Vintage les Paul neck repair/conversion advice

[Peegoo]

@smsuryan

It would be a cinch to make a replacement bar for that trapeze from 3/8" x 3/4" aluminum bar. Seriously. You can do it with simple hand tools (hack saw, vise, drill, some files and sandpapers) in about an hour or two and it would look great and work great.

Example: I made this string anchor for a headless guitar from aluminum bar stock in about an hour and a half. I used only a drill press and the tools listed above.

All the vintage guitar snobs will sniff and frown and ruefully shake their heads, but screw that noise.

Look at it this way: the guitar is unplayable in the current condition, and making a bar bridge for it will make it completely playable and you'll get to enjoy it for what it is. This mod is 100% reversible back to stock with no permanent changes to anything on the guitar, so no collector value will be lost.

The problem is, the original parts don't work.

Gibson has long touted the "fact" that Les Paul invented the Les Paul guitar. In actual fact, the guitar was already done when they presented it to Les and Mary and sought his endorsement. The one change he insisted on was replacing Gibson's original bridge concept with the trapeze unit you see here. And it was widely reviled by players because palm muting is impossible.

Pretty hilarious. And I am a Les Paul freak! I met him back in the 90s.

 

[Paul G.]

@smsuryan

...Gibson has long touted the "fact" that Les Paul invented the Les Paul guitar....

I believe what you meant to say is Les Paul has long touted the "fact" that Les Paul invented the Les Paul guitar. The Gibson company pretty much neither confirmed, nor denied...

 

[fenderchamp]

Sell it and buy a player. I wouldn't mess with it. Sell it as an untouched original I wouldn't let somebody mess with or convert it into anything. I'd hang on to it and play something else or sell it and get something else to play.

I would put a different tailpiece on it, if that would make it playable and didn't leave marks.

I wouldn't have the neck reset and put a wraptail or a 2 piece gibson bridge on it. They would have done that back in the 70s and refinished it as a burst too, I wouldn't do that now.

The thing isn't magic, I bet it sounds fine but...why rape it, you can get all the "tonez" and "magicz" out of something else.

I bet there are more "converted" ones than untouched ones floating around.

Of course you might have 50 vintage guitars and 50 Million in the bank for all I know, in which case...well I still wouldn't rape it. Keep it with it's warts intact.

 

[Fretting out]

That would be a 52 wouldn’t it since it’s pre serial?

Beautiful by the way!

 

[Peegoo]

I believe what you meant to say is Les Paul has long touted the "fact" that Les Paul invented the Les Paul guitar. The Gibson company pretty much neither confirmed, nor denied...

No, I meant to say that

Gibson was banking on their association with Les Paul from the outset because he was popular in the early 1950s; Television was brand new to most homes, and Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home was one of the first TV series that lit the public's imagination like wildfire.

Over time the company gradually backed away from the claim, but Les continued to perpetuate the myth. Here are two early Gibson ads from 1953:

 

[1 21 gigawatts]

I have a print of the Gibson patent hanging on my wall. McCarty is listed as the inventor; Les Paul's name is no where to be found. Also, shows a simple stop bar tailpiece that they should have stuck with.

 

[Nightclub Dwight]

Its a used guitar. It would be a great used guitar with a wraparound bridge. And would probably get a lot more use too.

 

[jayyj]

For what it's worth, the best Les Paul I've ever played was a '52, a living, breathing monster of a guitar.

It had the Mojoaxe replacement tailpiece on it - which works brilliantly and turns a '52 into an instrument that can be used at a professional level without doing anything that can't be reversed.

No need to sell it, keep it as a collectable only or make irreversible mods like resetting the neck and adding a different bridge as various people have suggested, the Mojoaxe is the perfect solution for your situation.

@smsuryan

The one change he insisted on was replacing Gibson's original bridge concept with the trapeze unit you see here. And it was widely reviled by players because palm muting is impossible.

Pretty hilarious. And I am a Les Paul freak! I met him back in the 90s.

To be fair to Les, his tailpiece was designed to be strung over the top which would have allowed palm muting. Gibson didn't realise they would need a steeper neck set than they'd initially intended for the Les Paul for Les's tailpiece to work and, having already made up a bunch of them, decided to see if they could get away with stringing them upside down. They fairly quickly realised it wasn't going to wash and switched to a different set up whilst a new archtop model, the ES225, inherited the remaining stock of Les's tailpiece - strung the correct way round that time.