My latest ‘50s Les Paul conversion project- eye popping original flame top!

Iamnobody

I love seeing your work @jumping@shadows - keep posting please.

I’d hazard a guess that most of us could not afford/justify buying one of your restorations and the fact you share them in great detail is appreciated.

The bottom line is these guitars are for you and your customers do do what you want with. I don’t buy into the you are the custodian of an old guitar and must preserve it bullshit. 

Unfortunately we all have opinions and they aren’t always conveyed in the right way. I’m sure most posters are guilty (myself included) of treading a fine line over breaking rule 1. People have shit going on in their lives outside the forum and I’m sure it sometimes influences what and how they approach posting here. P90 is a good egg and I wouldn’t want to see him banned over this.

Looks like you’ve taken it all with a pinch of salt anyway. 

I don’t particularly like bursts - give me a gold top any day but I’m still looking forward to seeing the end result here.

viz

This is going to be an interesting thread. Are there any more pics yet?

sawyer

Jumping@shadows I was very interested in your original post rebuilding the guitar. It's all gone a bit crazy now:(  Will you be starting another thread detailing the process as originally intended? I'm in awe of skills in individuals such as yourself and find such posts fascinating as I know the vast majority of the forum do. I think its ok for debate regards such things as long as we talking healthy debate. Ultimately these trapeze bridge Les Paul's have all been modified to make them more playable. It's part of there 'History' if people want to make a big deal of 'History' I remember seeing one that had been converted many years prior and been fascinated in the magic of the thing. It was awesome. Added tailpiece and tuneamatic,Humuckers and obvious filled trapeze hole.  It had been played to within an inch of its life and had the 'mojo' to go with it. Had it not been converted it would probably been in much better shape and never seen the action it did. If we talking about preserving 'History' well the 'History' of these guitars is they got modified to make them more usable. Would be a historical crime to know that flame top was there and cover it up too in my opinion.

ourmaninthenorth

Iamnobody said:

Unfortunately we all have opinions and they aren’t always conveyed in the right way. I’m sure most posters are guilty (myself included) of treading a fine line over breaking rule 1. People have shit going on in their lives outside the forum and I’m sure it sometimes influences what and how they approach posting here. 

A particularly intelligent and insightful thing to say in my humble. 

Do you know, thinking about and engaging with this topic yesterday gave me a half hour break from the dreadful time me and me missus are having to endure at the moment.

Stage 3 Ovarian Cancer tends to focus and overwhelm the mind somewhat. 7 hours in surgery, 2 days intensive care, 5 further days in hospital, another week in hospital with post op complications, and 18 weeks of chemo starting in the next month...That shiver that's just gone up your spine...a fucker isn't it? 

If I could please ask you not to comment, I'd be very grateful. This is the first time I've spoken about it in public. 

I know it's not cool, or wind sweptingly interesting to admit, but just to be able to be amongst a set of peers on a life long journey, and argue the toss a little about a guitar, helped me yesterday....considerably. 

Thanks Fellas. 

jumping@shadows

Heres another pic of the veneer top ‘53 conversion and another refin I did :-)

I’ll get to the monster top ‘53 next week  

jumping@shadows

jumping@shadows said:

Heres another pic of the veneer top ‘53 conversion and another refin I did :-)

I’ll get to the monster top ‘53 next week  

@ourmaninthenorth Then I’ll do my best to give you a decent thread to engage with and reflect on mate  

ourmaninthenorth

Thanks Yukki. Stay cool Pal. 

fretfinder

jumping@shadows said:

Heres another pic of the veneer top ‘53 conversion and another refin I did :-)

I’ll get to the monster top ‘53 next week  

Wowser!! I’ll take the one on the right in the pic please. 

guitars4you

sawyer said:

Jumping@shadows I was very interested in your original post rebuilding the guitar. It's all gone a bit crazy now:(  Will you be starting another thread detailing the process as originally intended? I'm in awe of skills in individuals such as yourself and find such posts fascinating as I know the vast majority of the forum do. I think its ok for debate regards such things as long as we talking healthy debate. Ultimately these trapeze bridge Les Paul's have all been modified to make them more playable. It's part of there 'History' if people want to make a big deal of 'History' I remember seeing one that had been converted many years prior and been fascinated in the magic of the thing. It was awesome. Added tailpiece and tuneamatic,Humuckers and obvious filled trapeze hole.  It had been played to within an inch of its life and had the 'mojo' to go with it. Had it not been converted it would probably been in much better shape and never seen the action it did. If we talking about preserving 'History' well the 'History' of these guitars is they got modified to make them more usable. Would be a historical crime to know that flame top was there and cover it up too in my opinion.

valid comment about the 'history' and it always reminds me and @icbm , that just about every Strad has been modified regarding the body/neck join, with a change in scale length from baroque to orchestral - and it is just taken as granted - ditto for many pre-war Martins, plus others, with reset body/necks

peteri

And this is my 53/59 conversion Yuuki did

https://imgur.com/a/rV0MC

zepp76

As a life long Les Paul lover this thread is right up my street! I love the work you do, it's inspiring. Please continue to post the work you do, it makes for great reading. If I had the spondoolies I'd be knocking your door down!

sweepy

poopot said:

P90 neck, strat middle and hb in the bridge!...
Some sort of active circuitry maybe!.

just putting it out there. 

You forgot the obligatory Floyd Rose

jumping@shadows

zepp76 said:

As a life long Les Paul lover this thread is right up my street! I love the work you do, it's inspiring. Please continue to post the work you do, it makes for great reading. If I had the spondoolies I'd be knocking your door down!

Thanks man! You can see all my work on Instagram under playergradevintage  

57Deluxe

looks a bit Chibson now...

ICBM

jumping@shadows said:

Heres another pic of the veneer top ‘53 conversion and another refin I did :-)

Interesting - I assume the one on the right is a 'real' top?

If so | think you can tell the difference - the veneer looks much less '3D' by comparison, even though obviously the flame effect is only in the surface layer so you would think it shouldn't matter!

This isn't a criticism at all, it looks far better than that mess it left the factory with...

WezV

ICBM said:

jumping@shadows said:

Heres another pic of the veneer top ‘53 conversion and another refin I did :-)

Interesting - I assume the one on the right is a 'real' top?

If so | think you can tell the difference - the veneer looks much less '3D' by comparison, even though obviously the flame effect is only in the surface layer so you would think it shouldn't matter!

This isn't a criticism at all, it looks far better than that mess it left the factory with...

  Using a veneer won’t make any difference to the figure you see on a flat surface or the centre of the carve... no more than you get between two bits of wood

it can look different as you carve through the grainlines... but grain patterns are kinda random anyway, so with carefull veneer choice you can get similar patterns to a carved top

depth of figure is entirely decided by the wood grain you see on the surface.

WezV

The main difference I see to indicate a veneer is the consistency of the figure across the carve on the left one

But if I didn’t know one was a veneer I would be a lot less sure

jumping@shadows

WezV said:

The main difference I see to indicate a veneer is the consistency of the figure across the carve on the left one

But if I didn’t know one was a veneer I would be a lot less sure

In person you wouldn’t question it imo, although it does have a different quality vs solid figured maple 

KKJale

I can't imagine what a great feeling it must have been to scrape off a nasty gold refin and find a centre-seamed top with that kind of figure and grain peeking back. It's like the guitar-restorer's equivalent of Howard Carter poking a candle through a hole in Tutankhamun's tomb  

Incidentally @jumping@shadows, the black Custom rebuild on page 2 of this thread looks knockout. Bit of a long shot, but if you got those knobs in a trade for a set of gold mirror tops, then that was with me…

Looking forward to seeing how this project turns out. 

grungebob

fretfinder said:

jumping@shadows said:

Heres another pic of the veneer top ‘53 conversion and another refin I did :-)

I’ll get to the monster top ‘53 next week  

Wowser!! I’ll take the one on the right in the pic please. 

Doesn’t that work out well. I want the one on the left.