A few notes for the Buk forum record, and for the edification of the Les Paul Goldtop here in this bastion of the literary minded (not everyday one's two greatest passions intersect): the goldtop was introduced in 1952 as an answer to Leo fender's wildly successful Broadcaster (later known as the Telecaster). The Les Paul had a "trapeeze" tailpiece which rendered it unplayable. It is thought that Gibson factory workers simply misunderstood the concept suggested by Les.
Ted McCarty (Gibson CEO and brilliant instrument designer in his own right) came up with a solution in early '53, he changed the goldtop from a trapeeze tail to a one-piece wrap-around tail piece (wrap-tail) upon which the strings wrap over the bar (as seen above on the '54). This configuration is considered among the best for playability and intonation. The early '53-early '54 wrap tail was still slightly problematic until mid '54 when McCarty realized that the guitar needed a steeper neck-angle, like a violin (if you notice, any Les Paul after early '54 can not be laid flat on a table).
In 1955 McCarty added the ABR-1 Tune-o-matic adjustable bridge with a stop-tail piece (as seen on my guitar above), the last change coming in mid 1957 with Seth Lover's brilliant invention of the 'Humbucking" pick up. The Les Paul and every other electric guitar had single coil pickups which were succeptible to picking up the 60 cycle hum in the electric circuits of a home or concert venue so that while not playing a note, the guitar is still humming loudly. In 1957 Seth Lover invented the humbucker with two coils wrapped 'out of phase' with each other thus cancelling out the hum. Many people to this day prefer the aggressive growl of the single coil P-90 pick up, while others prefer the lush double-tone and harmonic resonance of the humbucker.
The decade-long evolution of the Les Paul Standard happened when the only option was goldtop paint. When the evolution was complete in mid '57 with the addition of the humbucker, the color remained gold for almost a whole year. In mid 1958 with lagging sales, McCarty decided to make the Les Paul look more traditional by changing the gold opaque top finish to a tranparent sunburst finish which highlighted the beautiful flamed maple which had always been present. He said that he wanted the top of the les paul to look like the back of the more expensive hollow-body jazz guitars of the day, as well as the back of Stradivarius violins which also had center-seam two-piece tiger-striped maple beneath a sunburst translucent finish.
This did not help sales, so in mid 1960 the Les Paul was discontinued until late 1968 when suddenly the guitar had found its true identity in the hands of people like Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, Jimmy Page, Peter Green, and several others who had discovered that by playing these guitars at extremely loud volume through an over driven tube amp that it would produce a rich, pleasing sound rich in harmonics and double note breakup almost like a reed instrument. From 1968 on gibson has mas produced these guitars (often at far less quality than the 1950s models) making the early ones very desirable to collectors and musicians.
Today those sunburst models from 1958-1960 sell anywhere from $150,000 to $500,000 each. The lowly goldtops are now selling anywhere from $12,000 for a '52, to $30,000 (1954), $30-45,000 (1956) up to $85,000 (1957 humbucker model).
It should be noted that Les Paul introduced another variation of his name-sake guitar to Gibson. It was known as the Les Paul custom. This guitar was introduced in 1954 (already with the ABR-1 tune-o-matic bridge/stop tail configuration) and was known as the Black Beauty or the Fretless wonder (due to its very low frets made for jazz playing).
Les' concept for these two guitars was that gold should be the color for the standard, because, well, gold is the best, right? And his Custom (Black Beauty) was made for guys playing in clubs wearing a tux. He wanted everything to be black and elegant so all the audience would see were the "flying fingers" of the player. The Les Paul custom also came with single coil pickups until mid '57 when it, too, came equipped with humbucker pickups.
