Gibson Archtops & Thin-Body Electrics

Here is an ES 335 I just finished for my friend Bill Stapleton. Bill wanted something close to Clapton’s Cream 335. Red 335s look so great with ambered and worn binding!

Here’s three ES style guitars enjoying a sunny winter afternoon in Victoria. The blonde and cherry ones were recently painted by GM vintage…the original finish sunburst 1960 ES 330 is just there to complete the family picture…

Here is an ES-335 we did for a great customer from Hawaii. This 335 sports a gorgeous flame top and back and real double white PAFs. I really liked this one…

About 90% of my business is the big three (Les Pauls, strats and teles) so it’s always fun when something different shows up. This is a custom ordered L5 that I just finished for Dave D… a great customer from California. We added a mixture of original vintage parts along with Montreux parts. I didn’t […]

I’m a fan of Rock-A-Billy, so I’ve always loved ES-295s. I scored this guitar pretty cheap off ebay because it was refinished and the headstock had been broken. The neck was replaced with a late 60’s ES-175 neck… unfortunately, whoever did the job in England set the neck at much too steep of an angle… […]

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 […]

This is a cool project we just finished. This guitar started out as a basket case 1950 L7 I found in pieces at the Seattle guitar show. It caught my attention because it had an L5 fingerboard held on with elastics and original 50s L5 tuners,tailpiece and case. I decided to go whole hog and […]

I saw this beautiful J200 on Ebay and decided to get it. When it arrived, the lacquer was untinted and the guitar was way too new looking for my tastes. I stripped it right down and put a very thin tinted nitro finish on. I love the stinger that Gibson put on its vintage J200s […]

A cool mid 50s ES 295 we did an aged goldtop finish on for producer Bob Rock. These are one of my all time favorite guitars.

Here is a dot neck 335 project I recently completed. I got this from my good friend Bill Stapleton. Gibson made some great flamey ES 335s back in the 1980s when they first reissued the dotnecks. This one was hard to play because it was missing its neck! We made a replacement out of a […]