In 1952 Gibson came out with the first Les Paul. It had a trapeze tail piece that was designed with a major flaw. The strings wrapped under instead of over the tail piece making the guitar very hard to play

The very earliest guitars also had no neck binding as in this picture so the first change was to bind the neck.

In 1953 the got rid of the trapeze tail piece and went with a wrap tail piece that stayed until mid 1955 when they introduced the stopbar tail and ABR-1 bridge for better intonation and fine tuning. The also changed the neck angle to accommodate the wrap tail piece in 1953.

The mid 1953 - mid 1955 Les paul

The mid 1955 - mid 1957 Les Paul

1957 was the next change came with the introduction of the PAF humbucker. All Les Paul standard from 192 - mid 1957 had single coil P90's.

The 1957 Les Paul Duane's Goldtop

Duane's 59 les paul sunburst

Mid 1958 they introduced the Sunburst finish that stayed with the original line until then end of 1960 when they stopped production until 1968

A 1960 Les paul with Reflector knobs and the Totmato soup finish- the last changes made before being discontinued

[Edited on 3/26/2015 by goldtop]