Re: What happened to the Gibson USA Les Paul Jr.?
i feel you...but in this case, it's really ''good riddance'' imo. one of my main guitars is an '01 standard production sunburst jr. it is outstanding. you can tell that at that point in the history of gibson, each guitar on the assembly line got a respectable amount of attention from people who actually knew something about building guitars...even the ''cheap'' ones like my jr. but the recent/current jrs. are poster children for the slop-job guitars that gibson is infamous for churning out now.
the standard prouction jrs. were discontinued not too long after i got mine, and then jrs. were only available as historics for several years [for over twice the price]. they were finally brought back in recent years, and i was excited at first. i played at least half a dozen of the newer ones, hoping to find a nice backup for my '01, but they all felt like junk. they felt really slapped together and cranked out en masse using mediocre materials and unskilled labor. ugly, heavy, dead sounding wood, cheap hardware, very unrefined fret and nut work, all sorts of sharp and/or rough edges, and sloppy finishing to top it off. and that's not to mention the use of obeche wood as a fretboard, which seemed like ashy, splintery, ugly, and rough-feeling wood to me [maybe due to the terrible sanding jobs on the boards].
so i'd just try finding a used one from 10 or more years ago, or one of the early melody maker reissues, called the les paul melody maker. they have one dogear pickup. they are basically just slim-bodied, stop-tailpiece-equipped juniors.