My '59 Les Paul Build.

[nickhofen]

This is my first attempt to build such a guitar.
After some telecaster builds, strats and a Jagstang it is time to try and build a Les Paul.

Specifications of this guitar are:
Body : One piece mahogany
Neck : Mahogany (Although I play recently a 78 LP with maple neck and I like the way it sounds)
Fretboard - Brazilian Rosewood
Cellulose inlays,Seth Lover HB-R humbucker for the neck position and maybe Pearly gates or Seymour Duncan for the bridge, I have some pickups in stock that I buy from time to time from ebay .

The Seth lover pick up I mention above is this one, picture taken from the internet.

 

[nickhofen]

I was lucky since a friend gave me a slab of mahogany for free about a month ago, this slab will give two one piece LP bodies.
Here is a pick after I manage to clean it on a thickness planner from 62mm to 45mm.
And a photo of the maple that I am going to use for the top, this maple was send to me from Helmut from NY some years back, the man also managed to book match cut it on his band saw,(thanks man) I hope to make good use of it!

 

[nickhofen]

I study Preeb's, Muzikp's and some other LP build threads, I have on hand Bartlett LP plans, as Marty and Herb suggest in the past, TBOTB book and the will to do it, so ...let the party begin.

 

[nickhofen]

First I want to share some photos from the 78 LP I mention above, enjoy!

 

[EsquireBoy]

Great project, looking forward to watch the build come alive!

 

[nickhofen]

Three-piece maple neck....more pics.

 

[nickhofen]

Great project, looking forward to watch the build come alive!

Thanks, I'll do my best!

 

[AndyPanda]

The Seth lover pick up I mention above is this one, picture taken from the internet.
View attachment 667718

I'm no expert but I thought the circuit board HB-R pickups were Bill Lawrence era

 

[mistermikev]

This is my first attempt to build such a guitar.
After some telecaster builds, strats and a Jagstang it is time to try and build a Les Paul.

Specifications of this guitar are:
Body : One piece mahogany
Neck : Mahogany (Although I play recently a 78 LP with maple neck and I like the way it sounds)
Fretboard - Brazilian Rosewood
Cellulose inlays,Seth Lover HB-R humbucker for the neck position and maybe Pearly gates or Seymour Duncan for the bridge, I have some pickups in stock that I buy from time to time from ebay .

The Seth lover pick up I mention above is this one, picture taken from the internet.
View attachment 667718

don't believe that is a seth lover. I have the exact sm pickup... except the hb-l. that was a joint effort between bill lawrence and gibson. Mine came from a 1990 gibson sg 90. very bright pickup... lower dcr... but sounds pretty gainy. Love mine. They are fairly valuable if I'm not mistaken.

 

[mistermikev]

also, some beauty wood above.
when it comes time to mount that hbr... you'll find that std screws won't work. what I did is got some screen clips from the hardware store... they are a sort of 'triangular' clip that I would run the screw thru, then thru the pcb, then thru the other side of the clip. works perfect... and allows the screw to be threaded in/out w/o ruining the pickup. fyi.

 

[guitarbuilder]

Good resources here as well as the LP forum for top terrace templates.

https://www.gitarrebassbau.de/viewtopic.php?t=6

 

[nickhofen]

The 78 LP came to my hands seven days ago.
A guy call me a month ago and told me that he found a guitar in his stepfather closet, his stepfather mentioned the guitar after a long discussion they have about music instruments, they both are drum players and the older guy mention that about 20 years ago he exchanges some drums with a guitar and some cush.
The guitar is the one above, it was seating in the dark for 20 years, I thought that this was stories that grandfathers were telling to kids at nights to fall asleep and see nice dreams and no one of those stories was true...
When the guy call me a month ago, he said that he wanted to bring the guitar for a setup, I ask if I had the permission to take some measurements or even better copy her, and he said : ''Sure that's not a problem".

 

[nickhofen]

So I dive at my scrap part pile and make a duplicator or copy curve or whatever it is called, lol.
The two last photos show the index point that traces the object you want to copy, for each router bits you use you have to have the identical index point.

 

[nickhofen]

I'm no expert but I thought the circuit board HB-R pickups were Bill Lawrence era

Yes this is not the perfect pick up for a 59 but this is what I have in hand right now, also it does not get as muddy as the neck pickups of Gibson, it is more bright that the other ones ,I will give it a try and decide then if I keep it or not.

also, some beauty wood above.
when it comes time to mount that hbr... you'll find that std screws won't work. what I did is got some screen clips from the hardware store... they are a sort of 'triangular' clip that I would run the screw thru, then thru the pcb, then thru the other side of the clip. works perfect... and allows the screw to be threaded in/out w/o ruining the pickup. fyi.

Nice tip!

Good resources here as well as the LP forum for top terrace templates.

https://www.gitarrebassbau.de/viewtopic.php?t=6

Thanks Marty, I use the site to make my templates, the guys over there have done a perfect job.

 

[nickhofen]

The duplicator works very well I have to say, this is a copy of the 78 Les Paul neck, was done pretty fast!

 

[I_build_my_own]

Nick you cannot just plow away and draw the outline on the maple top. We all expect to be involved and insist on a voting contest regarding what’s lower bout and upper bout and what’s going to be the seam/glue line!

 

[photondev2]

Hey Nick, great start, you have some beautiful wood.

Hopefully this will help you, this is a set of Les Paul building videos from a very respected builder from mylespaul.com. The link to the first video in the series is here:



Good luck

 

[RogerC]

Great project, Nick! Looking forward to seeing it come together!

 

[LeftFinger]

The two last photos show the index point that traces the object you want to copy, for each router bits you use you have to have the identical index point.

I call the index point a stylus . For inletting I make both oversize and undersize stylus, depending on what I want the cutter to do .
There's a nylon called delrin that works really well.

Rich

 

[Freeman Keller]

I'll mostly sit back and watch this but I did build a 'burst LP clone a couple of years ago and am happy to comment if I can be of any help