My Les Paul Junior

[albertop]

Hi everybody,

I finished this guitar about a month ago but I just finally have the time to show the pics.

The guitar is pretty simple: magohany neck and body, rosewood fretboard, a p90 pickup, chrome wraparound bridge and chrome tuners (I bought them from Guitarfetish and they're really good), 1 tone and 1 volume, gold buttons and bone nut.

I really love the sound, the p90 sounds cool, it's the first one I build with one of those and I'm very happy with the sound, the guitar is kinda heavy but rich and full and the scale (24 3/4") is really comfortable.

I will post pics from the beginning till the end, hope you like it, I will only put the ones I think are important so you would not get bored

The first one is when I routed the body from the template:

Edited September 5, 2007 by albertop

[albertop]

This one is from the neck building, the angle degree is 14 degrees and I use a scarf joint which is much better than one piece:

[albertop]

With this one I'll explain how I glue and work the fretboard:

First I cut and sand the neck to the desired size, then I glue the fretboard very carefully and size it with the router. You need to be precise and careful with the gluing, I have very nice results with this method because it's very little wood I remove (just the wood of the fretboard), you just need the fret lines to be paralel to the nut line and your neck needs to be inside the fretboard. I hope you understand me.

For the dots I just run a line at the center across the frets and then draw X's inside each fret space that needs to have a dot, then is when I see the center of my dot. And I drill the side dots with my Dremel drill bit at hand with the same method.

[albertop]

Then I align the neck and the body to outline where the mortise (is that the name?) will be. Is not that hard if you have done the tennon right, I mean it needs to be square and symmetrical Trace the center of both neck and body and you will be fine. Note that In haven't place the bridge yet.

[albertop]

This is when I routed the mortise, I made the mortise the size of the whole tennon, I think Gibson also used to use this method at some point (I'm not entirely sure if they still do it like that but they built several guitars this way), I mean the heel is the bottom of my tennon, it doesn't haver different heights.

[albertop]

This one is the fitting of the neck, notice that the neck is not raised too much, at the end I put some veneer over the bottom of the the mortise to raise the neck a little bit. I did it all without the bridge and I don't recommend it, you need to have your bridge, so please be patient.

[albertop]

This one is from the headstock, after I did the trussrod rout I put a template and rout the headstock and then glued a mahogany overlay and carve a trussrod nut hole ala Gibson, it doesnt need to be like that, it just that I like it that way The overlay helps me to make a nice space for my bone nut, that way it's difficult that the nut moves from its place, you just need to slide it from the side and voila!.

[albertop]

In this pic you'll see when I glued the neck to the body, notice that I didn't carve the back of the neck, in this case I glued it and then carved it. You can try the other way I think, at the end it's basically the same. This way you have more control over the neck but it's a little bit difficult to carve the heel I think, but nothing a good chisel or rasp won't do.

I also routed the control cavity, it's really small because of the 2 controls, this also helps the guitar to be on the heavy side, if you think that you only make two holes (neck and control cavity) you'll see what I mean. I don't count the pickup hole because in this caseit very shalow been a dogear p90 rout.

[albertop]

And now the end results, sorry I don't have the painting process, i can tell you that the finish is poylester and the sunburst is a b*tch to paint. It's the first sunburst and I think it looks cool.

Here you see the pickguard and the harware. Let me tell you that Guitarfetish sells pretty cool stuff, I think it's the second time I order from them and the items are righteous, the wraparound is well made and the same for the p90 and the tuners. Really cool stuff if you're on a budget like me.

[albertop]

Another shot:

Edited September 5, 2007 by albertop

[albertop]

The back:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1353/132672...80d9170a0_o.jpg

The headstock, where I'm gonna put a little plate engraved:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1144/132583...fb9772791_o.jpg

And the rest of the pics:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27263073@N00/...57601873415727/

Well hope you like it and I expect to hear your comments, cheers

Alberto

[Vinny]

Beautiful work Alberto, I really like how the finish came out. Looks great! -Vinny

[capello]

fantastic job!!!!

i like your LPJ a lot!!!!

[brian d]

Shiny! Great work Albertop. I've liked the stuff from Guitarfetish too. Nice folk to deal with, and great value for money.

So what's your next project?

Brian.

[eddiewarlock]

you are a MAESTRO , Alberto, love your work, and yes, guitar fetish kicks ass!!

[CleverPun]

Do you have a sound clip of the pickup? I'm curious about Guitarfetish's quality pickup-wise. I might use them for a project considering their price.

[Feild Craddock]

did you have any neck angle?

[RGman]

If you look at the picture where the tenon is clamped you will see that there is neck angle.

[erikbojerik]

Very nice work Alberto! Your advice is right on....the bridge is the first piece of hardware you should decide on (and have in hand) before any wood is cut!

The finish looks great, and the burst looks very authentic. What kind of polyester did you use? I am thinking of trying McFadden's...the only problem is they have a 5-gallon minimum purchase, and the stuff would rot on the shelf at the rate that I build instruments.

[DanielM]

Now that is one very nice Junior! top notch finish job too!

[albertop]

Hey brian d, I would like to build for my next project a guitar with an alternative wood; maple is hard to buy here in Peru (that's why all the wood I use is mahogany because it is cheap here) so I'll try to find some exotic or another wood that suits guitarbuilding. And also I think I'm gonna try a design of my own .

Thanks eddiewarlock, I know thar you are also from South America, tell me: what kind of woods do you use? cedar? I have worked with cedar but I think maybe is too soft for guitars...

Hi Feild Craddock, yes, the guitar does have a neck angle, it's about 2,5 degrees and I prefer angle the bottom of the tennon, for me is easier that way.

CleverPun I don't have any soundclips, but I use the Guitarfetish products after reading good reviews in this and other forums. And they're a bang for the buck, of course there are other brands with higher quality products but for $34 I think they're damn good.

You're right Erickbojerick, the bridge is so important, I got lucky this time but I really dont recommend it, seriously. And I use some polyester I buy from a national company. I heard that McFadden's is a really good brand. But there's other options for finish, I really would like to try that water based lacquer that StewMac sells. And also I would like to try urethane, I looks really good and hard.

Thanks for the comments and sorry for the slow reply, my computer almost die but now it's all good so I'll try to post more. Cheers,

Alberto

[eddiewarlock]

Alberto for necks I'm using purpleheart ( it is called Zapatero in Venezuela) It's a very hard and dense wood of a beautiful purple color, i started using it since no mahogany can be found here. Spanish cedar can be too soft, but i have managed to find pieces as hard as mahogany, it looks the same and smells sooo nice, and if you're lucky you can find pieces that are quilted or flamed. There's another wood called saman ( monkey pod in english) sometimes i think it looks like Koa, but lately i haven't been able to find any pieces that are dry... there's another one called Pardillo, which has been hard to locate lately, it looks almost exactly like black limba, i recently scored some thin pieces of Jatoba, called here Algarrobo, also called Brazilian Cherry...as you see there are nice woods, but the deforestation has made it hard to find them, and maybe you get cooler woods in Peru Oh and I'm another GFS pickup convert I bought a Crunchy Rails pickup that looks like X2N or a Dimebucker and i am very pleased with it, perhaps i should venture and build a retro looking guitar, because even the Tele i'm building has nothing of traditional! hehe

PS: whatever you do, DON'T buy Ceiba, i made that mistake once, i couldn't find mahogany or cedar and since it looked similar i bought, it is waaaay too soft, Janka scale hardness rates it at 260 as a comparison, basswood is 410, Limba is 450, Spanish cedar in average is 660, Mahogany 830, Hard Maple 1230, and Purpleheart 1860.

Edited September 10, 2007 by eddiewarlock