What's going on inside this '72 Les Paul?

well hey there gang what do we got going on here today it's a really lovely les paul and yes those are mini humbuckers in there because this is a les paul deluxe from the early 1970s it's difficult to date them from the early 70s because they had some serial number issues and 1970-1972 is what we figured this one is it's the period when they were making the stack laminated bodies two pieces of mahogany they call them pancake bodies yeah mini buckers and really really low wide frets this is a true fretless wonder and like all your favorite les pauls this one has a headstock break yeah so this is from the era when gibson was putting a volute on the back of the headstock uh volute is a stupid name this is not a volute veloute has a very specific meaning in architecture it's the top of an ionic column it's a it's a spiral curve this is not a volute this is just a bump people will sometimes suggest that the gibson should go back to doing this as it keeps the headstock from breaking when it hits the ground it doesn't of course but it can make things a little less severe when they do break because there's more material surrounding the truss rod pocket here and when they go the brakes tend to be less messy put it that way this one had everything going for it had the slightly reduced headstock angle they were making them at 15 degrees rather than 17 at this point in time which you know they had 17 in the 50s in afterwards in the 80s and 90s when they were trying to replicate what they had done in the past it also has this nice big healthy volute gibson make a headstock that doesn't break yes yeah i think they could why don't they because no one would buy it people who love to complain about gibsons generally speaking don't buy them they don't have the money they prefer a different style of instrument it's fine whatever but the people who do buy them they want them to be exactly like the early ones they want in 1959 it's the holy grail right you have to remember the people in the 1970s complained bitterly about these guitars because they had the stack laminated body that's not like the original ones they had the wrong pickups and they had this volute i mean this changes the tone drastically right so that's why they changed back people didn't want this then again the guys in thin lizzy just shut up about it and plugged them in and made some good rock and roll this is a second break apparently this is a reopening the owner says that the person who re-glued it the first time wasn't all that skilled looking at the surface in there it seems pretty clean to me it's not shiny or anything and this nice long diagonal break with lots of surface area this was the best case scenario for a good glue up there might be polyvinyl glue residue still in there and that's a bit of a concern i'm going to use fish glue to repair this because and i have no real proof of this beyond simple experimentation but i think it holds better to plastics than titebond does i'm also going to add splines not because they make things stronger per se but because they add surface area that crosses the joint for gluing fresh wood to fresh wood surface this might be a dirty joint in there that's going to be clean and virgin material this thing is on at least its second set of tuners it's got grovers on it right now which i don't mind at all um i might go back and color these in here it seems like they've been plugged the previous screw holes but a little brown marker goes a long way i can see what's going on under the truss rod cover in this case does it have a functioning truss rod is it filled with glue i'm going to wax this well to prevent future heartache i'm going to also protect the threads with some tape here as well so i'm being pretty generous with the glue here the fish glue has a nice long open time but when you put it together it it gets sticky it tacks up really quick there's bound to be a little bit of squeeze out in the truss rod pocket when i clamp it up but should get rid of the excess do this little wedge is going to apply additional pressure to an unsupported area of the brake i put that in and i see some squeeze out emerge trying to think of other people who played these back then in the 70s like i said thin lizzy the early ones yes i don't think gary moore ever had one some of the prog rock guys maybe a lot of them were converted to full-size humbuckers um oh pete townsend pete townsend played one for a number of them i think he had like he actually had numbers painted on them um see those shepherds studios videos like um uh won't get fooled again with the lasers where he's hopping around being his most town sandian with the windmills and stuff yeah he played one but you know they have their own sound and uh maybe not as preferred as the full-size humbuckers yeah this has got the old guitar hanger syndrome um you know the old style the ones that had kind of it looks like surgical tubing on the yoke yeah it really burns through nitro you stick it up there and leave it for a few weeks and it kind of plasticizes and you take the guitar down and it comes right off so we'll do some touch up on that as well and once again i think i've shown this a number of different times just going to measure the washer there i don't want to put the splines right through the pocket or hit it or anything usually it's around 12 13 millimeters yep i'm just going to put a piece of tape on here to remind me where that is this guitar is a laminated neck and i can actually see ghosting from the layers of the interior lamination so i'm just going to center that there and sort of eyeball it and i'll put the splines on either side of that in this case i'll do them sort of parallel figure out where i want them to start and stop somewhere around there i think i'm all set up to route this thing has been shown in several other videos and some of you have actually taken the time to make your own which is kind of flattering to me because my jigs aren't pretty to look at they're functional and quickly made it's just a tray that holds the base of my palm router clamps to the headstock up here and the edge on this side that uh contacts the neck is well padded with cork so i'm not going to make a big divot there going with a 5 16 inch slot which is just about 8 millimeters to set the bit depth i measure from the underside of the jig to a point that's just about one and a half millimeters up from both the headstock facing and the underside surface of the fingerboard at the end of the slots and depending on the headstock angle i might need to add a shim on the neck end the depth on a gibson is usually about 22 millimeters here to which i need to add the thickness of the jig's bottom plate in this case it's about 11 millimeters so the bit has to protrude below its base plate by about 33 millimeters there is a quarter inch or six millimeter riser in the jig that lets me cut the channel in two passes without having to change the height adjustment on my router that can introduce inaccuracies so in use with the riser in place there's usually an area in the center of the channel where the bit isn't actually touching the surface of the neck for the first pass so that's where i start for the second cut i need to carefully tip the bit into the work and these are pretty heavy cuts for a bit of this diameter so i need to do a fairly slow feed rate there we go a couple of slots [Music] with spline material i'm using quarter quarter-sand mahogany i mention this every time but it's got to be a good fit if it's loose you're better off not putting splines in at all because this whole thing is predicated on the idea of having perfect contact between the parts if not then you're just making a weaker neck i'm using dial calipers to record the length i'll transfer the length to the plug blank score it and then cut it off then i'll start the rounding process with a sanding block here it's got some 80 grit sandpaper on it it's pretty aggressive stuff i'll use it to cut some facets on the ends and then i can finish off by using sort of a shoe shine technique here it gets a pretty good radius on there i'm searching for that perfect fit can't be loose can't be tight just go in there just perfectly because this thing is going to swell a little bit when the glue hits it so just just perfect i'm using tight bond style glue here i'm not sure really matters fish glue tight bond six of one half dozen of the other whichever bottles closest to me and i'll snug those up with some spring clamps protecting both the fingerboard and the headstock facing i'm going to get into carving down those plugs and take a second here to strop my knives people always ask me about them when i show this operation i've got two that i like to use for this this is a small sloyd knife made by dell stubs at pinewood forge i like it because it's the right size and it's got that nice curved edge on it i also use a standard mora sloyed knife as well these are capable of pretty powerful cuts as well as refined delicate accurate cuts as well the slight curve on the edge lets me get close to the finished surface around the plug without carving into it if that makes sense so i can use a small portion of the edge rather than dragging a straight one like a chisel up and down the curve helps as i get closer the cuts become more and more delicate i like to work the edges of the plug down so that they're in line with the form around it the contour of the neck as it's been carved in the factory that leaves a bump in the middle which i can go back and take down using scrapers or sanding sometimes a curved edge scraper like this gooseneck is helpful in the transition area around the volute where it blends into the neck shaft i'm using a sanding block around the top portion of the headstock there trying to keep those flat and level with the original finish now i'm using a razor blade as a scraper to focus on that center section of the plug which had been left slightly high and really focus on trying to get the curve continuous with the neck i want a nice smooth curve it's not always easy it can be kind of tricky i'll finish up with some sandpaper wrapped around a dowel the fissures on either side from the hanger disease are really really deep they're serious craters so i don't really feel comfortable drop filling those i'm going to fill them using a two-part epoxy putty which is a product used for repairing wood or other surfaces i'm going to cram a bunch in there i'll let that cure and then i can shape it afterwards it's pretty easy to sculpt this stuff i'll start off with a small file and then progress on to sandpaper and try to blend it in with a contour this is not unlike automobile body work using bondo this stuff might be a little less toxic than bondo that stuff's pretty nasty i'll apply a pour filler to the mahogany this is a water based pore filler which i've added some dye to to both color it and also fill in the pores in a way that makes it look kind of like the original stuff that gibson used it on with a paper towel put it on pretty thick try to wipe off the excess while leaving some of it in the pores usually it'll take two coats of this to get adequate coverage so i'll lightly sand off the excess and also sand the surface around here so it'll be a good key for future coats of lacquer which are about to go on i'll start off with a flash coat of mostly lacquer thinner to soften the old finish around the repair make it more receptive and then build up the color using my airbrush and tinted lacquer trying to darken the areas that need darkening without making the whole thing too dark after that i'll put on three or four coats of spray can lacquer and let that cure for a little while i think this has enough finish on it now it might require one or two light mist coats after level sanding the thing i want to emphasize is that when you're dealing with lacquer repairs there has to be sufficient time for it to shrink before you sand it level and polish it this has been sitting around for three days now and you can see that there's a dimple effect going on around the outline of the plugs now you'll recall that these were sanded level with the surrounding finish but now they look sunken this is just something that happens when you put new finish on new wood next to hold they move at different rates this will continue for some time and the longer you can wait before level sanding the better i could make a mirror gloss finish on this three days after spring but a week from now it will look like this again it'll be obviously sunken so you know a week to 10 days is a bare minimum before polishing out a finished repair i don't think we're shooting for surface perfection in this case making this look brand new might actually draw needless attention to it because the rest of the guitar looks like a 50 year old object with heavy play wear so i do think it looks much better than it did before i'll put some tuners on it and we'll play it a little bit we can talk about leveling and polishing on another area uh someone previously tried to do a touch-up or something here and they've made this dull spot on the back see if we can try and improve that a little bit so on small repairs i tend to sand dry with the highest grit that will work this is 1200 grit i've got a double stick tape to a flat block and i use a really light touch and i clean the dust away often because you don't want it rolling around under there that can cause scratches that are worse than the actual abrasive in this case it's probably not even necessary i'm just showing you what i would do on that other repair try to keep things you know reasonably flat so this haze might actually be a finish or some kind of material that's been put on top because it's actually sanding away almost like it was like an oil finish or something i'll hand rub this up using automotive compounds this is mother's california gold ultimate wax system not a sponsor this is step one usually in any of these systems there'll be a one two and three the first one's usually pretty aggressive second less so and the third is kind of a swirl mark remover and these are liquid compounds sometimes i'll use a foam pad in my drill i also have a small electric buffer too but it's messy and it's kind of a hassle to drag it out for a little job like this and doing it by hand also allows me to kind of blend it in to the surface around it you know just take some elbow grease and i think this stuff is probably abrasive enough to cut through whatever that film is the one caveat with this kind of thing is they tend to be light in color and if you've got a finish that has a lot of scratches or serious dings or say fissures around a binding this stuff can leave a waxy gunk in those lines which can be very difficult to remove and it's light in color so on a dark surface like this you could see it i'll usually start off doing circles and then finish off with uni-directional strokes like this in between grades of polish you do want to clean the surface i'm using naphtha it's kind of a meditative process it looks much better again doesn't look brand new but it doesn't look all gunky like it was there's another slightly grungy spot here on the front there's an area here on the edge of the fingerboard which has suffered a bit of a ding and it's missing some material i can't leave it like that so i'm going to fill it with some super glue and rosewood dust just going to put a spritz of accelerator here on the fingerboard i'll wipe most of that off and i can apply a coat of super glue with the dust mixed in before it fully cures i'll press down on it with the edge of my palette knife here to make sure it's good and compressed i forgot to press record when i was scraping and sanding but by the time i was done it was pretty much gone i'm just doing some preliminary setup work here the player requested that i reverse the orientation of the bridge in other words when it arrived the adjustment screws were facing inward rather than towards the tailpiece and he's one of those people who wants them facing back people have strong opinions about this functionally it makes very little difference which side they're on although sometimes it can be easier to access them if they're on the inside depending on how high the tail piece has been set it can be difficult to get a screwdriver in there and it takes longer to do the setup work but in this case it's not too bad i've had to juggle some of the saddles so the one filed for the larger diameter of the base e string is on the proper side and flip some of them around several saddles were facing backwards and forwards in a way that seemed kind of random actually but looking at this now with the strings on i'm wondering if that was done in an attempt to even out the string to string spacing that can be a bit of a crap shoot depending on who was setting the strings at the factory on a particular day how close it was to lunch time they're not always even and in this case the high e is hugging pretty close to the edge of the treble side of the fingerboard and we're in from the base side some people actually like that especially if they play slide there's more clearance for their finger if it's closer to the edge of the board but also here at the bridge pickup the top strings are kind of outside the diameter of the screws like if you press them down they're not going to hit the screw top ordinarily i like to see them at least touch so if we're being honest this bridge should probably be removed plugged and re-drilled about a sixteenth of an inch over towards the base side or alternately new saddles could be purchased and re-slotted it's kind of a trade-off you know how much originality is enough so let's just see what this sounds like sometimes you can get away with them being that far off other times it feels a bit weak the other more pressing issue is that i can't get good action height on the base strings because the pickup screw here on the neck pickup seems to have been backed out of its slot and it won't go back in and it can't be lowered enough for clearance under that low e if i touch on the 22nd fret here we're fretting out on the cover of the pickup so we need to fix that well it can't ever be easy can it that screw is really stripped out yeah no forget about it i might actually have to cut a slot to get that backed out just don't slip that's all there is to it done a pretty good job of taping up around the pickup because i don't want steel dust from this grinding operation to get inside it somehow on all those magnets [Music] i cut it just deep enough that a slot screwdriver would grab i knew i was going to be replacing that screw anyway and i can finally remove that pickup and see what's underneath i'm not the first person to do this someone else has been at work in here before you see there's an aluminum strip in there which has been screwed to the body and there are two small holes at either end theoretically tapped for the height adjustment screws and the screws of course went anywhere except in those holes also the foam which was used as a spring is well no longer a spring and the retaining nuts on those screws have been soldered in place so that they can't move i don't feel like heating these things up right now so i'm just going to use the dremel tool to cut them free obviously i've got as much tape around there as possible i've decided to go with the mounting method where the pickup is screwed directly to the wood rather than trying to thread it into one of these little blocks here i think it's a better attachment system it's important to save these spacers which keep the pickup at the correct distance above the cover plate there and the standard p90 screws might be a little too shallow they're about the same height as the route in the body so i'm going to have to make a block to screw them to basically replicating that aluminum one i'll use it as the template the mounting screws will use the same holes in the body i'm using surgical tubing rather than that crazy foam some people like springs other people don't like the sound of springs once i've got those set up i can fit the pickup in place and give myself some little marks with the ends of the screws then i can drill pilot holes for the p90 screws it's important that they're accurately sized because they're really skinny and it's possible to snap them off and that's a nightmare so now we've got clearance clearance i think that's enough for this video got it pretty much set up you can see that that neck pickup surround ends up basically buried in the body and flush with the top of the guitar that's pretty typical for these instruments and these frets i cleaned them up they're so low so low and wide i actually have difficulty playing them the owner finds them no problem at all and of course i have to wait a few days before i do the final sanding and polishing on the neck but i think it looks okay i'm happy with it so i'll try and play something that's kind of appropriate bear with me [Music] [Music] [Music] so you

Channel: twoodfrd

Views: 442,243

Rating: 4.9204187 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: QTYSJI3aHSU

Length: 26min 2sec (1562 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020