New Project (Picture heavy, 56K beware)

steveland?

OK, so here's my new guitar project.

Taking my old Spectrum Les Paul and sanding it down, replacing electronics and possibly hardware.

So I couldn't find a hand sander around the house, turns out my parents had nabbed it and headed down to Kerry with it where it's currently residing...

Body before sanding:


Headstock during sanding:


As far as I got before I gave up on sanding by hand:


At this point I've given up doing it by hand, wrecked my fingers...

I'm going to wait until I can get the sander back to finish the sanding so that's as far as I got with stripping the paint off.

My first new humbucker arrived today, a Seymour Duncan SH1 '59, purchased for the sum of €48.50 (including postage) on eBay.



This will be my bridge humbucker.

I'm waiting on a DiMarzio Breed DP165 to arrive which I won for €73.81 including postage on eBay aswell. This will be my neck pickup.

Will update when I get the body and headstock sanded down and am installing the hardware.

By the way has anyone any good wiring schematics for 2 humbuckers with 2 volume and 2 tone controls?

Any of the ones I've found online are just black lines coming from the pickup and aren't colour coded/labelled in any way as to hot/cold wires. I know most of the pickup manufacturers use different colouring conventions but I have a list of what each one corresponds to for DiMarzio and SD so if I could find one that has colours on it I could substitute for the other...

Patricide

you sure thats a real duncan? Now i could be wrong about this cause it could be an older duncan or whatever but dont they usually say seymore duncan across the bottom.

-Freebird-

Why would you hurt a Paul?

But it is something I have wanted to do perhaps with an old Fender or something...

Best one I've seen done was a Pearl drum kit... World series cherry red, completely sanded down and left a light wooden finish... Looks amazing...

what are you planning on doing with the body?

steveland?

This ain't a Paul... this is a "Spectrum" knock off

Not sure what I'll do with the body, depends how it looks sanded.

If it looks good I'll leave it at that, if it doesn't then I'll play it by ear and maybe design something for it

Patricide:
Took forever to get a picture where you could actually see it...

The underside of the pickup has the model number there on the sticker too. IJX20 SH-1N 0603

Image from music123.com (of the zebra version)


Think a good few of them don't say Seymour Duncan.

Bratach Bán

A heat gun or a careful application of Nitromor paint remover (from Woodies) will take that paint off for you no problem. Save your fingers too.

Oh, and take out the tuning-peg bushings from the headstock if you can, before you continue sanding.

-Freebird-

My bad, I just saw the words Les Paul!

I think a wooden finish is lovely, it'd look really well with that shape of a body

steveland?

-Freebird- wrote:

My bad, I just saw the words Les Paul!

I think a wooden finish is lovely, it'd look really well with that shape of a body

Hopefully it will

I think it'd look well with a black scratchplate offsetting the "woody" look

-Freebird-

I mean this kind of finish, it's an Ibanez completely sanded down (which I don't think would suit an Ibanez) but I'm not sure about a black scrathplate, might take the look of it... Then again maybe not, I wouldn't get a completely black one, maybe black with a thin line of grey around the edge...

steveland?

Well not completely black, one of the 5 ply ones like this:

http://www.thomann.de/ie/gibson_pickguard_lp_bk_2.htm

-Freebird-

What about a darker wood finish scratchboard? That would look really well... A really light finish body and then a slightly darker board...

Gaspode

steveland? wrote:

At this point I've given up doing it by hand, wrecked my fingers...

By Hand? Are ya mad? That'll take forever.:D

I'm going to wait until I can get the sander back to finish the sanding so that's as far as I got with stripping the paint off.

Good idea - or Use chemicals to strip it or a blowtorch, then finish with the sander.

-Freebird-

He's much much quicker using an electric sander!

The_g-man

The natural look can be sweet on a les paul:

Good luck with it.;)

Dord

you might want to take off the hardware before you go any further.

oh and btw, Nitromors wont work on that guitar. most likely that guitar is finished in poly, which is a nightmare to get off...i know this first hand.

get a heat gun or keep sanding. i went the sanding route, i bought one of those little "mouse" sized sanders. worked well but my body was flat

good luck with it!!

best idea for finishing "au natural" is to use tung oil, comes out great
you rub it into the body, it'll need about 6 or 8 coats though.

steveland?

Yeh hardware will be coming off tomorrow, it was obvious when I was doing it by hand that I wasn't going to get all the way through so didn't take off any of the hardware yet.

Don't want to use a heatgun so sanding is my only real option. The body on this is flat alright, the sander I'm waiting to get back is one of the smaller ones. I've a big one downstairs but I reckon it'd be too big (and too damn noisy).

I may just sand it using the big Black and Decker tomorrow though...

I'll remember the tung oil tip too, cheers

Patricide

You could use the big sander for the back mabey? Its flat and a lot of paint that needs taking off.

vengeance52

that looks like a good project. I might just get my spectrum, knock the dust of it and do something kinda the same.

Keep the updates comin.

punchdrunk

okay,you most definitely can dtrip a poly finish with intromors,i have done it to a jap jag,smear the stuff on,leave it in a plastic bag for ten minutes and then take a scraper to it,it will lift off in sheets

i'd rethink the wood finish if i were you,chances are they used the cheapest wood possible so it won't have any book matching etc,it could have knots or blemishes and it could be made for many pieces of wood,may look a bit crap!

Gaspode

punchdrunk wrote:

i'd rethink the wood finish if i were you,chances are they used the cheapest wood possible so it won't have any book matching etc,it could have knots or blemishes and it could be made for many pieces of wood,may look a bit crap!

He's about to find out soon enough!

Hypnotoad

I have an epiphone lp in bad condition,maybe I'll just fix it up :cool:

steveland?

punchdrunk wrote:

i'd rethink the wood finish if i were you,chances are they used the cheapest wood possible so it won't have any book matching etc,it could have knots or blemishes and it could be made for many pieces of wood,may look a bit crap!

Ah well sure if it looks crap I can always repaint it or something. It doesn't look too bad from what I've got sanded off so far (went at it with the big sander today but ran out of sandpaper... D'Oh)

Dord

if it looks bad, who cares.
if it looks good, well thats great!

in the end its just a cheap guitar to practice fixin' up and it'll probably be better than it started out as. plus he'll have done it HIMSELF, which is the most important part.

steveland?

Ta Daaaaa.
OK it's been nearly a month since I did anything with this...

My father got bored one day and went at it with Nitromores after I'd damn near given up on sanding...

Here's the fruit of his efforts:



Looks pretty damn cool if I do say so myself...

So I got bored this evening and finished off the head and started putting bits together:


Neck attached back on:




So here are my pickups:

On the right there it's a DiMarzio DP165. Left is the Seymour Duncan SH1 '59.

The pickups on the guitar:


Guitar with all the hardware back on:


I'm torn now as to whether to leave the Rythm/Treble plate on it. I like it without the plate aswell. It looks a bit more subtle. Obviously I know that up is rythm and down is treble. Here's both for reference. I think I'm going to leave it off.




So you'll have notice I've only put two knobs on. This is because I bought two other pots which were too short to fit through... D'Oh...

This leaves me with the option of either getting two more and having a more complicated wiring job (I'm still a little sketchy as to what goes where...) or I can do something a little different...

I know that on 4-wire humbuckers there's two wires you solder and tape together. What I'm going to do is solder a switch in between these for each of the pickups and put the switches in the two holes where the two old pots were. This means I only have one volume and tone control each BUT I can switch between single coil and humbucker mode. I like the idea of having something a little different on this guitar.

So just really the wiring to get done now and I've a newly renovated guitar!

I'm thrilled at how this has turned out so far, I can only hope it'll sound as good as I think it looks.

And so here it is thus far... the (nearly) finished article:

feylya

That looks quite well actually. It'd be nice with a bit of tint or a wax finish or something. As for wiring, I'll sort you out if ya like.

steveland?

feylya wrote:

That looks quite well actually. It'd be nice with a bit of tint or a wax finish or something. As for wiring, I'll sort you out if ya like.

Sounds good man cheers for the offer, I might just take you up on that.

MSN me next time you see me online and we'll talk

vengeance52

thats looking really good, i didnt think the wood would look as good sanded down, Im definitly gonna go to work on my spectrum now, Ive got new pickups and Beecher is playin about with it for last few weeks.

Good work.

Patricide

May i say it looks a hell of a lot better than i thought, the only thing i would do is put on a VERy subtle light stain just to give it a more dark glossy look but it looks teh sex anyway.

steveland?

vengeance52 wrote:

thats looking really good, i didnt think the wood would look as good sanded down, Im definitly gonna go to work on my spectrum now, Ive got new pickups and Beecher is playin about with it for last few weeks.

Good work.

Yeh I was expecting it to have knots and blemishes everywhere but it actually looks quite well. Go for it

I got tuning heads from eBay from an old 1985 Les Paul reissue but went to put them on today and the little holder things (don't know the name, they go into the hole on the top and the capstan comes through them from underneath) are too big to fit in the holes. The new machine heads are also too big to fit in the old holders that were originally on the guitar.

I've started sanding down the inside of the holes but my hands are in bits and I've only got one done. Has anyone any tips on enlarging the holes (prefereably something that won't involve going to Woodies and buying something)?

Of the one that I've got in the capstan seems to be too short to fit all the way through but the string hole is poking up far enough so I guess it'll be alright if I keep the strings going into them short enough to not pop out and long enough to be held down.

Since the capstans won't fit all the way through the head I've decided to call this guitar "Fathead".

rcaz

That's gorgeous, man! Looks a bit like a Les Paul Junior, which is always a good thing. Bet it's even better if you're able to say, "I did that!" Nice work!

Dord

nice work man!

it'd look nice with a stain on it.

LundiMardi

looks good to me man, well played:)

Johnny Storm

Looking good.
Personally I think having the 2 vol knobs on a Gibson is very useful. IE the pickup selector can be your lead boost and youy can blend the 2 pups any way you want. OTOH split humbuckers loose their novelty value very quickly. JIMHO.

steveland?

Nearly finished now.

Have it all wired up and soldered but unfortunately I think there's something stuck in the passageway between the pots bit and the pickup selecter switch.

So for the meantime I'm forgoing the split humbuckers idea and I've put the pickup selecter where I'd have put one of my switches and moved the switches around. When I find a way to get the wire through it (and get more wire...) I'll finish it off but for the moment it's working out great.

Having a bit of trouble keeping it in tune but the nut is all perished so waiting on one to arrive in from eBay and hopefully it should be grand after that.

The finished article:

OLP

One word.

Skill

Gaspode

Thats nice now. Pity the strings are the wrong way round though

Svee

sweet. There must be L-O-A-D-S of elbow grease in that guitar.

Your efforts have paid off though mate, it looks good

carpothepunk

How much do you want? That is beautiful dude

steveland?

carpothepunk wrote:

How much do you want? That is beautiful dude

€25,000 should cover the damage to my elbow from sanding...

carpothepunk

Skin grafts are your friend

vengeance52

dont think after all the work that was put into it, ya wanna part with it just yet nice work

fish-head

That looks great Steve.