Good Ol' 55

Inspired by the Gibson Les Paul Junior – and a great song by Tom Waits – Eastman’s SB55 is a tribute to a 66-year-old guitar that just refuses to retire

- Dave Burrluck

Spend any time with Eastman designer Pepijn ‘t Hart and you can’t help but be inspired: his enthusiasm for the electric guitar is quite infectious. And it’s that very enthusiasm that has driven a batch of Eastman designs that certainly deviate from the company’s archtop heritage, creating almost time-capsule visions – and very heartfelt tributes – to the glorious past of the instrument’s formative years. The latest, and possibly last, in this series is the SB55/v and its double-cut stablemate, the SB55DC/v.

But while the Gibson Les Paul Junior certainly has its fans, in both styles, single-pickup guitars remain pretty niche. The first this writer knew of the project was when Pepijn mentioned the idea and before long we were swapping Junior stories, specs and dimensions.

“One of the things was that I thought it was a guitar we could do really well,” says Pepijn from his Netherlands base. “In the beginning, it started out as either a [two-pickup] Special or single-pickup Junior. We were never going to do the double-cutaway style. And then I spoke to you and a friend of mine who has a collection of around 20 Juniors from the 50s. I mean, it’s the Telecaster of Gibson! We wanted to do something like that, really make a very simple but high-quality guitar. It felt like a very natural thing for us to do based on the body shape that I’d started with the SB59. Of course, it will never look as original as the original…