restoring a punked up les paul

[thetragichero]

trolling around reverb i found a 2017 les paul faded body and neck (this one hasn't been broken yet!)


first the before





stripped as much as i care to strip it



dyed with red aniline dye, blue pen ink, and isopropyl alcohol (as i discovered the denatured alcohol can was empty)



today i drop filled an especially large nick on the side that would've been much easier with wood filler before the dye but whatever. hit with the first coats of clear poly spiked with a bit of black ink (my quick and dirty purple), concentrating on the sides and a sort of pseudo burst. not enough to be high contrast but enough to be interesting. have a few little runs on the sides to sand flat once dry then more clear

[thetragichero]

decided to take a picture before bed

[JohnH]

Its looking great! Do those have a maple top? And how shiny will you go?

[thetragichero]

yup mahogany with a maple top. not a particularly figured one either
I'm gonna shoot a bunch of poly on it but buff out to satin
they didn't do a bit of grain filling in either of the two fadeds (2004 sg and this one) I've had my hands on so just having a uniform surface will make it feel more luxurious

all of plastic bits I've gathered are black with the pickups, bridge, and tuners chrome (i can't STAND the look of the kluson tuners that come on most les pauls so i purchased some gotoh tuners that appear to be removed from a tacona acoustic)

bridge pickup came from an epiphone g400 their alnico classic. swapped the smooth alnico 5 for a rough cast magnet, swapped the pole pieces with some dark hex pole pieces, wired for 4 conductor switching, and potted in wax
neck pickup came from an ibanez, swapped ceramic magnet with alnico 3 and did what i did with the bridge pickup. alnico magnet is thinner than the ceramic it replaced so there's a bit of an air gap between it and the baseplate. i bet larry dimarzio would come up with interesting ad copy wrt that
purchased cts pots for this even though I'd much rather use bourns.. give em what they want. push/pull tone pots for series/parallel on each pickup. will use some sort of funky looking cap for the tone controls, and I'm undecided about using treble bleeds (i personally don't care for em but if it helps the guitar sell it's a worthwhile addition)

at least i learned from my friend's sg not to clean the headstock with denatured alcohol!

[frets]

Hi Trag,
It looks fabulous!!
Hey, I strongly suggest that you do a Jimmy Page in it in order to maximize your profit. I’ll put up the “Easy” Jimmy Page up in Wiring.

[unreg]

Gollie, I wonder into a new part of these nuts forums and y’all are extremely skilled and talented! That looks beautiful thetragichero! Hope you found a nice buyer.