New Les Paul addition

OilCityPickups

The Desire to have a Gibson Les Paul as a pickup demo instrument .... and also because, I currently didn't have one resulted in me picking this up in the classifieds a short while ago. 
A 2014 Les Paul Studio with quite a nice flamed top ... but no pickups and a horrible control  'circuit board'.
Nice weight, 60s neck profile (which I prefer) and quite a lot of dust and muck :-)


Step one .... out came the nasty circuit board ... to be replaced by three CTS vintage taper pots, and a CTS push/pull pot (more about that later. 
Sorry for those who like black plastic on a LP ... on a dark coloured one like this ... I personally don't. So the search opened for Cream plastic ... after a couple of abortive orders, and a whole pile of rings etc where the cream didn't match between the parts ... a fantastic fretboarder stepped up with a set of Gibson R0 plastic ... at a very reasonable price. Yes it got a scratchplate .... get over it :-) 
Next step was pickups ... well of course being a winder, I had the whole sweetshop to choose from ... but instead of going bonkers, I decided to fit my prototype Peter Green set, flipped neck magnet, Butyrate bobbins heavy Formvar neck wind and all the usual appointments :-)
I have rather a liking for 'reversed zebra' bobbins ... which I much prefer to nickel covers ... so I got winding, and in they went. With that push pull pot controlling the neck phase. 

And RESULT! It plays very, very well, bags of sustain, lovely honk in the out of phase mode, and with a nice, low action. 
Still a bit to do mind ... it's going to get a trip to @FelineGuitars ; shortly to get an Earvana nut fitted, and to have a good action set up and fret job (I don't trust pleck). 

Funkfingers

TheGuitarWeasel said:
Sorry for those who like black plastic on a LP 

Black on Customs and Specials. Cream on Standards. Simples.

TheGuitarWeasel said:

Next step was pickups ... I decided to fit my prototype Peter Green set ... RESULT! It plays very, very well, bags of sustain, lovely honk in the out of phase mode, and with a nice, low action. 

Seems as if it will be a shame to have to remove the PG set for future pickup demonstration uses. You might be forced to buy another Les Paul.

OilCityPickups

Funkfingers said:

Seems as if it will be a shame to have to remove the PG set for future pickup demonstration uses. You might be forced to buy another Les Paul.

Yep .... damn shame that. ;-)
The up side for me is that this little beauty cost me less than a new Epiphone LP ... and I had full control of all the bits that went into the pickups and electrics side.
The interesting thing is that after more than 25 years of mostly playing Fenders I dropped straight back into the 'Les Paul feel' totally naturally. My last regular Gibson ... aside from the Melodymaker and SG that had short stays with me ... was my beloved old Les Paul Special, with P90s. That guitar roared and whispered equally beautifully, and this one seems (purely by luck on my part as far as the basic instrument goes)) to be similar. I gave it a blast through an AC30 the other day and it sounded the dogs danglies. I'm not normally a low wind humbucker player, having cut my teeth on Super Distortions in the 70s ... but the low wind PAF route certainly seems to suit this instrument ... or maybe I'm mellowing with age :-) 

roundthebend

What does "a lovely honk in the out of phase mode" mean? Can you do an audio/video demo?

Adam_MD

Looks much better with the cream plastics.  

John_P

That looks a thousand times better.     Hope you enjoy using it.  

OilCityPickups

roundthebend said:

What does "a lovely honk in the out of phase mode" mean? Can you do an audio/video demo?

I'll try ... or come to the Birmingham guitar show and try it yourself :-)