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Electric Guitar

Gibson Les Paul Special (2019-Present)

Name: Gibson Les Paul Special (2019-Present)
Brand: Gibson

Gibson · Les Paul Special (2019 - Present)

Price: 1.150 EUR – 4.690 EUR

Price history

Cheapest seen Most expensive seen

Availability: 9/10 (Common)

The middle rung of Gibson's original three-tier slab-body Les Paul family: two P-90 soapbar pickups and a bound fingerboard elevate it above the single-pickup Junior already covered in this research, while its flat, uncarved body keeps it well below the gold-topped Standard. Its historic finish carries one of guitar history's more entertainingly contested nicknames - TV Yellow - with three competing, unresolved explanations for where the name actually came from.

Where available? Go to the best price – 1.150 EUR About this instrument

About the Gibson Les Paul Special (2019-Present)

This guitar shares its fundamental construction with the Les Paul Junior already covered in this research - the same flat, uncarved mahogany body and compensated wraparound bridge combining saddle and tailpiece - but adds exactly the features that defined the middle tier of Gibson's original 1955 lineup: a second P-90 pickup, a bound fingerboard, and an upgraded pickguard. Where the Junior gives a player one volume, one tone and one pickup, the Special doubles all of it - independent volume and tone controls for each pickup, plus a three-way switch - a genuinely more flexible instrument built from the same basic recipe.

The pickups themselves use the soapbar casing style rather than the Junior's dogear covers, a cosmetic and mounting difference between otherwise similar P-90 designs. The neck carries a '60s slim taper profile, noticeably slimmer than the Junior's fuller '50s carve covered elsewhere in this research - another point where these closely related siblings genuinely diverge rather than just differing in pickup count.

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Source: https://reverb.com/item/101344192-gibson-les-paul-special-2019-present-tv-yellow

Sound character of the Gibson Les Paul Special (2019-Present)

The dual soapbar P-90 pairing delivers the classic warmer neck, brighter/bitier bridge, and blended middle-switch-position palette a single-pickup Junior simply can't offer - genuinely good soapbar tone with strong output, per available descriptions, giving this guitar meaningfully more tonal range than its single-pickup sibling while keeping the same raw, direct P-90 character at its core.

Punchy Midrange-forward Warm Crisp

What owners of the Gibson Les Paul Special (2019-Present) say

No independently verified body of current owner or reviewer sentiment specific to this 2019 production was found in the sources reviewed, so this section stays honestly limited. What's clear from collector-focused sources is that the historic TV Yellow finish's contested origin story is treated as a genuine point of fascination within the Gibson community rather than a settled piece of trivia.

Playability & handling of the Gibson Les Paul Special (2019-Present)

The slimmer '60s neck profile gives this guitar a faster, less substantial feel in the hand than the Junior's chunkier '50s carve, a genuine point of differentiation for players choosing between the two closely related models. The compensated wraparound bridge carries the same well-documented G/D-string sharpness trade-off already detailed for the Junior elsewhere in this research - an accepted characteristic of the design rather than a flaw specific to this guitar.

Recommended accessories & strings for the Gibson Les Paul Special (2019-Present)

At the 24.75-inch scale, .010-.046 is the factory-shipped starting set, the same as the Junior covered elsewhere in this research. With two independently controlled P-90s and a three-way switch, this guitar offers meaningfully more built-in tonal range than the single-pickup Junior without needing any additional gear to access it.

Technical data for the Gibson Les Paul Special (2019-Present)

Type	Solid-body electric guitar, single cutaway, glued-in (set) neck
Collection	Gibson USA Original Collection, launched 2019 (Nashville, Tennessee)
Body	Mahogany, flat/uncarved top, gloss nitrocellulose lacquer, black pickguard, chrome hardware
Neck	Mahogany, '60s slim taper profile
Fingerboard	Rosewood, 12 in. radius, dot inlays
Frets / scale	22 frets; 24.75 in. scale
Nut	1.695 in. width
Pickups	2x Gibson P-90 soapbar single-coils (neck and bridge)
Controls	Independent volume and tone per pickup (2 volume, 2 tone), 3-way switch; passive
Bridge	Compensated wraparound (combined bridge/tailpiece)
Tuners	Vintage-style Gibson Deluxe
Strings	.010-.046 as shipped
Weight	7 lb 6 oz
Origin note	Introduced 1955 as the middle tier between the Junior and the gold-top Standard; original limed mahogany finish became known as TV Yellow, with three disputed origin theories including one claiming it was designed to visually resemble a Telecaster

Price history for the Gibson Les Paul Special (2019-Present)

Cheapest seen: 1.150 EUR · Most expensive seen: 4.690 EUR

Cheapest seen Most expensive seen

The history of the Gibson Les Paul Special (2019-Present)

Gibson introduced the Les Paul Special in 1955 to fill the gap between the budget Junior and the full gold-top Standard, using the same flat slab body as the Junior but adding a second P-90, binding on the fingerboard, and a nicer pickguard - a clean three-tier structure (Junior, Special, Standard) that anticipated the later Studio/Standard/Custom hierarchy Gibson would build decades on.

The original finish is where this guitar's real historical curiosity lives. Gibson's own name for it was limed mahogany (sometimes natural or limed oak), and it ranged in appearance from an almost whitewashed look to a nearly opaque yellow depending on the year. Players and collectors came to call it TV Yellow, but exactly why remains genuinely unsettled, with three different explanations still in circulation: that it matched the popular finish on contemporary television cabinets and furniture; that the finish photographed better than pure white on early black-and-white TV cameras, which struggled with bright whites; and a more contested theory that Gibson executives deliberately chose the blonde-finish-plus-black-pickguard combination because it closely resembled Fender's Telecaster, hoping to visually confuse shoppers into buying a Les Paul Junior instead. None of the three has been definitively confirmed as the real origin. What is documented precisely is the finish's rarity: only 230 TV-finished guitars were built in 1955, and fewer than 30 of those carry what collectors call the Mark 1 version of the color - a darker, more transparent tone than the beige or canary yellow seen on later examples.

About Gibson as a manufacturer

This guitar sits alongside the Junior already covered in this research as part of Gibson's earliest deliberate use of a tiered product ladder - a strategy the company has returned to repeatedly across its history, including the modern Original Collection relaunch this 2019 version belongs to. What's distinct about the Special's story specifically is the finish-naming controversy, a rare case where a Gibson model's popular nickname may have originated as a direct, if unconfirmed, jab at Fender rather than as neutral marketing language.

Notable players & recordings featuring the Gibson Les Paul Special (2019-Present)

No specific professional endorsement for this exact 2019-and-later production could be verified in the sources reviewed for this research. The model's real cultural weight sits in its collector history - the rare and disputed TV Yellow finish - rather than a documented list of famous players, unlike the Junior nameplate covered elsewhere in this research.