Les Paul Pro

I was asked by a musician friend ( milosurf.bandcamp.com ) to do a conversion on his guitar. The guitar had a damaged serial number on it when he purchased it, so dating the guitar was not able to be done.

No worries, the job must go on. I am temporarily out of my normal work zone, so I procured an area on the kitchen table and went to town.

The guitar seemed to be almost all original. Maybe taken apart once before based on the solder joints. The body has a beautifully seasoned 3 piece maple top, a bourbon honey tint and the mahogany back was played just enough. The neck seemed to be slightly more narrow than other guitars of this era I have played, but still has a mildly chunk to it. 

As we can see, the current owner added an internal message which I interpreted as "you are about to jam on an exquisite piece of music history."  The neck has nice wear marks, the original Gibson tuners are hefty and hold tune well and the overall integrity of the guitar brings you back to the days of the late 60's to early 80's riffs.

I did play the guitar as it was with the P90's and it offered quite the blues-rock sound these pickups are known for. I carefully desoldered the switch and the pickups to remove the electronics and get to work.

I am not usually one to make structural modifications to vintage era instruments but in this case, the owner assured me this was what he wanted and this guitar is a very good condition player grade instrument.

I like to document the disassembly process for several reasons. I like the discovery process and also the wear on the guitar you usually can't see. Like the wear area compared to the area under the pick guard. The clear bobbin P90's are in excellent shape as are the P90 mount plates. The potentiometer plate/assembly is also in great shape. I really do enjoy looking at these set ups versus the new ones. You can really see the difference in workmanship. 

This was the process to lay out the new route section. I lay tape down, mark the area on the tape in pencil for the pickup and the pick up ring then make a cut line through the tape with an Exacto knife and into the guitar finish. This serves two purposes; one, gives me the line to set up my route jig and also makes a cut in the finish to keep from the chipping further past the cut line. 

Next step is to cut little blocks for the corners out of some maple I have on hand. I shape the corners and height for the prospective corner it will live. I use a piece of scrap rosewood from a fretboard build previously done to press against the maple and use the slight pressure from the clothes pins to hold them in place over night.

It was at this next stage my camera battery had died and the maple corner routing was not documented, nor the reading of the new pickups.

The current owner opted for vintage DiMarzio humbuckers. They read at 8.03K at the neck and 13.68K at the bridge.

Once they were wired in and playing, this guitar SCREAMS!!!

I plugged into my bench test amp (Fender Frontman 25R), and ran the typical gamut of play.

Once I had the guitar tuned and set up, I was not only proud of the completed job, but it plays so smoothly and actually inspired my confidence.