Les Paul Custom build

roberty

LastMantra said:

Looks really good BTW. 

I'd personally have went with two p90s and possibly nickel hardware, just to be different. 
That's just me though.

Nickel on white would be cool. I don't think I've seen it done before

davros

I almost universally hate gold hardware....except on a LP Custom 

LastMantra

I used to hate gold hardware, even when I used to wear a chain and watch it was always silver rather than gold, but actually there's no doubt it looks good on some things. 
Looks good on this!

elstoof

Looks amazing, given me some ideas I didn’t really need to be having 

guitargeek62

This is truly one of my favourite looking builds that I've seen on here, hats off to you!

davros

Thank you @elstoof and @guitargeek62. Not the most flashy build or particularly original but I like it too!

davros

Found a pic of my Edwards that I sold in 2016 convinced that Gibsons were better. Idiot! This is its spiritual successor, and at least has a proper split diamond!

roberty

@davros your Edwards was better than a Gibson Custom? High praise indeed

davros

Well, I had a Gibson LP Standard and decided as a result there was no point keeping the Edwards. I haven't owned a Gibson LPC but tried one in guitarguitar last year. I decided the QC was too poor for more than 4 grand to justify. Crappy binding scraping all over, paint build up at the neck joint, misaligned pickups/strings. etc.

roberty

@davros gotcha. Gibson are infuriating at times

bad_alice

Just had the unmitigated pleasure of reading this whole thread in one go! What a superb build and enormous praise and applause is headed your way @@davros ;
These level of builds are a delight to follow and dear GOD, man! The finished guitar has my GAS approaching Vesuvius levels! 

An awesome, awesome thread! Thanks so much for taking the time to allow us to hop on for the ride.

<doffs imaginary cap>

davros

Well thank you very much @bad_alice! I don't do build threads for the compliments but it's nice to get them! The main reasons for doing a thread are so I can refer to them later and so I can share what I'm doing with someone (the wife's not interested!!). If people find them entertaining, interesting or useful then even better!

A couple of weeks and I'll have it wet sanded, polished and assembled. Then I'll post the real hardcore guitar porn pics!

roberty

Phwoarr

elstoof

Bet you’d love to get your tiny hand all over it wouldn’t you

zedhex

I am really interested in doing this myself, where do you buy the pre-slotted fretboard, neck and body blanks?

davros

In this case they were all from Guitars and Woods. I find their blanks nicely prepped, but as you'll see in this thread I had a lot of movement in the neck blank as I cut it down. I've had numerous blanks from them with no issues. For fretboards they can't supply rosewood to the UK but ebony and other woods they can. The Maple top came from David Dyke.

For my last build I got everything (including slotted rosewood fretboard) from David Dyke. They're more able to provide different dimensions etc. Their wood was really nice too.

I'd recommend both.

elstoof

Did you do the body binding route in two passes or is there a bit that cuts both levels at once?

davros

I use one of these

https://www.wealdentool.com/cgi-bin/sh000001.pl?WD=small series&amp;PN=Online_Catalogue_Small_Series_212.html#aT1705E

I have about 10 different bearings all varying in radius by 0.5mm (linked to from the page above) so I can cut different depths. The first pass was a shallow 4.5mm rebate for the purfling then a deeper 1.5mm rebate for the binding.

elstoof

Does the little donut around the router stop it from falling too low from the previous pass then

davros

For most of the way round, I set the jig to a fixed depth. The donut was for the cutaway, where the height of the surface varies but the binding depth stays the same. The donut tracks the top side of the body, moving the router up and down to make the depth (relatively) consistent.