This job came in from a regular customer who got this Epiphone Les Paul as a Christmas present.
Although he loves the guitar, he decided he wanted it to have a road worn look and also have a new set of pickups made for it.
It always makes me a bit nervous when I’m asked to “bash up” someone’s pride & joy, especially when it is just out of the box and hasn’t really been played.
The customer wanted the lacquer checked (cracked) but, since this has a polyester finish, it can’t be checked using heat & cold treatment, so I had to create the cracks using a surgical scalpel.
Next came the addition of areas of wear around the edges followed by knocks and dings to create some impact cracks in the lacquer using various workshop tools.
The binding & pickup rings also got some treatment with the addition of “cracks”, again using the scalpel.
Some wear was added around the tone & volume knobs using one of my dental tools that I use in the workshop.
On the back of the guitar, I added belt buckle rash and a few more dings.
This left the guitar with quite a few signs of wear & tear but still with a very high gloss finish.
So, I sanded down the whole body, front & back using 600 grade paper followed by OOOOO grade wire wool to give a satinised finish.
The neck got the same treatment with the sandpaper & wire wool but no dings added because I wanted to keep the neck smooth.
The headstock is still work in progress. I’ve nibbled around the edge here & there but I still have to remove the hardware to allow me to get at the front & rear surfaces with a little sandpaper to add a bit of surface wear.
After adding the cracks, dents & scores etc, the Les Paul body was given a wipe over with a dark wood dye which is taken up by the cracks in the lacquer to add to the aging process.
After doing the headstock, it is on to the pickups.
The customer wants a little more punch out of the guitar to let him play some of the heavier styles of Rock but he still wants to be able to roll it back and play some blues as well.
We’ve agreed on a neck pickup wound to 8.0Kohms using 42 gauge wire with an AlNiCo V magnet and a bridge pickup wound to 10.0Kohms using 43 gauge wire but with a ceramic magnet. Both pickups will have open ivory bobbins.
So, this is what the body looks like now with the pickups still to be changed.
