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A Pair Of Gibby Tribute Builds.


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Beautiful work through and through. I have to say though - I really don't like the logo. The workmanship is fantastic, however a tribute logo "in the style of" a readily recognisable logo easily looks too "cheap Asian copy" if you see what I mean. The quality of the instrument as a whole doesn't say that of course....but the logo man.... :D

Thanks P !

I know what you mean about the logo, it is indeed a difficult issue with this replica build thing.

Obviously there are different positions on the subject. Some people would want to see a "perfect replica" down to all the cosmetic details, i.e. a Gibson logo.

Apart from the obvious ethical and legal implications, I'd personally not give credit to Gibson (or whoever) for a guitar that I built. :D

But on these ones I still wanted to keep the visual identity, to keep the overall cosmetics of the headstock as consistent with the original as possible. And to me that meant a logo that "looked like" but that clearly "was not" the original. Just to make sure that, if for any reason this guitar gets sold down the road by someone other than me, it can't be sold as something it is not.

Not that I need to justify myself but rather to share my opinion, I am a very "visual" person, when I look at a familiar headstock I like seeing a logo that doesn't immediately stand out as "wrong". I understand why others may find it a bit cheesy, but it works for me. B)

....and on the "cheap Asian copy" subject. I was attending a Dutch guitar builders gathering this Saturday, and there was this chinese ES-355 kit for sale. All the bindings, the solid block down the center and including the shaped and fretted neck. Properly assembled and finished it could make a reasonably convincing 335 type guitar: All for 250 euros !!! So discouraging !!! B)

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That screw method with the bridge... awesome genius! I'm gunna use that!

Chris

Hmmmmm, most of my methods are patented, copyrighted, trademarked or whatever applies... :D

What exactly is that you gunna use ?

The positioning of the bridge according to intonation was a bit of a necessity in the case of these builds, due to the rather inconsistent fret spacing vs. scale length.

This was easy enough to do, still Gibson used a template to position the bridge posts holes using the 12th fret as the reference at the old factory.

Then there's another story with the bridge posts.

These are (and have always been) rather short for this application. Here you see three sets of posts, L-R: Faber (4mm), StewMac (4mm) and Gibson (6-32).

th_IMG_108_Brg_Posts2.jpg

The gibson is actually the shortest, at 27mm. This is clearly not a problem with a solidbody, or when mounting them to a solid, hardwood base for archtop use. But then again the 335s are neither.

At the point where the bridge sits on the top we have pretty much the full thickness of the spruce contour bracing (13mm), and the top plate is about 5mm thick. So if you leave 15mm of post exposed, it will only go through the plate and end somewhere in the middle of the spruce bracing. It never reaches the maple centerblock. B) If you're lucky enough not to find one of the kerfs in the spruce right where your post goes, that's all the support you get, much less if you're less lucky. :D This is just one more in the list of engineering problems that these guitars have.

On this build I drilled and tapped the holes all the way down to the centerblock. If I happen to find this "pseudo-floating" bridge approach lacking in any way, I will make longer posts out of those 2" long 6-32 steel screws.... B)

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I forgot to ask, how about the tuning stability with bigsby?

Thanks Osorio !

Regarding the tuning stability it's still too early to tell. I just strung it up yesterday and could only play it a little bit. Light wobbling doesn't seem to immediately throw it out of tune, but I don't keep my expectations too high...

The extremely long distance between the Bigsby and the bridge may help a bit (shallower break angle than on a Les Paul design), and I took good care in leaving the nut slots as shallow as possible. But we'll have to see.

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Considering I'm not to keen on the 335 this is looking superb, and the "Golden 50's" headstock is brilliant. It makes you look a bit harder when something appears correct but you know there's something not quite right with it.

Hey, thanks Jaycee ! Clearly we share this point of view on the subject.

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The days of the whiter shade of pale are counted.

Time to start color testing.

I prepared a couple of pieces of mahogany, one from an off-cut of the neck blank and another from an off-cut of the LP body. Sanded them down to 320 and handed them to my wife (she's the one dealing with the pore filling and color staining).

We also tested the cherry for the ES-355 maple body on a piece of laminated plate.

The LP will be some variation of darkburst, and the ES-355 will be cherry. But I want to achieve a vintagey look, not too shiny red. So we aimed for the washed/faded cherry shades for the mahogany.

After some tests we're pretty happy with the colors we obtained for the mahogany: the LP back and neck, and the ES355 neck.

IMG_250.jpg

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Here's a comparison against my own Gibson R9 back and neck.

No flash.

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Flash.

IMG_258.jpg

No flash.

IMG_259.jpg

The neck is pretty much spot on, the body is not identical, but mostly where I want it anyway, i.e. a bit more brownish. The two different pieces of mahogany react very differently to the colors...

For the color of the maple body of the ES-355 we're not quite happy yet. We will try some more. And we have to begin testing the colors for the LP top. I have to locate a piece of the proper maple (this top was cut 3 years ago !) and prepare it for the tests.

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More color tests...

I told my wife that for the Les Paul I wanted something like this:

th_IMG_192.jpg

...or something like this:

th_IMG_196.jpg

(the colors of the thumbnails appear a bit warmer than the zommed pics, at least in my monitor, and are closer to real life)

I think she got them both pretty close !! :D

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It was not easy to convince myself that the Les Paul needed to be disassembled… It was such a sweet playing and sounding thing…

But every guitar needs a finish, right ?

So, time to do some damage….

Everything ready. Final sanded, grain raised a few times and masked for this operation and the following ones…

We decided to go with the darker, more reddish of the two finishes. And since we I'm new to spray equipment I'd like to keep it simple this time. The burst is rubbed on using StewMac Dyes. This is obviously not vintage correct, though. B)

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As per a request from the artist, we're not going to reveal the complete process… :D But let's just say it's an amber(ish) base…

IMG_202.jpg

And three additional sunbursting operations to get to this point :D :

IMG_208.jpg

Not exactly like the pictured finish, it would require darker rims, but I kind of like it better this way.

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Next the back and neck. Here we tried to stick to vintage-correct protocol as much as possible.

IMG_209.jpg

The originals were pore filled with a cherry-red colored paste. This was applied liberally to the wood with a creamy viscosity and the excess was removed by rubbing with a piece of burlap while still wet, without sanding.

This filled the pores with the colored paste and stained the wood at the same time. Then it was clear coated. :D

I am using the Rustins pore filler, and it can be colored by the Rustins Wood Dyes, but there's no such thing as cherry red…. And it won't take the aniline dyes, so we did it in a two step approach. First the pore filling, with some Mahogany Red color added:

IMG_210.jpg

And when dry, an additional cherry red stain was applied directly to the wood.

IMG_211.jpg

The final result when removing the binding masking tape is quite accurate to the vintage look:

IMG_212.jpg

The clear coat will hopefully add depth to the finish while still keeping the slightly faded appearance.

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The ES355 cherry was indeed achieved by staining the wood in the originals.

IMG_257.jpg

I will be applying a light coat of amber on this one. This will soften the white of the bindings and headstock pearl inlays and should make the body just a tad orangey, as the old 59s have generally aged.

The neck was done in the same way of the Les Paul's. Masked so that just the neck is exposed. Just a note on masking: For the body binding I used 1/4" fine line 3M masking tape. A rather expensive stuff, and the results were far less than great. I had to work a lot to scrape the binding clean of stain afterwards. :D This last saturday, I found a similar product in a local paint shop, now from an unknown brand and much cheaper (1/3 of the price). This one worked amazingly well ! The bindings on the Les Paul and the 355 neck hardly needed any cleaning at all !! (I have to go and buy some more of this tape)

IMG_258.jpg

Tinted pore filler applied:

IMG_260.jpg

And stained cherry afterwards:

IMG_262.jpg

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Hey BD, I opened this post and stepped away for a minute while the pictures downloaded. I happened to glance back at the monitor and thought, Huh--someone's painted the back of an LP bright blue and given it a creamy white figured top. That doesn't look half bad.

Then I came back to the real world and realized what I was looking at. The kudos go to your wife this time. She did a wonderful job on that LP. I seem to remember that she has skills in inlaying as well. You get points for landing her though! :D

Very nice on all counts, man, you've certainly got two classy instruments nearly ready to play.

SR

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Eddie - it prob is a rude question, like asking a woman her weight, but I'd love to know the answer too!

Just looking at that burst again, the figure and burst on yours looks much better than the pic you're trying to replicate!

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