Gibson Murphy Lab '59 Les Paul Standard Reissue Ultra Heavy Aged

81
AUGUST 2021 GUITARIST
review
GIBSON MURPHY LAB
7. The original Les Paul
Junior was introduced
in 1954 as the single-cut
model we see here. The
double-cut came later in
1958. Currently, you can
only buy a Murphy Lab
recreation of the former
8. It’s this sort of heavy
neck wear on our Junior
that is bound to polarise
opinion. Would you ever
let your prized guitar
get in a state like this?
It does have a slightly
uneven feel
maple laminated body with a centre block
of solid maple, a Fijian mahogany neck and
Indian rosewood fingerboard. The ’59 Les
Paul has a solid Fijian mahogany back and
neck, with flamed maple top and Indian
rosewood ’board. The Junior sticks closely
to the original stripped-down recipe: a
one-piece 45mm thick slab mahogany
body, while the full-width of the mahogany
neck slots into the body, resulting in that
lip in the cutaway. Unlike the ’59 Les Paul
Standard, the fingerboard is unbound and,
of course, just dot-inlaid.
As you’d expect, hide glue wood joins
prevail, and shapes, contours, et cetera,
have been slavishly scanned from actual
vintage examples. All of Gibson’s latest
plastics, although unaged, conform as
closely as possible to vintage specs, so
there’s a lot to admire here.
Electrics-wise, both the ES-335 and
’59 Les Paul feature Gibson Alnico 3
Custombuckers, and these now come
unpotted. This is said to offer a more
transparent and open sound than when
the coils are buried in wax. The Junior, of
course, comes with its lone P-90 single coil
in its ‘dog-ear’ cover, which first appeared
on this model when it was introduced in
1954. As it’s simply classed as a Custom
Dogear P-90, we have little to go on, and
obviously here we just have a volume and
tone control. All our guitars use CTS 500k
audio taper pots, while capacitors are
traditional paper-in-oil. Toggle switches
and jack sockets are by Switchcraft.
Feel & Sounds
Over the years Gibson has built on the
accuracy of earlier reissues, constantly
learning and improving, and arriving at a set
of neck dimensions that now hits bullseye.
Most players that we know, including all the
Guitarist team, agree that the ’59 medium C
profile, with not too much ‘shoulder’ on the
carve, is the most player friendly. So, how
pleasing it was to pick up the ES-335 and ’59
Les Paul and find ourselves completely at
home. Juniors are known for their chunky
neck shapes and if that’s your preference
you won’t be disappointed here with this
‘Chunky C’ shape. That said, while the
profile is a big clubby C with plenty of
shoulder, the heavily aged neck back does
give a slightly uneven feel.
Our guitars come perfectly set up with
Gibson’ s standard 5/64th-inch (1.98mm)
and 3/64th-inch (1.19mm) bass and treble
action heights at the 12th fret. The necks
are buzz free and the medium-jumbo
frets do everything we always say they
do – namely, provide enough fretboard
clearance for string bending or squeezing
out a tasty vibrato.
Naturally, the ES-335, with its double
cutaways and 19th-fret neck join, allows
for better top-fret access than the much
more restricted Les Pauls, which provide
no ‘thumb over the top’ facility past the
16th. But – again, as we say almost every
time – this limitation hasn’t prevented
a host of amazing players bringing us
dazzling dusty end solos. The Junior’s
higher-position access is further hampered
by that body lip in the cutaway, but after
quite a few decades of playing the real
thing, it’s really never bothered us.
So, while the softly rounded necks of the
ES-335 and ’59 Les Paul both clock in at
22mm at the 1st and 25mm at the 12th fret,
This is a very, very
good example of the
Junior style and one
of the closest legal
‘clones’ we’ve seen
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VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
GIT474.rev_gibson.indd 81GIT474.rev_gibson.indd 81 09/06/2021 20:0609/06/2021 20:06