I was planning to buy an electric guitar and amazon.com is offering Epiphone Les Paul Junior Guitars at a seemingly reasonable deals. The related question that I have is: what's a junior guitar?
What's the standard length of a fretboard on a guitar (and how many frets should it normally have)?
Does a junior guitar have lesser number of frets or is it that the fretboard is just scaled for young teenagers?
If one starts with a junior guitar, how difficult is it to switch to a normal guitar?
The Les Paul Junior is not a different size guitar, it's simply an entry-level Les Paul model. It was originally designed to be an affordable alternative to the Les Paul Standard, and thus is not as fully-featured. The main differences compared to a traditional Les Paul are:
You can read more about the Les Paul Junior in the Wikipedia article. Also, you can compare the specs of the Epiphone Les Paul Standard and Les Paul Junior. As far as I can see, they both have the same scale length (629 mm / 24.75") and number of frets (22).
If you start with a Les Paul Junior, you shouldn't have any difficulty switching to a higher-end Les Paul model, save perhaps having to adjust to a second pickup and more tonal options at your disposal.
Les Paul Jr's were built to a smaller scale when they were made originally, as an, entry guitar for children/teens/smaller adults. At the time, LP's were quite a bit more so many people started buying Jr's because of the cost difference. Because of this, Gibson ended up scaling the Jr up to standard size, which is what, we have today.
AFAIK, Epiphones are made in Indonesia, not China. Samick Music Co made Epiphone for Gibson and Samick is based in Indonesia, much like Cort.
Clarification: just because it is a "junior" guitar, does not necessarily mean that it is any worse of a guitar - or even in some cases a step down - than its standard counterpart. For example, Glenn Frey, legendary guitarist of the Eagles (Hotel California) played the majority of the band's earlier recordings on a Gibson Les Paul junior with an extra neck pickup (also a p90), including, if I'm not mistaken, the solo in Hotel California. Some people also prefer the Junior for other reasons, such as its light weight - a 4.5lbs compared to a roughly 12lb standard. Also, my personal preference is for the sound of the single coil p90s slightly more than the PAF humbuckers (silver pickups found in standard Les Pauls), because of their warm, crunchy midrange at more distorted volumes.
If you know what you are buying and what it is made out of, it can still be a fantastic sounding guitar. I'd definitely recommend trying them both out. Cheers!
In guitar products jargon usually means reduced price in cost of features or quality. Usually Junior will be better than Special. Guitar companies use much more words as Standard, Deluxe, Modern, Professional, Studio, Vintage... It takes some time to learn what they usually mean.
Les Paul junior is on of the most professionally used junior guitars anyway.
A few years later, but still a solid question with some solid answers. Did you get the guitar?
A few points for other readers who might stumble on these posts.
If you're talking Gibson then all of their guitars are good. Throughout the years there were a few models that were "lemons" by Gibson standards, but Gibson sets a high bar. In other words even a "bad" model Gibson will usually last longer and sound as good or better than a "good" model from some other brands.
The Jr models, were less costly than the full models, but they did this through simplifying the functions. So, you have volume and tone. Same wood, neck and other quality aspects of the full model, but simply less options.
As someone else mentioned there are many times the "Jr" was preferred, since there wasn't a lot of tone variation, the Jr had 1 set sound of its own, which for certain songs or styles was preferable.
You were going with the Epiphone? The Epiphone does use Gibson to base design on, but is made in China (as of 2004) and is def a cheaper alternative to Gibson. If you're going with Epiphone then I'd say go ahead and get the top of the line Epiphone which will mimick the full Gibson in functionality (tone switches, buttons , volume and 2-3 pickups) IF you're looking at Epiphone & Jr, I'm thinking that's kind of a bare bones set up.
I'd save for an American made Gibson (Jr or Standard) or if you go Epiphone get the top line Epiphone if money is an issue (will be more affordable than Gibson) of course the Epiphone uses cheaper wood, wiring, paint + bold in neck instead of set neck and so forth.
