2015 Gibson Les Paul Junior Electric Guitar

Apparently, 2015 was a much-maligned year for Gibsons due to innovations in the design which were mildly-questionable. Now that these are righted, however, it plays and sounds like a champ. Interestingly, the P90 pickup is built more like their late-'40s, pre-P90 design as it has fixed poles rather than adjustable poles. This gives it a little bit more of a DynaSonic or Fender Jazzmaster sound that I quite like, though it's not a traditional P90 bark tone.

This Junior originally had a very "leany" bridge setup, too, that was righted via a lot of fussing with bridge post removal, fill, and reinstall. The new, fully-adjustable bridge is quite nice and lighter-weight, too. At the headstock, there's a titanium, adjustable nut. It means the nut width is wider to accommodate it which is something a lot of players found odd as the spacing on the nut is actually fairly in-board as if the nut were made for a narrower neck.

Despite that, I actually think this is a cool design idea for a nut. It was very quick to adjust it and set it up properly and I can see how it would be useful to have a setup like that if, say, you were a guy who wanted a little more string clearance at the nut now and then for playing slide with a heavy hand. Of course, an adjustable nut means the company has to either have a variety of nut inserts for different board radius measurements or all of the guitars have to be built for the same radius.

Lastly, 2015 was a year for Robotuners on these instruments and fortunately this one escaped them.