So, after quite a bitter first half of my 2022 I decided to rekindle with two hobbies/passions of mine: writing and guitar building.
Last year was my rookie guitar building year. I worked on many projects, my favorite two being two different Les Paul guitars, a ‘59 standard type and a single cut Junior type. To come clean with y’all I did none of the woodwork myself, since I live in an apartment. I commissioned all the woodworking part to a great luthier that I found online and developed a great relationship with. The only downside is that he lives like 6–7 hours away…
I live in Argentina and we’ve got some great homegrown tone woods here, so I wanted to build those two guitars using local woods mostly. This builder made me discover cancharana which is a beautiful wood and a widely locally available alternative to mahogany. It actually has a more reddish tone than mahogany which gives it a gorgeous “faded cherry” look with any clear finish right off the bat.
For the top of the ‘59 style Les Paul he used our local alternative to maple called guatambú. The main difference it has with maple is that it has a much more “modest” figuring without any kind of flaming, so as you can see in the pics this is a 100% plain top burst.
What I did last year was to give both guitars an oil finish, a.k.a. the best friend of any beginner apartment-living luthier. I used boiled linseed oil for everything except the top of the ‘59 LP for which I used Tru-oil. They both came out really nice considering my anxiety problems and novice status, but now just one year later, the finish in both guitars has started to look a bit too dull and “homemade” for my taste, so my plan is to give both guitars a good nitro lacquer refinish. Last year I also painted 3 other Fender style instruments with nitro and I really got a hold on the whole spraying/wet sanding/polishing flow so I finally feel like I can make these guitars some justice. I also plan to replace most of the electronics on each guitar to give them a nice vintage sound and feel.
To also get back on the writing part of this project I plan to log every part of the process with text and pictures. This first part of the journal will be mostly about “introducing” both guitars, and also taking inventory of the different phases of the project and everything I’ll need for each.
Les Paul #1
The first guitar is a single cut Les Paul junior, 55–57 style.
Body and neck are made of cancharana. Body is one piece while the neck does have a scarf-joint right below the headstock (Epiphone style). The headstock is a Gibson style “open book” design (don’t tell Mark Agnesi please…). The fretboard is made of “incienso” which is another local wood traditionally used for fretboards here in Argentina.
I kinda regret not telling this guy to use rosewood instead, but in a very amateur/anxious move I automatically discarded the idea thinking rosewood was way more expensive than it actually was. Sure, it IS a lot more expensive than incienso, but now I realize I could have handled the difference. As you can see though, the color of incienso does contrast beautifully with the cancharana, so at least I don’t regret my choice “visually”.
The neck profile is a typical 57/58 Gibson style fat neck which I absolutely love as a big hands guy, and another singularity of this guitar is that because of a design request mix up (again, rookie mistakes) It doesn’t have an actual neck heel, but it just sits flush with the depth of the neck pocket (as in Fender style bolt-ons). To be honest I thought this difference might bother me more than it actually does, as It’s basically invisible from the front and I don’t think it makes a ton of stability or sonic difference either.
My plan for this one is basically give it a nice clear finish after I give it some colored pore filler treatment.
Les Paul #3? (wait, what?)
After falling in love with my #1 and working on a couple of Fender style instruments with guatambú necks I just knew I desperately wanted a traditional ‘59 burst style Les Paul made of cancharana with a guatambú top.
To commission this same guy would have obviously been the no-brainer. The problem is, I make stupid choices sometimes. After going through this builder’s posts of his work I realized he had never built (or at least never posted) a standard Les Paul type guitar. While this was also the case with the Junior, the design of the Junior is pretty much piece-of-cake compared to a tradicional carve top bound Les Paul. I was basically afraid to ask him (aah these introvert types…) so I discarded the thought.
Some days later I found a guy that was building and selling some guitar parts using local wood and CNC machines. One of which was a standard Les Paul type guitar made of exactly cancharana and guatambú. Bingo! or so I thought…
I bought the parts from this other guy and I was extremely disappointed. It looked like he made all the wrong building shortcuts. The guy just sent me parts straight out of the CNC and saw machines. No sanding. Glue marks everywhere. I already knew the body was a two-piece back and had weight-relief holes so I was already making sacrifices in terms of build quality, but I never expected it to be so bad.
I thought I could live with it, until this guy sent me the neck (literally on month after the body). He explicitly asked me the measurements as I told him I prefered a fat C style neck. He sent me an extremely thin D style and argued that neck profile difference in general are “subtle”. Worst part is that the neck is not only extremely thin at the first fret, but also extremely thick at the last fret, so this is basically a neck that is unplayable for thin AND thick neck players alike. Binding work was terrible, fretwork was terrible, and the neck joint didn’t even fit properly and I had to do AGES of sanding work to make it fit. Long story short, the guy kinda refunded me a part of the transaction after a not so sweet feedback from my end.
In the end I kept this guitar and started doing some work on it which I never finished. Now as I embark on this rebuild project I realized it makes for a perfect testing ground for every part of the process, as It’s the same type of guitar, built from exactly the same woods and I also initially finished it in BLO like the other two. At least this cursed guitar, which we’ll now refer to as #3 will do some good to the cause.
Les Paul #2
A few months after the first Les Paul fiasco I decided to re-contact the guy who built me my Junior and just ask him if he could actually build me a ‘59 style Les Paul. He said yes, only adding the footnote that it would take twice or three times the effort/price/time than the Junior, which I totally understood. I was ecstatic.
The moment I received that guitar I wanted to kick myself in the back for not going to this guy in the first place. He actually charged me less, for a work that was twice or more times as good. He even did the freakin fret nibs on the neck binding… that was completely unexpected…
This is, as intended, a proper ‘59 style Les Paul. The builder asked me if I had some plans I wanted him to refer to and I found some excellent ones with pretty accurate ‘59 measurements, especially for the neck which is probably the single most important building block of a ‘59 Les Paul. As expected, he followed those plans perfectly.
Like the Junior this is a one piece cancharana body. The neck, like the Junior has the Epiphone style scarf joint, but this time it does have a heel, although with a heel joint. The top is made of two pieces of guatambú, which as stated is our local alternative to maple. Neck and body are bound which is going to be an extra care required when doing stripping work, unlike on the junior. Fretboard is made of proper rosewood unlike the Junior, which of course gives it a much more traditional look.
My plan for #2 is to give it the same refinish as the Junior on the body. One of the things I love the most about both of these guitars is that sense of “sisterhood” between the two. Same local wood, same builder and relatively the same specs, so it makes sense to give them the same finish.
For the top I’m planning to make the burst by hand with aniline dye as I originally did before applying Tru-oil. Only this time I’ll probably cover it on some shellac to give it a bit more depth before spraying clear lacquer on the whole thing.
Before all that tho, I’m planning to do some “carve top correction”. The plans I originally sent this guy didn’t have a lot of info on the carved top profile so he basically decided on the shape by eyeballing it. While he did a beautiful job, It’s the only aspect of the guitar’s building that’s not so “historically correct” so what I plan to do is to take my orbital sander and correct it to a more 50s style carving shape. Basically make the edges deeper, a bit more “dish” looking like most 50s Les Pauls. This part does scare me a little, but I’m planning to take it very slowly.
This builder also added a 70s style volute to both necks. He told me he does this on most of his builds as he believes that it adds more mass and stability to the necks. I’m a bit on the fence between sanding them off or not. You guys will eventually know my final decision…
Ok, that’s all for now. I guess I’ll write again as soon as I start doing some actual work on these two (or three).
See you then!
