Project Description
Here’s an interesting one. A few years back, I picked up a homemade archtop at a garage sale. The neck was crap but the body was really good. I’ve always been intrigued by the thin-bodied L5 George Gobel model… this started my most ambitious project to date!
I removed the back of the guitar and cut down the sides to the new narrower dimensions. After putting in proper kerfing, I reinstalled the back and bound the top and back with 7-ply black and white binding.
I had to make a new neck so I decided to go whole hog and do a proper L5. This was my first experience with pearl inlay and multiple-bound headstocks and I’m pretty happy with the results. The headstock logo is a tongue-in-cheek nod to Gibson, I obviously borrowed their font but if you look closely you’ll see that it is actually my name.
The spruce top is finished in ultra-thin cherry nitro lacquer with ambered bindings. I added a gold Bigsby to satisfy the rocker in me. This was a huge project I won’t be repeating anytime too soon!
