Hi all, I thought I’d share a really cool recent project, and something a bit different to the usual conversions and traditional restorations I do.
I bought a completely FUBAR vintage ‘55 Jnr husk for no more reason than it was old and fell into my lap, but it was so trashed I didn’t really know what to do with it as far as a straight restoration, so as I had a heavily flamed eastern maple top laying around I decided to get crazy and see if I could build a hybrid guitar incorporating my favourite ‘50s Les Paul aspects.
I started with this:
The headstock was broken off, body riddled with hand chiselled cavities and crudely made into a double cut, as well as all the rest, so I first set about making a sound chassis to accept the maple top:
The plan was for a P90/PAF/wraptail combo with perhaps two volume/master tone Flying V set up, but that got modified later on.
It took a lot of work to get the top fitted, and I added a ~2mm shin under the original fretboard to make a fat neck as well as compensate for the shallow Jnr neck set, and here’s an early mock up:
Layout now decided:
Pickup routes and wraptail bridge complete:
Mahogany back pore filled and the whole guitar sanding sealed, ready for aniline finishing:
Classic ‘50s cherry sunburst:
The completed guitar:
I didn’t want to bind the top so masked off and scraped the edges to make a faux natural flame maple binding, which looks killer imo, and overall I feel it’s a really striking yet classically familiar look, and the pickup combination sounds crazy good!
Overall it sounds much more like a Jnr than a Standard as it’s aggressive and really barks in the midrange, and being slightly thinner overall is very comfortable- killer result from what was pretty much firewood
Comments
Looks interesting
make a short run of maybe 6 guitars
Superb build. I really like the aesthetics of just a master tone/volume opposed to tone/vol for each pickup, the lack of trapezoid inlays/with just dots, wraptail instead of tuneomatic and the combination of pickups.
Superb 'mule' LP for sure.