Hey, finally got round to doing up my old Epiphone Les Paul Black Beauty. It had fallen out of favour with me as I preferred the sound of my Telecaster Baja.
So I decided to do the whole thing up, fix all the little things that niggled me about (particularly the muddy tone) and change the look too.
First thing was to take out all the old hardware:
Next was to strip the top, I took the whole thing down to natural wood (takes a while) starting with 120 grit, through 240, 320, 600 then some fine steel wool.
Also to improve the play and feel, particularly to take away the tacky neck I repeated the process just not leaning weight into it so that only the gloss would come off, leaving the back sides and neck matt finished which improve the playability dramatically;
Time for new hardware - upgraded everything:
Tonepros locking tailpiece
Graphtech Resomax Bridge with stringsaver saddles (actually matching nut too not yet installed)
Grover locking Rotomatics Tuners (probably could have got better but this was a straight swap out and improved the gear ratio, the locking feature is a godsend)
BKP CTS 550k Custom audio taper Potentiometers
Switchcraft Switches and Jack Socket.
Pickups were all changed to BKP Humbucker sized P90s, neck and middle are slightly underwound - dunno why I'm sure Tim had his reasons.
Bridge: Pig 90 (Alnico V - 22k)
Middle: Mississippi Queen (Alnico v - 7k)
Neck: Mississippi Queen (Alnico IV - 6.4k)
After finally figuring out how to do it I actually modified the switching system to the All Access switching found in Yamaha TVL models and ES-5 Switchmasters, which allows me to get 7 sounds (B, B+N, N, M, N+M, B+M, B+N+M) Bridge and middle is a particular favourite great tight, fat chunky distorted rhythm tone - even with a clean amp.
So here is the finished article (Clips to follow once I get my amp back from a mate!)
Note yes there currently no control knob covers still waiting.
