Watch It First
One pickup. One volume. One tone. That’s the entire Les Paul Junior recipe – and somehow it’s been one of the coolest, most attitude-soaked guitars in rock for nearly 70 years.
The Epiphone Les Paul Junior in TV Yellow is the affordable take on that legend, and it absolutely nails the vibe. Slab of mahogany, chunky neck, one fat P-90, done.
No switches to fiddle with, no options to agonise over. Just plug in and play. Let me tell you why this simple little thing is so addictive.
The beauty of one pickup
In an age where every guitar wants to do everything, the Junior does the opposite. It’s gloriously simple – a single bridge pickup and nothing to get in the way.
That sounds limiting until you play one. With no neck pickup or selector switch stealing tone and sustain, all that mahogany resonance goes straight into one fat, punchy sound. It’s raw, direct and full of character.
It’s the guitar of choice for punk, garage, indie and no-nonsense rock n roll. Great for beginners too – there’s literally nothing to overthink, so you can just get on with learning.
That P-90 PRO
The heart of it is a single Epiphone P-90 PRO Dogear in the bridge – and P-90s are magic. They’re single-coils, but fatter and grittier, sitting somewhere between a Strat’s sparkle and a humbucker’s punch.
Through a clean amp it’s bright and jangly. Push it into some gain and it snarls and grinds like nothing else. It’s got that raw bite that makes power chords sound enormous.
Fancy putting it to work? A one-pickup Junior is perfect for hammering out a few simple rock songs – it’s built for exactly that kind of honest, direct playing.
Specs
- Body: Mahogany
- Neck: Set mahogany, ’50s Vintage profile
- Fretboard: Rosewood, pearloid dots, 22 medium-jumbo frets
- Scale / nut: 629 mm (24.75″) / Graph Tech nut
- Pickup: 1x Epiphone P-90 PRO Dogear (bridge)
- Controls: 1 volume, 1 tone
- Bridge: Lightning Bar compensated wraparound
- Tuners: Epiphone Deluxe, nickel hardware
- Finish: TV Yellow gloss
- Extras: Gigbag included
That wraparound bridge is part of the charm – it’s about as simple as a bridge gets, it adds to the sustain, and there’s very little to go wrong. Classic Junior, through and through.
That chunky ’50s neck
The Junior wears a ’50s Vintage neck profile – a proper handful. It’s rounder and chunkier than most modern necks, and if you love that vintage, fills-your-palm feel, you’ll adore it.
Paired with the Graph Tech nut and medium-jumbo frets, it plays smoothly and stays in tune well. It’s a neck that encourages big open chords and confident, meaty riffing rather than fiddly shredding.
If you prefer something slimmer and faster, this won’t be for you – but that chunk is a huge part of why the Junior feels so satisfying and solid to play.
So how does it sound
Big, raw and full of attitude. Cleanish, the P-90 is jangly and open with real character. Dirty, it snarls and barks in a way humbuckers just can’t – there’s grit and bite baked into every note.
It won’t do sparkling cleans or tight modern metal – for the heavy stuff you’d want something like the ESP LTD EC-1000. But for rock, punk, blues and garage, few cheap guitars have this much personality.
It’s a one-trick pony, sure. But what a trick. That single fat sound is exactly why players from Leslie West to Billie Joe Armstrong have loved the Junior for decades.
Who’s it for (and who should skip it)
Grab it if you love raw, simple rock and want a guitar with genuine character and zero faff. It’s brilliant for beginners, and a fantastic second guitar for anyone chasing that gritty P-90 snarl. Its sibling the Epiphone SG Standard is worth a look if you want two humbuckers instead.
Skip it if you need versatility – multiple pickups, clean sparkle, coil splits. Something like the more flexible options here or a classic dual-pickup guitar would serve you better. The Junior is proudly, deliberately simple.
The niggles
There’s not much to moan about at this price, but the simplicity cuts both ways – one pickup means one voice, so if you want tonal variety this isn’t your guitar.
The chunky neck won’t suit slim-neck fans, and P-90s are a little more prone to hum than humbuckers near noisy gear. None of it dents the fun, but worth knowing going in.
A guitar with real history
Part of the appeal of a Junior is that you’re playing a genuine piece of rock history. The original hit in the 1950s as a no-frills student guitar, and players quickly discovered that stripped-back simplicity was actually a superpower on stage.
From punk to hard rock to indie, that one-P-90 snarl has turned up on countless records. This Epiphone bottles that whole vibe – the shape, the finish, the philosophy – and hands it to you for pocket money instead of a fortune.
There’s something honest about it that modern feature-packed guitars often lose. It doesn’t try to be clever. It just wants to be plugged in and played loud, and there’s a lot to love about a guitar with that much conviction.
That TV Yellow finish
Come on – just look at it. The TV Yellow is one of the most iconic finishes in rock, a creamy, buttery yellow that instantly says vintage cool. With the black pickguard against it, it’s downright gorgeous.
It’s the kind of guitar that makes you want to sling it low and thrash out three chords. It looks effortlessly classic on any stage, and honestly, half the joy of a Junior is how right it looks.
