Gibson Goldtops & Other Solidbodies

//Gibson Goldtops & Other Solidbodies
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1955 Gibson Les Paul

Here is a beautiful 1955 tuneamatic/stop Les Paul we restored for my good buddy Tom Benson. Tom has great taste in guitars and motorcycles (he restores old Indians). This one turned out real purty and is a killer player!

1954 era Gold Top Finish

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Here is an example of a mid 50s gold top style finish. All the parts are from the 1950’s, the fingerboard is Brazilian rosewood and the bindings and inlays are period correct in colour and pattern.

1953 to 1956 Gibson Les Paul Conversion

Doing a Les Paul conversion is one of the more challenging jobs a restoration shop gets challenged with…it separates the boys from the men, as they say !! The following 10 pictures document a conversion we did for my now good friend Doug Capener of Seattle, Washington. Getting a conversion done is stressful business…Doug has kindly […]

Gibson 1954 Les Paul Reissue

Here’s a Gibson custom shop ’54 reissue that we aged for a customer. While it was a nice guitar, it just didn’t have the vibe. The lacquer checking on top is an EXACT reproduction of a well used real 54 goldtop, including the forearm wear. We also dyed the fingerboard darker, aged the inlays, truss […]

1954 Les Paul Custom

Here is a 1954 Les Paul custom I bought last year. It was totally stripped with the exception of the sides, but all parts were original including the case. The early customs sound great with their alnico and P90 pickups and this is one of my favorite guitars nowadays.

Historic LP Custom Black Beauty – Refinish

This a new historic 3 pickup black beauty we recently redid. It has a combination of vintage parts and new Montreux parts which I aged myself.

Old Black

A customer from Vancouver comissioned me to do a replica of Neil Young’s famous 50s Les Paul “Old Black”. This was originally a humbucking guitar that had to be filled in to accept P90s… therefore it was not possible to do the exact same wear pattern between the pickups. As Neil would say, “Long may […]

Les Paul Junior -> TV Special

This guitar started out as a stripped LP junior. I find specials to be more useful so I decided to do a conversion. All the appropriate changes
were made including new headstock overlay, royalite neck binding, and neck pickup and control cavity routing. All parts are original 50s and it
sports an aged TV yellow […]

1958 Gibson Les Paul Junior

This is a 1958 double cut TV junior that turned out nicely.

1958 Gibson Les Paul Special

This guitar was another eBay bargain… mostly non-original parts and a cherry sunburst polyurethane finish. Yuck! Gibson’s TV finish is a hard one to do… it’s a challenge to get the proper look to the grain and to capture that distinctive green/yellow/brown hue. Many people have told me that I really nailed it with this […]