It's been a few months since the end of my last build, so kicking off a new project. This will be a slow burner, I think as my wife has plenty of house and garden DIY jobs to do over the summer, but I've ordered neck, body and fretboard blanks.
The plan is to build something that's very constructionally similar to my red LP build - traditional LP construction but with fully chambered body and sculpted heel. This one, though, will be a white Custom, humbucker bridge and P90 (possibly staple) neck, multiply binding, ebony fretboard, MOP blocks and split diamond.
Some mockups below, I'm leaning towards the first one - I'll keep you all updated on build progress.
Comments
Bigsby!
Out of curiosity, have you had these mockups a while, or is there a way to get the Frank Montag configurator working without Flash?
The same method might work with the Kisekae generators for other models.
Personally I would go for an alnico staple pickup in the neck and the humbucker in the bridge.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Gibson did a Hot-Mod run around 2010 of LPs and LPCs. I had the chance to play on a batch in Mansons around then and one of them was a '55 LPC with a wraptail and HBs - it was the pick of the bunch for me.
@davros That second one in black or aged silverburst is essentially what I'd build for myself
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A lovely Khaya mahogany body and neck blank, and a very black gabon ebony slotted fingerboard blank have arrived, and I've been doing a little template updating.
Largely reusing them from my last LP build, but have made a new body template, 0.5mm larger all the way round to give a little more sanding allowance. I got a larger bearing for my binding cutter to do this super easily.
New headstock template for the Custom. I couldn't find a decent one online so drew a new one based on 1958 dimensions from MyLesPaul forum and photos to get the curves right. It looks about right to me.
The new skills part of this build is headstock inlays (logo and split diamond) and multiply binding. I'm going to start by making a headstock overlay. I have purfling and binding, a 3mm thick fiberboard veneer (like Gibson use) and a split diamond MOP inlay from the same place in China I got the block inlays for a previous build. I'm waiting for the blocks to come into stock so I can order them too.
I love your red les Paul and the olive tele Paul.
I'm still wondering how to go about finishing the headstock - whether to dye the overlay nice and black and just clear over it, or mask the inlays and paint it black. I'm assuming Gibson do the former, but any insights on the best option would be gratefully received. My wife has a Cricut and I have some solvent proof masking film, so painting it black won't be a problem.
Positioning the bits of the split diamond, which I bought pre-cut from China was a challenge and I was a bit paranoid about fucking it up. So, I scanned all the bits into my PC, traced around the shapes in Illustrator and moved them around until all perfectly aligned. I then used a printout to cut the inlay rebates.
Some modern guitars (e.g. Custom Classic) have a black plastic face plate with integral inlay and binding that just gets glued on and clear coated.
But, I'm doing a test with the binding and the 0.5mm strips, despite being advertised as ABS seem to be impervious to acetone. Does that mean it's not ABS (and therefore I can get a refund), and should i just use this with some different glue or get some more strips that are ABS?
Also, does anyone know a reasonable price for 0.5mm ABS binding strips, £7 a piece and 6 plys sounds expensive to me. This stuff was much cheaper, from Spain.
Photo below shows the difference between the 1.5mm and 0.5mm strips in acetone.