NGD: Goldtop goodness ...

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Just managed to find time to finish my latest project - strip down and respray of a Les Paul Style Gold Top. 

Started life as an Axesrus body and neck. Bought from @Teyeplayer from this forum.

Maple cap with thin flame veneer and VERY thick poly finish. Here's a taster of what it looked like:



The neck has a long-tenon joint, pretty good for a cheap-ish body. Upon stripping back the finish it was obvious that it's not a mahogany body though, instead it's a very light wood - maybe basswood or alder. Not such a problem though as I find Les Pauls a bit heavy, this is lovely and light on the strap.

After a strip down, staining, re-spray in Nitro, then some freeze-checking and wear, here's what she looks like now:





As you can see a lot of things aren't period-correct for an actual Gibson Gold top - bound headstock, 5-ply body binding etc, so I decided to do my own take - a homage to a GT, if you will ...

Back has been stained and sprayed thin satin nitro, so you can still feel the woodgrain. 

Headstock has a custom gold decal which worked out nicely. 

Board has been stained with leather dye - might go a shade darker though - further towards a dark rosewood. We'll see.

Hardware is Gibson - ABR-1 Bride and tailpiece, aged by me. Tuners are Wilkinson vintage style.

Pickups are Vanson Alnico-II with 50s wiring, not quite digging them yet, might treat the guitar to Bare Knuckle or similar.

Anyway, I now have a Nitro-finished Gold Top in my life, and the total cost of parts and paint is approx £250 ... not too shabby!

Exorcist

Looks Great!!

impmann

I like that!

Winny_Pooh

You must be super proud, that looks great!

Jack_

That looks great! Especially the headstock, the fonts and positioning etc make it look like a very expensive custom made LP that could've been made by any of the boutique companies that do this.

Do you have facilities to paint etc or is it a rattle can job?

guitars4you

well done - hope that doesn't sound patronising - Hope you like it as I dare say you've spent a few hours on it - Top marks

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Jack_ said:

That looks great! Especially the headstock, the fonts and positioning etc make it look like a very expensive custom made LP that could've been made by any of the boutique companies that do this.

Do you have facilities to paint etc or is it a rattle can job?

Rattle can and a lot of patience ...

DulcetJones

Nice!  The freeze checking is great, I had a mid 70's that got the treatment from being shipped across Canada in a crate on a train in January.  I took it out of the case before it had a chance to warm up.

sawyer

Looks cool.!

breakstuff

Great job.Very Impressive.

Teyeplayer

Flipping heck that looks awesome buddy! Glad it worked out despite not being the wood I thought it was, I'm feeling less guilty about that mistake having seen this.

marktheharp

Awesome job.. no end to your skills  ,Daniel 

ellwood

Very nice job...and brilliant photography too!

TheOtherDennis

Top work

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Teyeplayer said:

Flipping heck that looks awesome buddy! Glad it worked out despite not being the wood I thought it was, I'm feeling less guilty about that mistake having seen this.

Cheers pal - to be honest I gave up on the project twice - once when I realised the stripping the finish was a mammoth task, then again when I melted the binding from the top of the neck by accident ...  Glad I persevered though.

BluesyDave

Nice work Sir.

Voxman

Great job - looks very nice indeed! 

Jalapeno

Ossum !

freakboy1610

That looks great. Is it the original binding? 

thebreeze

Cool guitar.  Very nice.

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freakboy1610 said:

That looks great. Is it the original binding? 

Yeah. Scraping back binding after spraying is really therapeutic. Could do it all day. :-)