Victor's LP goes on a diet..

All binding is firmly seated and glued in.





It was done a curve or corner at a time, with plenty of time to set and harden before the next curve was accomplished. This takes a while, but I don't like the rest of the binding to bend and distort what I've glued while I'm gluing tight areas. So, a bit at a time.

I will pull the tape off and reveal it later tonight or tomorrow morning.

Okay, binding scraped and cleaned up..





There's a little maple dust in the checking on the sides. I'll get that cleaned up.



What's left to do before painting is to just glue the neck in, and go over the top with some 220 and a small rubber eraser to smooth things in prep for paint.. Since we are not doing a big, major refinish and leaving the back, sides and neck in its previous condition with all the road dings and nicks, that's all the body work this is going to get, save for the burst and light clear on the top.. it's time to set the neck and make this a guitar again.

This body is feather-light, and you'd never know it by looking at it. I would say right now that we have met and exceeded our goal.

EXCELLENT!

BTW, with the neck in (with tuners mounted), but no other hardware or pups, and no lacquer..

The guitar weighs about 6.3-6.5 pounds.

That gives me a conservative "guesstimate" of the finished instrument somewhere in the mid 7 / low 8 lb range.

-better than what we had hoped.

I'm leaning towards the mid-7 lb, if anything. Lacquer adds instant weight, and significantly so.

But I intend on spraying a bare minimum. That means an amber coat, slight reddish-brown bursting on the upper bout and far edges, then a minumum of protective clear.

This will serve us two-fold; it will keep added weight down, and it will provide Victor with the opportunity to naturally wear through the frequent contact areas (such as the left lower bout under the forearm), getting the newly-finished top to quickly match the rest of the instrument.

I did this for Chris Johnson of the Hollywood Hillbillies on a Tele I made him, finished in Oly white nitro.

It took him about 9 months of regular gigging to wear through at the contact areas, and get that Fender maple neck "wear-thru" thing on the fretboard. Worked perfectly.

In the interest of not adding weight, I won't be adding several top-coats of clear in attempt to wet-sand the clear for that zero orange-peel look, like I do on all my new builds. Gibson doesn't do it, too much skilled hand labor. they shoot a nice, thin flow coat over the whole affair, buff it, and call it done.

And so will I.

Since the rest of the guitar’s finish is dull as hell, the more “VOS” it is, the better.

Looking forward to finishing pics!

Got the holes drilled for controls, made sure they are all thin enough and angled right.. Ground wire in and tail bushings pressed .





And frets re-installed that I had removed, and the neck glue-up..



She is now back to being a guitar.

Important to note that with this top and Pastor Scott's fantastic "gold standard" 7-template top-carve set, and with the top milled to 11/16" before carving, it now has more of a 1950's deep carve, a bit taller than the somewhat shallow original. On a mock-up to check bridge and string height with some elastic cord I use in place of strings, the old bridge pup ring was a bit too tall for the action Victor likes. The cord was hitting the pup ring when I lowered the string to Victor's preferred height. Remember, the string and neck geometry is already set, and this is a 50's shaped top, no longer a 2003 R8 top. So the solution was to trim about 1/16" off the bottom of the new butyl pup ring. That worked out perfectly. Bridge sits low on the body, string height is perfect ..

After the neck sets, I will do a string mock-up again and set the bridge, drill and tap post holes, and set basic intonation.

Then break that down, mask and paint..

Those dark areas around the binding and body in some places are not gaps. The binding is tight.

those are areas where the binding is still a little tiny bit proud of the top.

I absolutely hate it when during the paint scraping process, the binding becomes a hair lower than the top. So I try and keep it a hair tall until the very end.

This just goes to show how wrong Gibson got it back then…

I could not be happier .

Neck joint is set, so I did some preliminary mock-up to see where we're at . String clearance over the pup ring is perfect, bridge is on it's thumb wheels and on the deck, and the strings are just a few thousandths clear of the frets..







This means just a scant few turns of the thumb wheels will give Victor the action he loves, and the bridge will remain very low to the top, like we all want it.

Yeah, this is a win.

True, where the binding is concerned the "carpet doesn't match the drapes", but whaddya gonna do.. the neck binding was ambered intentionally, I believe. So the whole thing will be rather "rustic". You can't get butyl rings in that shade of amber, nor can you get body binding in that shade. And I'm not going to pull the neck binding and change it.

So what. It never was a case queen. In fact, it was pretty darn "salty". Victor gigged the living shit out of this LP.

So it will get a fresh "iced tea / brown burst" on that flame top, and off it will go to my buddy Victor for him to enjoy playing again, as it is notably lighter than it was, and a better top, too.

But I'm damn happy with the geometry and setup this far. I even think I'll have a beer. Did I earn it?

LtDave32 said:

Did I earn it?

Click to expand...

Without a doubt!

That neck set angle is a beautiful thing.
I didn’t realize how cool that could be until I got my Standard 60s a couple years ago.
Bridge down nice and low like you describe, and the strings don’t even touch the back of the bridge.

Holy shit! It looks fantastic!

Dave has out Gibson’ed Gibson!

looking great.

VictorB said:

Holy shit! It was fantastic!

Dave has out Gibson’ed Gibson!

Click to expand...

You know, I didn't tell you this..

..but I went ahead and installed robot tuners, and I put a hologram of Henry J. smashing a Maestro SG on a cinderblock on the back of the neck. You turn it one way, he raises the SG. Turn it again, it comes crashing down. But it fails to break. Hmm.. Anyway, he looks super in his Steve Jobs grandma jeans-jacket. insanely great!

LtDave32 said:

You know, I didn't tell you this..

..but I went ahead and installed robot tuners, and I put a hologram of Henry J. smashing a Maestro SG on a cinderblock on the back of the neck. You turn it one way, he raises the SG. Turn it again, it comes crashing down. But it fails to break. Hmm.. Anyway, he looks super in his Steve Jobs grandma jeans-jacket. insanely great!

Click to expand...

Just to check it again, I added the neck pup and ring and the nut. Everything but the switch, wires, pots caps, strap buttons, knobs and strings.

6.85 pounds.

So with color and light clear, we're looking at about 7.2 - 7.3 pounds, ready to ship. That's my estimate.

The guitar was well over 10 pounds when it first arrived.

I call that reaching our objective, as we'd say in the Army.

This is going to be amazing…..

Are you saying that your finish can add almost a half pound? I’ve never seen that happen before. On my last build I don’t even thing it was a measure able amount before- after finish.

Joe Desperado said:

Are you saying that your finish can add almost a half pound? I’ve never seen that happen before. On my last build I don’t even thing it was a measure able amount before- after finish.

Click to expand...

What I'm saying is, multiple coats of clear applied for the purpose of wet-sanding to get that pane-of-glass finish adds weight, in my experience. I don't want to do that. Besides, doing that to the top and not the entire guitar would not look right. we are trying to keep this in visual harmony with the rest of the instrument, and a light, thin finish on the top will aid in getting the top even visually with the rest. On page one you can see that part of the top's original finish was completely worn off on the lower bout.

I put my numbers up a little heavy, and haven't counted for the rest of the hardware. So I hope to be pleasantly surprised when it's all done.