Slim-Taper Neck

Early Gibson Les Paul guitars had huge ‘tree-trunk’ necks, but beginning in 1959, the company began slimming the neck down to a more comfortable size. By 1960, this evolved into a design Gibson called the slim-taper neck. Varying in thickness only about a tenth of an inch from the first fret out to the twelfth and maintaining a precisely controlled width-to-thickness ratio, the “slim-taper” neck was meant to promote speed, while at the same time reduce player fatigue. For this reason, many players consider the 1960 “slim-taper” neck the most playable Les Paul neck ever made.