My Les Paul Jr project

damonjewel · 26-09-2010 7:10pm #1

My 1000th post!

This is what my guitar original looked, a cheap chinese made epiphone lp jr bought for 100 or so euros . Its quite basic and it had a good few flaws. So I decided to upgrade it into a John Lennon style Les paul Jr. The main alterations are a P90 pickup in the bridge and a Charlie Christian pickup in the Neck. John Lennon had one of these made for his Madison Square concert

So my Dad and I set to work on it. We routed the neck for a pickup and drilled a channel for the wiring. We also had to route in a switch for the second pickup

The route for the switch

The guitar couldn't stay in tune a moment, so some Grover locking tuners were essential

And here it is!

A bit closer, the scratchplate is the old one which I cut down to refit.

The Charlie Christian pickup was hand wound for me by Vintage vibe. It has a lovely low velvety tone excellent for Jazz.I also changed the capacitor on the tone control to a vintage sprague to give it even more warmth.

The P90 is actually a Gibson P94 which is built to retrofit a humbucker. It has plenty of bite and clarity. It has a sound reminiscent of late 60's Pete Townsend, plenty of bite.

Willl probably at a tune-o-matic bridge as the intonation is slightly off. But its still a very nice sounding guitar with plenty of versatility in its two pickups.

Alanstrainor · 26-09-2010 7:12pm

Awesome work man. What's the neck like on it?

damonjewel · 26-09-2010 7:49pm

Its pretty decent, its dead straight and there are no nicks in any of the fret wires. I have the action nice and low and I tried out a set of Ernie ball hybrid strings which are really nice (the use a thin gauge .009 for the top E, going to a thicker gauge than normal in the lower E).

I usually pick up my fender strat first when practicing and to go from the jumbo frets on the strat to this makes my playing so easy. Also not having the greatest span in my fingers I can achieve a lot more with the LP jr. Saying that the fret wires are quite big so it wouldn't be a shredders dream. But for my own style its fine.

There may be a time in the future i go for a neck change but it does its job fine for now.