Reshaping Epiphone headstock without doing the obvious

DeeTee

I've nearly finished my repair to an Epiphone Les Paul. As it's not going to have any resale value at all, I figured I might as well try to do something about that ugly headstock, but I'm not interested in trying to make it look like a Gibson. 

The face is snapped, so I might as well put a laminate with my own design on the front. Has anyone done similar? Any tips? Am I going to have to completely remove the poly first? 

I'm particularly interested in any outlines that look decent, but aren't trying to be Gibson that won't involve me having to add wood.

andy_k

Do a Martin, should be very simple.   -------

DrBob

Reshape it to a PRS silhouette, really mess with peoples brains 

usedtobe

I did a sort of reverse prs headstock on one I put together..

DeeTee

I thought about doing something a bit like a PRS design with a straight line of travel for the strings, but that would involve filling and redrilling the holes for the tuners. I'm a bit uncomfortable with that.

MattNovak

Try a Zemaitis LP style? There should be enough wood on the Epi...

DrBob

MattNovak said:

Try a Zemaitis LP style? There should be enough wood on the Epi...

That’s a cool idea 

hollywoodrox

Just do a gibson-ish one ,it’s not like you’re gonna put a water slide gibson decal on it or anything 

paulnb57

Best best is to try different shapes cut out of paper and laid on top of your current head, until you find one you like, take a photo, it seems to help...

DeeTee

paulnb57 said:

Best best is to try different shapes cut out of paper and laid on top of your current head, until you find one you like, take a photo, it seems to help...

That's actually what I mean - does anyone have a template?

TTBZ

Be interested to see what you end up doing, please post it when it's done! The old ones seem to go for stupidly cheap now so I'm tempted to get one to mess around with but I'm not a fan of that headstock shape on a Les Paul.

DeeTee

It'll be a while, I think. The first thing I need to do is work out how to refinish the back of the neck where I put the splines in. I have a feeling I'll be best served doing it all at the same time.