Simplify, Amplify, Terrify...

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Just watched a YouTube by one of my favourite content makers, MusicIsWin, where he records finding an absolute steal of a guitar in a pawn shop in Johnson City, Tennessee: a 1955 Gibson Les Paul Junior. The asking price for this battered example was $8,500, which might sound a lot for a ratty looking plank, but in today's market is way under value. However, that wasn't the point of the piece: he didn't buy it, but left it for some other lucky punter to find and hopefully treasure and play, rather than simply monetise it.

The Les Paul Junior was marketed as essentially a student or jobbing level instrument. A stripped down and cheaper version of the Les Paul itself, featuring a much simplified slab body, no bindings or decoration, a single P90 pickup in the bridge position, and cheaper tuners. A working guitar, no more, no less. Introduced the year before, in the year of my birth, these things now can fetch £10,000 and upwards: not bad for an entry-level guitar.

Of course this leads me to Leslie West, the greatest exponent of the Les Paul Junior, and a musician who took the simple to the sublime with the most basic of kit. His sound has never really been bettered, his stripped-down approach to blues rock likewise: he knew when to shut up and get back to the tune. The amplifiers that helped him on his way to the sound that made "Mississippi Queen" the studio and live classic that it was, were Sunn Colosseum PA amps, wrongly delivered to a gig with four 4x12 speaker cabinets instead of the expected Marshall rig, but which turned out, in combination with the 'Junior, to produce the signature monster tone that he became synonymous with. Magic... 

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