Les Paul Replicas - Build Progress

[Bainzy]

Now that I've thicknessed the fretboard blank on that drill press jig, I did some work cutting the fret slots today for my guitar, and routing the truss rod channel in another of the neck blanks:







I love how black this Brazilian Rosewood is - looks just like the fretboards on vintage Les Pauls. Good luck finding this on a Gibson Historic! All being well tommorrow I'll route out the cavities for the inlays.

[WezV]

looking good but being the eco-warrior i am striving to be its worth pointing out that you could have saved wood on th neck blank that could have gone towards a laminated neck!!


the fretboard does look nice though - but darker than i would expect from BRW - looks more like a nice chunk of ebony!


i love the stew-mac fret slotting jig - mainly because i got one last year after hand meausring and slotting boards for all the guitars before that - a 3 hour job now takes 15 minutes at the most!!!!!

[dave_mc]

that is some nice fretboard wood.  :twisted:

[Bainzy]

looking good but being the eco-warrior i am striving to be its worth pointing out that you could have saved wood on th neck blank that could have gone towards a laminated neck!!


the fretboard does look nice though - but darker than i would expect from BRW - looks more like a nice chunk of ebony!


i love the stew-mac fret slotting jig - mainly because i got one last year after hand meausring and slotting boards for all the guitars before that - a 3 hour job now takes 15 minutes at the most!!!!!

Yeah it's a fantastic piece of kit, and it's worth the price just for the piece of mind it brings.

I don't really feel guilty about only getting 6 out of a possible 12 neck blanks from the wood I got for these necks, as if I'm building a Gibson replica there's not much point using completely different construction techniques - although on my own design guitars, I certainly wouldn't go for the one piece design just from a structural standpoint. Bear in mind that the wood is FSC certified after all, so even if I simply burnt the wood it wouldn't harm the rainforest in any way as it's all being logged sustainably.

[WezV]

its a good point but i would still consider cutting either side off that neck blank so you have two laminates ready for a future neck that isnt a gibson replica.  If you did 3 one piece necks you could get an extra 6 laminates for 2 more 3-piece necks for your own designs

it would mean glueing ears onto your gibson headstocks  - but thats generally what gibson do anyway!!

5 necks instead of 3 (or ten instead of 6!!!) - either way its got to be good!!

[ToneMonkey]

Any progress dude?

[Bainzy]

Most of the parts for the guitar I'm building for myself have arrived, the exceptions being pickups, pickup rings, bridge - which I've all ordered, and then electronics and screws which I haven't ordered yet. I've installed the truss rod in another neck blank and glued up another body blank, so I'll take some pics of all that shortly. When I get some free time this weekend I should be routing out and installing the inlays, then radiusing and tapering the fretboard. The project has just stopped for a bit the past few days as I've been too tired when I've had spare time from either emptying my grandad's house or from thai boxing - hopefully it shouldn't take much longer though.

[Twinfan]

Hey Bainzy - any update on your Les Paul builds?  You've not posted for ages, hope you're OK?

[FernandoDuarte]

Going awesome!
Would like to see the finished babies!

[kluson]

Looks great so far well done ... great project

[ThrashZilla]

Oh man, no LP Custom replicas!? I would love to see some Block Inlay Action.

I would definitely pop in some Unpotted Mules into those babies.