Whats your opinion on converting Les Paul Juniors to 59-60 full Fat Les Pauls

Jez6345789

Over the years there has always been cut and shut jobs done on old gold tops and other just out of year doner guitars. 

I saw this on Ebay and was surprised to see it being done on a regular basis.

I have always fancied YOB guitar and probably a junior would be all I could afford, if this guy and others slowly use up the Junior stocks that will start pushing those prices. 

Juniors of this era are great guitars is it really worth sacrificing them to chase the burst culture. Seems almost stupid

Frankly I would rather spend 15k on a Yaron or similar repro. 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1959-VINTAGE-GIBSON-LES-PAUL-BURST-FLAME-TOP-Conversion-/162328174690?hash=item25cb836062:g:czIAAOSwal5YCmpS

Your thoughts are welcome

Teetonetal

Stupid in my opinion. Even more so to spend that sort of money on one. 

usedtobe

That sucks on every level..

JookyChap

Yep - scumbuckets the lot of them

richardhomer

Just no....

IvisonGuitars

Taking a perfectly good, classic vintage guitar and turning it in to a fake, wannabe Burst....nothing more than fraud in my opinion.

I also have a BIG bee in my bonnet with the trend of taking a perfectly good 52/53/54 Goldtop and routing it for humbuckers as a 'conversion'.

If the guitars are basket cases cases or already damaged then there is a bit more honour in it...

but No. Not for me at all.

Skipped

It is a controversial subject.

Had an argument about this on LPF a couple of years ago. The argument (from the owner) was basically this.
"Why can't I call my reworked and re-topped Junior a Conversion?"
And my POV was.....we already know what a Conversion is. If you want to put a maple cap on a junior, and add trapezoid inlays, and neck binding, etc....then we should probably find a new word for that. Because somebody somewhere is going to heavily modify a Melody Maker.....and add wood to the headstock....and then tell us that it is a Conversion. In fact......why not modify a Gibson Lap Steel? Is it amazing what you can do with wings.
So......Heavily Modified Les Paul Junior/Melody Maker would be a better description for this guitar.

Or better still. Don't modify a guitar that has nothing wrong with it.

Which takes us into a second controversy. Does the neck angle on a 52/53 Les Paul have something wrong with it? Les Paul seems to have said it was a mistake. There are guys who are playing these guitars with the strings going under the bridge. It is possible that they actually like this but that seems doubtful.
So there was some logic to the original concept of a Conversion.

In recent threads relating to Replicas we have seen suggestions that the Replica Police are hovering. I dispute this but I do not deny that there may be Logo Police. But Conversion Police is definitely a thing. I try to awkwardly sit on the fence. I would not convert a 52/53 Les Paul (I would mod the bridge - totally reversible). But I do own a Conversion and as long as a couple of  thousand (or more) original trapeze Gold Tops are in no danger whatsoever with their current owners/collectors I don't see the problem. I would also point out (again) that Les Paul was a serial modder and probably never played an early GT that was not modded.

Sassafras

I'd rather have a real 50s Junior than that fake Les Paul.

Danielsguitars

I'd also have any junior or a special would be my ideal 
Leave any original vintage guitar alone unless it's been butchered, then a nice sympathetic restoration would get my vote

I've already done the as close to burst tone thing and there wasn't much in it between my hand made and a real 58

No idea why people do this, might as well make one from scratch imo

WezV

i think the whole thing relies too much on the old wood train of thought... a junior needs to be totally dismantled and rebuilt to convert it like this - so you are essentially paying the price of an old junior just for the materials used on an old guitar.

He takes a full width tenon and converts it to a narrower long tenon - so is taking apart a perfectly good neck join and rebuilding it with extra bits of wood not original to the guitar. How is that preferable to starting from two bits of old stock unused wood?

Danielsguitars

Because your not messing up a perfectly good guitar imo

How is a junior a burst anyway, it's just greed fueling this silly practice

Eventually the juniors will become overpriced so that normal people can't afford them

Philly_Q

WezV said:

i think the whole thing relies too much on the old wood train of thought... a junior needs to be totally dismantled and rebuilt to convert it like this - so you are essentially paying the price of an old junior just for the materials used on an old guitar.

He takes a full width tenon and converts it to a narrower long tenon - so is taking apart a perfectly good neck join and rebuilding it with extra bits of wood not original to the guitar. How is that preferable to starting from two bits of old stock unused wood?

As I read this thread I was pondering the question of the neck join, glad you mentioned it.  It's completely stupid to dismantle the existing join - and I notice there's no picture of it in that listing.

UnclePsychosis

I dont get the point, at all. 

You would be as well converting a 1950s coffee table into a Les Paul, it wouldn't be any less the real deal. 

Seriously, taking a vintage guitar, butchering it to turn it into something it isn't, and then charging a fortune for it because the thing you're pretending it is (that it isn't) is expensive is one of the most ridiculous things I think I've seen in guitar land. WTF? 

Danielsguitars

What id like to know is they have the correct thickness on the body when it has that roundover on top, I don't even know it's the same shape

Something I'll get round to checking at some point

ICBM

As usual I will be the Devil's Avocado…

It depends on the donor guitar. If it's an all-original Junior then it would be stupidity bordering on criminal damage. But if you had one that's already been hacked - maybe a neck pickup, extra controls or switch and/or a tune-o-matic conversion or some combination of those - and so which can't be properly restored without cutting it down and re-topping it anyway (and doing the same on the back if it's had extra controls and a switch), then it's probably fair enough. The seller does say that it's this type of donor he's using, although he doesn't say exactly how bad it was.

But given that it's impossible to re-make the Junior tenon into a Standard one - because the Junior pocket is the full width of the neck, so to make it into a narrower tenon will mean packing the body with new pieces - the original wood on the treble side must be shaved down to wafer-thin, and it's debatable how correct it is really. That aside, his workmanship looks excellent - the only flaw I can see is that he's left one of the original Junior backplate screw holes visible, but this may actually be intentional, to stop it being passed off (at least without further work by someone else) as an original Standard.

So a qualified 'OK', assuming that the donor guitar wasn't easily restorable.

WezV

these are the bits that take this into insane territory for  me

"These conversions require some re-building and massaging to the Mahogany body before the Flame Maple top is added. These include re-working of the larger neck tenon to the longer, narrow, correct Les Paul Standard tenon." 

"We took 50's P-90's and dismantled them and built PAF's out of them. This includes the coil wire, magnets and pole screws."


also, its all well and good saying its fine if its a damaged old guitar... but anyone who is willing to shell out for one of these as a donor will also be willing to damage a perfectly good guitar to make it "suitable for a conversion".  Don;t think this happens, i know of someone who modded some old original parts himself so a replica builder would willingly use them

riscado

I much prefer juniors and specials than standard les pauls, so I'm biased. But regardless, unless the guitars is really, and I mean really screwed up, I'd keep it original. These days if you want a good les paul go chase a post 2014 custom shop or a custom luthier job and be happy.

pintspiller

If I had a genuine Junior from the period I would keep it as-is.

However, I have an SG Special from 1974 or so that I attempted to change from the original cherry to black but sanded off the serial number when rubbing it down. I have since changed it back to Brown and given it semi-Junior spec, but would not attempt.to sell the guitar as anything other than a butchered SG Special. I would certainly expect to get paid less than the going rate for a used Epiphone.

Rocker

I don't understand why (a) there is so much hostility to someone dropping $15K on a guitar and (b) a guy taking what is a common enough guitar and modifying it to what he claims is a much higher standard instrument.  That kind of money [$15K] will get you a PRS Custom Shop guitar, one or possibly two Andersons or similar, and just about any UK custom shop builder will build you one for a lot less dosh.  That guy is doing nothing different than any custom shop builder is doing except that he is using a real guitar as his starting point.  Not a few planks of wood.  If he ends up with a decent playable guitar, one that someone is prepared to pay his asking price for it, where is the difficulty?

There was a similar kind of outcry when Gary Moore announced that he was selling his Greenie Les Paul.    A lot of people forget that the builder has bought the donor guitar, worked on it and finished it to what seems a decent standard.  Just as Gary Moore was free to sell his guitar to anyone who was prepared to pay the asking price, the same applies to that guitar builder.

richardhomer

^ More akin to Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon, than a guitar builder....

ICBM

Taking the Devil's Advocate wig off…

The issue is in modifying an original, if not especially rare, vintage guitar to create a pseudo higher-value one, but in a way which can never be properly accurate due to the structural difference between them - essentially destroying something real to make something fake. While it's not illegal and the guitar is the owner's to do what they like with, they're still taking something which has some historical value and turning it into one that has none.

It does very much depend on whether the original guitar could already be considered destroyed, but it's worrying to hear Wez mention someone who would do that on purpose to make a rebuild acceptable to the luthier who did it, if they would otherwise not.

I don't have a problem if the guitar is already beyond sensible restoration, but I would if it wasn't. An original Junior is a great guitar in its own right, it's not a poor relation to a Standard at all just because it's worth a lot less.