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1955 Les Paul Jnr ‘Resto Mod’

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jumping@shadowsjumping@shadows Frets: 1276
in Making & Modding
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 :+1: 
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