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Why were LPs unpopular in the fifties?

JTR

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What was it that people didn't like, why did they stop making them? what's changed
 
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Doug H

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Hmmmmm.......... thoughts......

Well, there were only a few high visibility players using them apart from Les himself (who was still having hits at that time)- Fran Beecher from Bill Haley's Comets played a BB (as did Chuck Berry- I've seen a pic), and I've seen a couple pics of John Lee Hooker with a goldtop. But jeez, I guess there weren't too many other celebs at the time... I believe country was (proportionately) more popular at that stage, and those guys probably gravitated more to Fender, who already had the Broadcasters/Teles/Esquires out for 3+ years before the LP came out. Plus, some of the rock doods like Buddy Holly & Ritchie Valens used Strats- I'm sure that helped the Strat's popularity. Jazz doods seem to have stuck to their guns and kept using hollowbodies. So perhaps the musical climate at the time was a bit LP-unfriendly. Of course, I wasn't there...;)
 
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Plankspanker

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IMO the Fender Stratocaster was the center of attention, contour styling, great sound, lots of settings. While Gibson did have it's Futuristic guitars, they probably felt clumsy compared to Fenders comfortable body cuts. Gibson's appealed to the older crowd.
 

John Catto

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The question (which possibly carries it's own answer) is NOT "why were Les pauls unpopular in the 50's?" so much as "why were all Les Pauls after the introduction of the humbucking pickup unpopular in the 50's?". They sold tons of all the early 50's up to late mid models and they were used by many high profile bluesmen among others. Those with a long memory will probably remember that this was Big Al's introductory salvo back not one but 2 boards ago! It still holds up I'm afraid.
 

John Catto

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BTW the weight argument holds little force since the majority of 50's Les pauls, early goldtops and pretty much all Customs in particular were super light compared to later issues and often lighter than some of Fenders early Telecasters/Esquires/Broadcasters not to mention Gibsons maple bodied Jazz boxes.
 

Tom Wittrock

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John Catto said:
BTW the weight argument holds little force since the majority of 50's Les pauls, early goldtops and pretty much all Customs in particular were super light compared to later issues and often lighter than some of Fenders early Telecasters/Esquires/Broadcasters not to mention Gibsons maple bodied Jazz boxes.
Sorry John, but I strongly disagree. Archtop Les Pauls were heavier than most Fenders. I have had Bursts over 10 pounds. I have had over 100 1952-1960 Les Pauls [excluding Juniors and Specials] and a comparable number of fifties Fenders. It's a very rare day when the Fender outweighs the Les Paul. There are always exceptions, but an 8 pound Les Paul is very light, while an 8 pound Fender is pretty heavy.
I truly believe weight was a major issue, but not the main or only one.
 

John Catto

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Actually I agree with you, I kind of overplayed my hand there although some of the early Tele's are just as surprisingly heavy as the early Pauls are light. Still something like an ES-5 is just as heavy as many Les pauls and no-one gets het up about it. Out of curiosity what do you think the issue was? If you look at the shipping totals they just nosedived towards the end of the decade.
 

Dave Paetow

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Maybe it had something to do with Les and Mary's career nosediving, it was a signature guitar.
 

Heritage 80

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I think a lot of it was just a styling issue. Design trends in the late 50's were futuristic if you look at car styling at the time (as I'm sure most everyone knows, Fender used popular new car colors for a lot of their custom colors). LP's were just seen as old fashioned and boring by the young folks who were taking over the electric guiter market at the time. Rock and Roll actually killed the Les Paul in the late 50's! We're lucky JP, EC, MB, ... found out how fine they are and define "that sound".
 

Big Al

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I've been thinking it was the Humbucker.

Our beloved PAF sunk the LP. Witness the failure of EVERY single solidbody Gibson to feature Humbuckers, until the mid 60's. Les Paul Standards and Customs, Explorer's and V's, SG Standards and Customs all were pretty much ignored by professional players.

Yet P90 and Fender Singlecoil Solidbodies keep showing up in high numbers. Gibson's use of P90's on the low end Guitars may have led to their smaller numbers in professional use,( compared to Fender), yet they are encountered more than humbucking equipted top of the line instruments just the same.

Even then, Humbucker equipted Gibsons didn't really get popular till the end of the 60's, after Clapton and Bloomfield made such a powerful argument in their defence. Those two players alone are responsible for the increased popularity of Humbucking equipted Gibsons as Rock Guitar Icon and the standard for Rock Tone today IMO.

Strats weren't really that popular either. Townsend was the only early 60's rocker to use one till Hendrix as far as I can tell. Hank Marvin was a big influence in England, where you could hardly get one, and had no impact here in the States.

The Tele was the Bad Boy of Rock. Tons were used and heres just a few, Clapton, Bloomfield, Beck, Burton, Bryant, and many, many more. I have reams of photos and videos from this period and Tele's and Semi Hollow ES style guitars are the most popular, with Goldtop P90 guitars close behind. Check out the Goldtop P90 roster, again it is only a partial list, Freddie King, Muddy Waters, Roy Clark, John Lee Hooker, Carl Perkins, and many, many more. You see some of SG Specials too.

There isn't one Player of note to use a 'Burst that I can find til Keef, and he got rid of his.

I think for the tone of the day, the singlecoil was better suited. It is the only explaination I can come up with.

I am facinated by this and have been doing lots of research. I love to share info on this subject and any you can provide is much appreciated.
 

Cogswell

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Might I add...

talking w/an older guitar player/dealer about LPs one day a few years ago, & specifically about `58-`60 bursts, he commented (for what it's worth) that alot of guys couldn't figure out why gibson would put the BACK of a guitar on the TOP. They thought it was just plain ugly, & that it looked stupid. The majority of guitars that used flamed or curly maple at that time used it on the backs, w/some exceptions.
 

TruelasDougblood

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Doug H said:
Hmmmmm.......... thoughts......

I believe country was (proportionately) more popular at that stage, and those guys probably gravitated more to Fender, who already had the Broadcasters/Teles/Esquires out for 3+ years before the LP came out. Plus, some of the rock doods like Buddy Holly & Ritchie Valens used Strats- I'm sure that helped the Strat's popularity. Jazz doods seem to have stuck to their guns and kept using hollowbodies. So perhaps the musical climate at the time was a bit LP-unfriendly. Of course, I wasn't there...;)

Broadcasters/Teles/Esquires were only out for a year before the
first goldtops ( the supposed 1948 date was a CBS ad f'up), so
it probably wasn't that. I do think that generally the guitar business was slowing down anyway by the end of the 50's; the early 60's were really dark days w/ the Frankie Avalon's and his ilk. I suppose the folk boom was good for acoustic's but the
real growth in guitar sales was after the Beatles came out in 1964. Combine that w/ all of us baby-boomers and the market was a lot bigger in the 60's and 70's.

I grew up in a suburb of Boston in a town of about 12,000; the
peak graduating classes were in the early 70's. The increases were 300-500 each year. And a lot of us were playing guitars,
trying to be Eric Clapton or whoever......:smokin
 

John Catto

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One more thing, I suspect in general that people HATED the Cherry sunburst finish when they first came out, especially if it was as bright when new as many people have suggested lately. Gibson had no history of producing a finish like that and people were quite possibly put off by it. The Goldtops and Customs had appealed to Gibson's Tuxedo wearing target audience but I don't think they would have lept on a bright cherry sunburst. I think it's no coincidence that by the time the guitar was taken up in the late 60's most of them had softened in appearance considerably. Funnily enough even with the Goldtops you don't see a lot of early rockers using them (Carl Perkins and Bill Haleys guy excepted) mostly it was the blues guys, Freddy King, Guitar Slim, Hubert Sumlin etc. etc. The early rock guys all used (in downward order) Big bodied Gibson jazzers (ES-5 etc), Gretschs and Telecasters. Too be honest non of the big companies targeted that market anyway, Gibson sold to the Jazz guys and half heartedly to the country/western swing market, Gretsch pretty much the same in reverse and Fender didn't seem interested in anyone except the West coast country guys.
 
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Stevedenver

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lps in the 50s

all good points, but i cant help but attribute some of the lack of popularity to the overall sound back then, clean, no overdrive, no effects (relatively speaking), perhaps less need to deal with feedback)-humbuckers are a bit lackluster compared to single coils or a throaty archtop if youre playing dry and unprocessed-then again i might be way off
 

Sol

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The humbucker sound makes an interesting point.

I've got just one 1950's amp. and it's a Shaftesbury, about 8watts with an
Goodmans speaker, one EL84, an EZ81 and an ECC83, people who have
seen it say that it's pretty typical of the type of thing your average player
would have back then.
Just enough to keep up with a skiffle group or whatever..

The point is that despite it being a lovely little amp, it's just a non starter
where the humbucker is concerned. (for getting the clean 50's RnR'sound)

Muddy on low volume, ( even on the bridge ) and then starts to break up when you turn it up.
Great in 1969, but not so great in 1959, when all you want is to sound like
Buddy Holly playing Peggy Sue or something..

If you look at it from the point of view of a young guitarist listening to the
hit's of the day, you can imagine how the warmer, higher output of humbuckers, set against say a Tele or strat in a music shop, might have just tipped the scales against the Gibson.
That warm sound may have sounded too jazzy, as opposed the trebly, rock'n roll sound of the day.
It's a historic fact that amp manufacturers like Vox changed their designs
with Treble boost to acomodate the Les Paul's and Gretch guitars with the new direction that the music was going in.
Just thinking out loud over here ! :)

of singlecoils
 

LHakim

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I have to respectfully disagree with the paf being the sole culprit. Gretschs with their Filtertrons and the Gibson archtops and ES models with pafs didn't dwindle in sales or become discontinued that I'm aware of. I think that if pafs were involved with the decline of the Burst it had more to do with the particular way a paf interacts with a body of the mass and weight of a Les Paul coupled with the Paul's weight, and *relative* lack of upper fret access (compared to a Strat or 335 for instance) that caused sales to go down. In short I believe the design had "run its course" as far as guitarists of the late 50's and early 60's were concerned.
 

super112amp

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WTF is wrong with you guys? THE reason the LP was unpopular in the 50s is because there were no friggin Marshalls to play them through!!!

Period.

:)
 

tom3k

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There were tweed Bassmans, however;) . But I agree (sort of). The LP really came into it's own in the age where sustain and distortion ruled (where the LP excells like nothing else), rather than twang or mellowness (Fenders and hollowbodies).
 

Big Al

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Let me answer some of the things I've read with what I have learned, or what I may think.

The statement about the look of the burst maybe being a factor is not one I give creedence too.

First for the back of guitar on front argument, the only reference I've ever found to that was in the book "Burst" by DaPra. This is a book filled with personal takes and insights and some misinformation.

Too many Gibsons featured Maple and Figured Maple Tops then. It was acceptable and often viewed as desireable on an electric guitar. Consider, ES-5, Switchmaster, ES-350, ES-350T, ES-225, ES-125, ES120, ES140, ES140T, ES-125T, ES-295, ES-175, there are more but this makes my point. There was no preception at that time that Maple was only a BACK wood and did not belong on the top of an electric guitar. Quite the opposite, as in fact I can find little to support a Mahogany Top as a desireable thing. All in all I don't think it was an issue at all, and pretty timber has allways been a good selling point.

John, you English Sage, it seems that the Cherry Burst was pretty popular here. It shows up on more and more models and even some stodgy Jazzers featured it. I really don't think the color was so shocking in an era of Sea Foam Green and Hot Pink!!! The late 50's were bold in the USA!!

I've collected some cool video from the late 50's and lots of Goldtops were in use. Even up into the early 60's but allways the P90 type. The Burst would not explain the failure of the Custom, or the Goldtop with PAF's. PAF's are what they shared, and I believe PAF's were their downfall as well as their ressurection.
Jr and Specials still sold well while the Humbucker models declined.

SteveDenver and Sol make good points. This is what I have been thinking. Notice that Gretsches Roc Jets and Solidbodies with Filtertrons are not as common among Rockers or Country Artist's, as the DeArmond Dynosonic Single Coil models were.


LHakim,
Shipping totals don't tell the whole story. There was an economic boom in the 50's and early 60's and people did spend dough!! It is the shipping totals plus the utter lack of PAF Solidbody Guitars in the hands of working Professionals that I find so interesting!
You can't compare Solidbody to Hollowbody. My whole point is in relation to the failure of the PAF in Solidbody Guitars in the late 50's. Singlecoil Solidbodies were more popular and used by more Proffesionals than Humbucker Solidbodies. Gibson or Gretsch! Things were so bad Gibson contemplated dropping solidbodies alltogether!! SG's and Firebirds were not setting the world afire pre 66!!

The very thing that doomed early Gibson Solidbodies, was the very thing that resurrected them and raised them to such status today. PAF'S!!
 

John Catto

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Hi Al, how ya doin'. I don't kow, if that colour is still capable of looking garish and being called a clownburst now it probably was then too, why do you think that old paint guy you met insisted on doing everything darkburst! Hummn? But you thankfully brought up again the first point I made that it's " NOT "why were Les pauls unpopular in the 50's?" so much as "why were all Les Pauls after the introduction of the humbucking pickup unpopular in the 50's?". They sold plenty of Goldtops and they got used a lot by major high profile stars, it's the PAF, you don't see a lot of people using 57 style goldies with PAF's either. Also it's worth remembering that Gretsch Filtertrons are a real low output Humbucker (5k as I remember) and still back then everyone (ecept Chet Atkins who never liked the single coils) used the Dearmonds. Also while 335's didn't do too badly what do you see see everyone using up until around '67 is 330s with P90's. The total dominance of the single coil thing did not stop with the 50's but of carried on to about 67. Early 60's american bands used fenders and Gretschs, UK bands used Gretsch's (OK filtertrons), Rickies and 330's, even those first west coast american Psychedelic bands mostly used P90 loaded SG's.
 
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