bite that is usually missing from humbucker guitars.

Great review - didn't realise that those weird National/Airlines had been reissued. I was bidding recently for DC PRS SE1 (the idea was to set it up for slide). Haven't ever played one, but thought it looked pretty good.

What a great, informative review.

I love the sound of the P-90 pickups and the tone they produce, I'm a bit curious while you are having a discussion on the tone by adjusting the tone and volume controls on the guitar, what's the amp settings? A lot has to do with that as well. Sounds like the amps turned up quite a bit. What is the amp settings?

Neville has written many superb articles , particularly on blues playing,... here he shows how gorgeous a Junior can sound, ...a superb player too, tasty , classy licks with beautiful vibrato & note choice.....world class.

I understand that limitations can bring out the best in artists sometimes. That's a great concept to have. But I'd prefer the options of a standard LesPaul. You can still limit yourself and play around with the volume/tone but the pick up switch is an amazing tool to have. And I personally need the warmer tones of the neck pick up for the music I make. I'd maybe take a neck pickup only guitar :D

I have a Rick Turner model 1 with a single rotating hum bucker . split coil and full electronic package . Superb !

I have Maestro Les Paul & SG Juniors that i wanna put P90's in em although their humbuckers cut hard! As for the Esquire, i built one w/a second-hand DIY Tele kit that I put more work in filling the pickguard than rewiring which came easy after replacing the import 3-way switch for a CRL that made a big difference that now I'm thinking of putting a bigger capacitor in the 3rd position; the Bridge pickup has a ceramic bar magnet that was very shrill but now not at all after rewiring! Single pickup guitars definitely make you work harder but then again not as hard as you get used to less items because after all, less IS more!

1957 Gibson Les Paul Junior … always wanted one & managed to get the Custom Shop re-issue which is a fantastic guitar. Gibson no longer making the re-issues but managed to find one in the USA and get it shipped to UK. It’s awesome!

I really like the Gordon Smith in fact I will check how much to send one to the USA of if they ship to the USA. GREAT video.

I like the players, the guitars are great, (especially the Junior), and it's a great demo of the tones available, but I find the reverb very distracting, and I don't know what type of amp was used, but that reverb sounds pretty bad.

I have a 1963 Melody Maker modded with a Strat single coil neck pickup on the MM's lone single coil bridge position. And yes, I have LEARNED how to get SO MUCH variety of tone!!! For example, opened up wide it can just CRUNCH and scream with the best of them, then volume dialed back to 7-8 leaves plenty of grit but gets rid of the extreme highs (especially useful on clean channel so it's not so twangy and possibly just outright harsh), and dialing the tone knob back to 7-8 does its own thing on volume AND tone, and yet a different sound with volume in the 3-4 range, and you mix 'n' match the volume and tone (remembering, that volume also effects tone, so volume itself is like volume+tone in one), and then on my amp (Fender Princeton Chorus 2x10 solidstate from when I was a kid, my first "real" amp) there's a huge variety of tones to mix 'n' match with the guitar just by limiting the gain, from gain fully opened up and limiter all the way down to 0 for outright metal sounds, to having gain still fully open but limiter slightly turned up to around 4 (that is to say, slightly limiting the gain), and from there if my Melody Maker is cranked wide open then it's heavy and crunchy and definitely "hard rock" but not "metal", and then dialing the guitar volume down to 3=4-6 gives a classic rock overdriven tube sound with a little fuzz or something, reduced volume but still plenty of grit especially with hard picking technique, and so with "just" a single, single coil pickup you can get ALL KINDS of tones just by adjusting the volume and tone knobs and of both guitar and amp, but you indeed have to SEARCH OUT the tones, you really have to get to know the instrument and the machinery and the sound and the FEEL of it, you have to WORK to find the best sounds, it's not plug-in-and-play (unless it ain't your first rodeo haha), but it really teaches you HOW to find great tone and all kinds of it!!!

Really enjoying Guitarist. Intelligent to the point reviews. Started with Gibson 'cause dad played one. Switched to F types and never looked back...still have a LP standard though. You get killer sound from your house amp. Have you upgraded the valves, speaker? Inquiring minds want to know!!! Hello, my name is TheLivingDead and I don't like selling my guitars. Thank you

Great video!

Just one question which amp was used during the demos? Very nice video, thanks.

You missed the Dean Leslie West Signature model. Awesome sounding Mountain of Tone humbucer pickup. Custom wound to sound like a really hot P90.

I heard somewhere that the magnetic field of the pickups slightly restricts the vibration of the strings, so fewer pickups = freer vibration of the strings

Really like that Esquire!!

Don't forget Mick Ralphs on the first Bad Company tour as well as Ariel Bender AKA Luther Grosvenor when he replaced Mick in Mott...Both played L.P. juniors when I saw them!!!!

Should have thrown a PRS SE One into that mix, beautiful alternative to the costly LPJs

One of the best reviews I've seen. well done guys.

After falling in love with the tone from Frankie Cosmos (Greta Kline's) Danelectro U1, and waiting years for that exact model (mid 90s Korean, rosewood saddle, single concentric tone/vol.) with the glorious mid body lipstick p/up to come on the used market, I finally have an excellent condition deep purple in transit as I type. The nice relatively light chambered body will be better for the chronic sciatica in my right leg too :)

I wonder why they Didn't use a Gordon Smith GS1 fitted with their own P90 they sound great, also instead of the Esquire which is a totally different kettle of fish they could have tested a PRS SE One.. with a P90 fitted..

Looks just like the Junior (even same year) as the one the guitarist in my old band had, 30 years ago. At one point, he had it in his guitar tech's shop for maintenance when a nationally-known guitarist offered him $500 for it. My guitarist turned it down, as he should have. The sad part of this story is that a couple of years later when my guitarist fell on financial difficulties, he sold it to a nobody for $100. I was so mad he didn't offer it to me! That guitar had the best sound, the best bite, crunch... that brittle sound I loved so much!

single pickup guitars are great but you can apply all these techniques to a multi-pickup guitar

What would you think about a mini-humbucker in the middle position of a hollowbody? I thinking about make this experiment, but just am sure not 100% sure.

Had a Jr. just like that...one of my favorites. Got it new in 57 but it was a 56. It burned up in our home fire.

I liked the Gordon Smith but I think they were way skeptical about the gs.Getting some addtional tones is a good thing and atleast u cud've shown the headstock!

Great vid!

It still takes an excellent tube amp to get that proper sizzle,breakup and tone!

I'm kinda mad at myself for choosing a dual humbucker setup to build my first guitar. LP Junior. It's still in the box. What to do????

I've always favored the Les Paul Jr. Certainly Leslie West showed me what a thick tone and harmonic bite it could achieve. In 1970 when the album Mountain Climbing came out and I heard, 1) Mississippi Queen, and 2) Theme For An Imaginary Western - I was hooked on the look, tone and over all sound of the old L.P. Jr's. I've owned a couple of vintage Gibson collections and have had most all of the great Gibson guitars including old L.P. Jr's, both single and double cutaway versions, A single pick up Firebird, A Flying V and the classic L.P. Standard in cherry sunburst. But of all my guitars the one I prized most was a tobacco sunburst '59 Melody Maker single cutaway, single pick up that I bought at Sol Bentnun guitars in L.A. for $155 back in '74. I was in Valdez Custom Guitars on Sunset Blvd., picking it up after they replaced the single coil plastic cover pick up with a humbucker and Art gave me a really funky old brown alligator case for it. They went together like a hand in a glove. I then came across a double cutaway Epiphone single pick up tobacco sunburst Jr. that matched it perfectly & I had a really cool pair of classic juniors that were the envy of every guitarist on the Strip. Those were the days... eh?

Keith Urban is the master when it comes to tone & volume control. I've never seen anything like what he can do with a Jnr...👍👍

Great review.

I'm 6 years+ too late but any OD pedals involved in the recording? Or was it plugged directly in the AC15?

This is recorded very nicely.

exceptional video performance. These hosts are intelligent informers..

i have a 59 es125, it's pickup is similar to that, dog ears, but i prefer it's neck position over the bridge. what is so great is how creamy clean it is, AND THE BITE IT HAS!

The pickup looks a lot like a P-90 in a humbuckers size! Very nice tones.

Such knowledge. Thank you.

With the airline guitar you could put a humbucker in it that's a really cool idea or just changed back and forth

at 2:45 he's playing a riff that sounds amazing. anyone figured the tab out yet?

On the Gordon-Smith GS-1, which pickup were you using, The P90? Great Info, Thanks

I used single humbucker strats for years, need a pickup that will do it all!

I have a Godin Redline 1. One EMG pickup and a volume control. You can find a few demos on You Tube. Fun guitar.

Nice that you mentioned STEVE MARRIOTT.

My favorite player of these fine instruments, Johnny Thunders. 😍🎸

I would pay ridiculous amounts of money for the 57 Junior oh my gooooddd

When I think of a single pickup electric, apart from the Les Paul Jnr I think of a Kramer Baretta.

amp sounds wonderful, wish I could get an AC15 to sound like that

Mines not a '57 but I still think it's amazing. You can do anything with it. Really like the P90, sounds great out of my Fender Deville.

Good video ! 👏 p.x: but I had choosen other two that they have choosen

What a TASTY sounding old 6 string. (the paul) Love this guy's playing as well, very soulful and 'unforced' if this makes sense. The second guy played well too, But not with the same touch as first guy.

That is one beautiful Les Paul Junior!

I sort of regret in 1982 to not have bought one I saw at Wilcox Trading Post in Lansing Michigan as I already had one which I got in 1978 at the Music Inn in the Village in New York City. and I was looking for a Pre Cbs Stratocaster. My wife's brother said you yeah can find an old Strat up here (Lansing Michigan). It was our first vacation and went up there. No Stratocasters but a place called the Wilcox Trading Post had this Les Paul Junior and the double Cut Away Les Paul Jr. as well.. I could have got them for $280 & $300. But I was holding on to the $ to buy the Stratocaster. At that same place were a few Fender Jaguars for $365. But I looked at those and thought why would anyone ever buy one of those when Stratocasters look so much better. Jaguars were around that $365 for what seemed like forever and were pretty much in every used place there was. No body really wanted them. I did get the Stratocaster a 65" in Feb.1983 which was 3 times the $ of the Juniors. But that trip was something. We went by the Gibson Kalamazoo factory..Elderly guitars and the trip to the Henry Ford Museums blew me away. My wife say I went in one to those museums and came out a totally different person after seeing all of the antiquity and American History. Was completely changed by what I saw. Cheers P.s Just before Covid these Jrs guitars were going for $4400-$5000 for years unless they were mint collectors things. It's just since then they have gone so up. And another thing I had a 1958 I think it was, Les Paul Special. My brother gave it to me as a gift in the 90's he got it for $1k. The guitar really wasn't that good at all and I always struggled with it..it was all original ..so they are not all really good instruments across the board. I traded that Special to get a 1999 Gibson Les Paul 59' Historic. It's not the greatest but I like it much better and it's good.

Great info, I play with the knobs on every guitar XD, all teh tonez

The Cordon Smith GS-1 is closer to a Melody Maker than a double cut Junior.

Great review :-)