Blackdog

And yet another update. The 335 body kit is here: The inner parts packaged: and unpackaged, left is the soft maple centerblock stock, the mahogany kerfed lining and the pre-shaped mahogany tailblock (this is a nice touch, in the previous kit it was just the unshaped stock). Right is the stock for the kerfed contoured bracings, A-grade spruce, perfectly quartered. The plates and rims packaged: And unpackaged. It's pretty obvious what is what. The plates are 4 layers of maple, the inner ones are a bit thinner and cross grained. The outer ones are faultless and lightly flamed. Glued together with UF glue, exactly like the 59 plates were made. The rims are similarly built, three layers of maple cross grained. The top has the holes pre-cut on a pin router. It seems like last month that I finished building one of these and now it all starts again.... (Wait !! It was last month !!) I will be showing the molds and fixtures in the next installment. Cheers.

BTW, I'm getting close to the point I am right now with these builds. This thread will become real-time pretty soon. So enjoy these unusually frequents updates while they last. I prepared the brazilian fretboard for the Les Paul. I picked from the very few pieces I have and chose one that instead of being dark and even (some prefer that on a burst) it looks a bit interesting. I had read that the thickness at the centerline of the original boards was 3/16" (4.76mm), so I thicknessed the board down to 5mm. Close enough I thought. But then I read some more , and it seems to be the case that 3/16 was the thickness of the unbound boards (Auch !!). The boards that were to have binding were a bit thicker, apparently 5.25mm (no clue what's the closest in inches). It's done already, I will be short of 0.25mm. No such a big deal I guess... This board looks (and smells) too good to be discarded for a mere 1/4mm (that's less than 1/64" by the way). Today I got hold of the package with the body kit for the ES355. I'm looking forward to getting home to open the box and take pictures !! The non-solidbody part of this thread will start soon !!! Thanks for reading !!

Last chapter we were about to smooth those staircase steps off.... Takes a while. I was led to believe that it was 1/2Hr of orbital sander... Well, it's a bit more. It's not funny how the sander likes to kick and jump when in contact with such a sharply uneven surface !! I resorted to scrapers to remove the hard edges and to do most of the levelling. I don't know, it works better for me. Finally I smoothed things with a cork block and sandpaper, 60, 80, 120 grits. Scrapers are also a must to work out the recurve. I don't consider it finished yet, I know myself, I will be retouching the carving for many days to come. Besides the recurve still ends in a flat around the outline of the top. I kept this flat until I'm done with the binding channel. Then I'll blend the recurve while scraping/sanding the binding. But all in all, it's looking better already: With the top carve pretty much done, like I said before, it was time to finish the control cavity. The concept is simple: the top gets thicker towards the center of the body, and the cavity needs to be deepened accordingly to more or less follow the curve of the top. We need to keep the thickness down for the threaded part of the pots to fit. The thickness needs to be kept between 4-6mm for normal, CTS type, pots. I can think of a number of different ways to solve this. Long post potentiometers could also be used. But this is a replica, right ?? So we have to do what we have to do. Back in the day Gibson resolved the issue by further routing the bottom of the cavity at an angle (some well versed sources even say 2 angles , I'll stick to one, thank you). This is not intrinsically difficult, but requires the use of a very long router bit to get to the bottom of the cavity from a template of some thickness mounted on the back and at an angle !! After that it's no rocket science, and again, the originals were all over the place. So I could afford being a bit sloppy and still remain vintage-correct !! (Hey, in some cases vintage correct MEANS sloppy !!) Here you can see the partial template. There's no need for a full one as we do not need to remove any wood close to the edge, and because I could use some light getting in there to have an idea of the damage I was doing... Then you see the final result. Looks like something coming out from Kalamazoo in the late 50s to me... Close enough anyway. I enlarged the holes to the final size. These were drilled vertically on the originals, no reason to do it differently here (and a lot easier). I tried the pots in place and everything fits nicely. The cavity is finished. Hey, hold it right there !! I thought you said it was going to be a P90 Les Paul !! I see humbucker cavities drawn there !! Sh!t !! I better correct that before I get carried away and f*** it up big time !! Better now....

Thanks Bill, appreciated. Hope you'll have fun with this thread.

Why couldn't you ?? Just get it directly from the source, here. You'll still have to figure out what the two angles cut from the top will do to the stair-case in the neck area, though... BTW, there's also a one-page cross section drawing there, you may find that one useful too.

Thanks, Osorio. This is the first time I use the topographic method for the top carving myself. It looks like a good way to achieve a predictable result for us one-off (or a few-off) builders. In the old days, at Gibson, they used a copy-carver and a slack-belt sander to shape the tops. That final manual intervention is what gave them a bit of "personality". Not two were exactly identical...

Yes, Benedetto makes it look very do-able. When time comes I plan to follow most of his teachings. It's a good thing to draw plans 1:1 for everything. For the current builds spent a good few hours to draw the plans for the necks, reconstructing the knowledge available in the net... From the plans I make the templates, and that works very well. According to specs the width of the 335s at the sides is 1 3/4" (44.4mm), but the truth is that the originals were all over the place. There was a good deal of manual work in building these back in the day. The assembly of the centerblock and sides, and the contoured bracing to the top and back plates could only be done manually. This produced a lot of variation in the dimensions of the assembled guitars.

So now it was time to carve the top. I know that MexicanBreed likes the more dramatic carving I made for my son's Paula much better than the usual LP top carve... But for this one I want to go full LP, and to tell the truth the late 50s carving is not that uninteresting after all. Significantly more dramatic than the modern carve. The top starts at 5/8", I think today they get away with 1/2". There are more pronounced recurves and the pickups rest in a plane, not unlike the type of carving I usually do. Over at the MLP there is no shortage of amazing LP builds, and a user there (ExNihilo) was kind enough to decompose a 50s style carving into a topographic map, and produced a set of templates for newbies like me to use. The different levels are all 1/16" apart from each other. So by the time you have routed your way through the 7 templates, you have a huge pile of maple shavings and your top looks like this: The Les Paul top is broken into two angles. First is the neck angle, that ends at the end of the fingerboard, on this plane sits the fretboard. From that point to just front of the bridge there's the pickup angle, this is the plane where the pickups sit. Now, the beauty of building a clone of something that exists is that everything is already figured out. It is pretty much carved in stone that the neck angle on a 50s LP has to be between 4.2 and 4.4 degrees. I chose 4.3 degrees as a good compromise. The pickup angle is whatever results, which usually is around 1.5 degrees. Here you can see the basic jig I use to plane the tops to any angle desired, and the top once the two angles have been cut. From this point on we are a few hours of orbital sander, scrapers and manual sanding away from a properly carved 50s LP top.....

Hi there ! So you think that in this case "no news" is "best news"... Then it means that I've been doing great for the last couple of builds !! I was a bit intimidated at first with the rebuilt, a couple of times I asked myself why I didn't buy the already assembled body, stick the neck in and call it a day.. But after actually doing it I was enthusiastic enough to plan for another build like this... A few months ago, during a visit to NY, I went to the Met exhibition on D'Angelicos, D'Aquistos and Monteleones and was completely hooked !! Next in my build list are "real" ARCHTOPS. Anyway, you (and your dog) are welcome to post and ask at anytime !! Everybody (and their respective dogs) are by the way. Thanks for chiming in.

Welcome. It is going to be a "from scratch" build. I have already started the thread for the concurrent build of the 355 and a LP, though it's mostly about the LP so far... But the body kit will be with me by the end of this week, so we'll get there.

Nice build ! Great work with the fretboard. I'really looking forward to the "blue burst" part... Just one question, maybe it's just the angle of the picture, but isn't the Bigsby too close to the bridge ? How is the string angle going to be from the bridge to the down-hold bar of the Bigsby ?

The next day it was time to bring the top down to the proper thickness. The correct thickness for a well bred LP is 5/8" (15.9mm). About 2mm were removed. ] Now, with the top in place, the control cavities could be deepened to the final value (for this stage), leaving around 1mm of mahogany at the bottom. It's really that thin, that's why this final deepening was done only after gluing the top. There's still a secondary route required inside the control cavity of the originals, but that will come later: after carving the top.

OK, let's get started. The lacquer of the rebuilt 335 was curing and I was bored. That's when I decided to resurrect the old LP build... I brought it into the workshop and gathered some material around to take some decisions about what to use for the necks and the fretboard. This is what the body looked like since mid 2008. Just like the one I built for my son, It was patterned after my 2005 Gibson R9. Not exactly vintage correct, but close enough for Rock'n'Roll... The body blank was thicker than needed, around 48mm, and so was the top, at 18mm. The original idea back in 2008 was to make a guitar with a similar carve as my son's, but hollow and with a similarly carved back. With that in mind, the mahogany blank I used for the body was not exactly the lightest. More like the opposite... So the first step was to bring the thickness of the back down to the required size for a normal LP: 1 3/4" or 44mm. For the position of the controls and such I decided to follow John Catto's plan for the 58-60 LPs. I had to adapt a bit because the outline is not exactly the same of the R9. But I made new templates for the wiring channel and the cavities from that plan. First drilled the pilot holes for the controls and switch, and routed the wiring channel. Then routed the control cavities. For the cavities' covers I opted for the modern (Gibson reissue) sizes and shapes instead of the vintage correct ones. I happen to have a set of covers available, otherwise I would have to cut new ones. I know, the final tone and sustain will suffer because the shape of the covers is wrong, but I'm prepared to live with that. ] Now another small departure from vintage specs.... Like I said, the body blank was on the heavy side. I didn't want to go with chambers with this one... Over at the TDP forum there's a fantastic Burst build thread by this guy Preeb. He does amazing work and there he built a replica with extensive weight-relief treatment (swiss-cheesing) and he swears that it still sounded like a full bodied LP, and the only effect was the weight reduction. This one that I had was a perfectly good blank of Honduras, only heavy, why not giving the technique a try ? So I went for the swiss-cheesing, the holes are about an inch deep. The weight was reduced significantly. Still it is not going to be an specially light LP, but should be quite reasonable. And at this stage I glued the top on.

So I am already busy with a couple of new builds. I recently finished a rebuild of a trashed Gibson ES335. I re-used the neck and most of the hardware and built a new body for it. For this I had the luck to run into a guy in Traverse City, MI who is producing the ES335 laminates like Gibson did in the old days. He sells fully assembled bodies or the parts as a kit. I bought a kit back in January to see how well it would go and was very satisfied with the end results. As I was finishing the ES335 body, I thought that it would be nice to make a complete scratch build of a guitar I've been wanting to have: a 59-spec'd ES355, mono-wired with a Bigsby TP. Considering that I already have the molds and fixtures for the body assembly, I ordered another ES3x5 body kit, which should be arriving within the next few days. This meant that now I have to build a neck "Gibson Style", that is: with a simple TR, no CF bars, one piece construction and a mortise/tenon style of joint. Now that got me thinking… Why not make two Gibson styled necks while I am at it ? Three years ago, when I built the LP-ish guitar for my son, I prepared and jointed two heavily flamed maple top-sets. I put one apart for my own use, but when I cut the shape of the top or my son's guitar against the mahogany body I happened to cut the top I was keeping for myself by mistake. That top could be nothing but a LP after that, so back then I even cut a honduras mahogany body to match it and the set got shelved... Now is time to resurrect it. So the plan is to build two different Gibby Tribute guitars: - A Les Paul, with a mastergrade maple top, honduras body and neck and a brazilian RW fretboard. Built along the lines of a reissue/replica 59 as much as possible, but with a pair of P90s (simply because I want one). - An ES-355, built as a good reissue. Body and neck following late 50 specs, materials and construction. Of course an ebony board, multi-ply binding, pearl inlays and gold hardware. This will be wired mono and finished in faded cherry (as it was common in 59). I think of it as the reissue I can not get from Gibson. I'll try to keep this thread informative and will try to build them like replicas as much as possible, and explain when and why departures are made. It's a bit of a challenge for me as there are quite a few firsts in the way things will have to be built. So, this should be fun.

Only four customers ? (albeit four very enthusiastic ones...) More than enough I'd say. I'll try to keep it interesting.

As I kept the logo on the face of the headstock (obviously the original one) and the serial number on the back, I resolved the issue in two ways: The orange label under the f-hole is kind of a replica of a 50s label with the modern serial number and a legend at the bottom saying "by Blackdog Custom Guitars, Leiderdorp" instead of "Nashville Tenesse"... There's also an additional label under the bridge pickup (under the lacquer), clearly specifying that I built the body and Gibson built the neck. Still, it is just my own guitar and I do not think I will ever sell it. The new one will not have the Gibson label but something of my own. You mean like these ? (there's many more where these came from... ) And if I do the build thread you'll have plenty more !!

Hi WezV. Maybe I was talking for myself... Three years ago, when my son wanted a Les Paul, I told him that I was in no way going to build a replica... Now I am building a LP replica too... So you like them binding-less ? Have you seen this thread ? The guy is incredible, he doesn't just make replicas, he clones every single detail down to the impossible. I am going to go a much humbler route, I want to build just what a good reissue should be. Just a few more pictures of my rebuilt blonde as you requested (I still need to get my wife to take the "good" pictures, but no decent light around here these days):

Hola José Luis, Yes, it is me. There can only be one Blackdog... That thread was a bit of a post-factum build thread... I have to admit that I only started it when I was pretty sure that I could pull it through... And the outcome is the guitar in the pictures I posted above. I didn't post here in the first place because I didn't have the impression that this kind of builds were much appreciated over here, while there are plenty of replica builds over there (OK, mostly LPs anyway...) But I might have been wrong, after all...

Hi guys, Have not posted much lately, but I have been busy with a major-repair/rebuild project. Back in January I was exploring rebuilding options for a destroyed Gibson ES335 I had, of which basically all that could be rescued was the neck and the hardware. The idea at the time was that of a hollowed out back with a carved top, or something along those lines, simply because I though it would not be possible to rebuild the real thing at the amateur builder level. Eventually, I came across a source for the laminated plates and all the other wooden bits and pieces made like the "real" ones of the late 50s, and instead of building something else I could rebuild it like a proper ES335. Actually closer to the old specs than the original. Essentially, I had the chance to bring the guitar back from the dead. I am extremely happy with the outcome, this is "The Phoenix": So happy, that I decided to build another one just for my personal amusement: A 59-ish ES355. Now, this is going to be a build more along the lines of a replica, I'll be doing things in certain ways simply because that's how they were done in the late 50s Kalamazoo factory. Some of those things could be frowned-upon in this forum, like non-scarfed 17deg tilt-back headstocks or neck bindings with nibs... I reckon that this is a bit of a step backwards in terms of creativity and all, but I take it mostly as an educational exercise. And I end up with a guitar I wanted to own as a bonus ! I can't remember seeing any replica style build threads in this forum, but the ES3xx Gibsons are interesting beasts in their own right, will there be any interest in one such build thread ? All in all, it'll be just a plywood guitar build... But some people love the 335s just for what they are. I know I do.

That's how I do it. I bind before gluing to the neck. Just keep in mind that when you glue the binding to the sides of a slotted FB, glue will want to go into your fret slots. You'll have to clean them carefully while glue is still soft or better still, use something to fill the slots that will be easily removed later. I was thinking about trying a bit of paraffin at the slots ends for my next build with wood binding. Now, if you were going to do it the Gibson way (with the nibs) there aren't many alternatives to radiusing, fretting, binding all before gluing the FB to the neck.

I have always used Rustins pore filler for my builds so far. Messy stuff, but somewhat controllable. I have the impression that CA can be a real pain to use as pore filler... How is it supposed to be applied ??

Wow Scott !!! What a sexy guitar you've made there. The contouring/carving flows very well, I love what you did with the neck joint. Every thing integrates very well. I thought many times about a control cover that would follow the carve. Your implementation is very tasteful. Not too sure about the deep screw holes, but I guess you need to hold the cover solidly in place for the carving, right ?? The initials on the back are a nice idea. Looks very elegant, and the fact that you used wood keeps up with the visual theme of the build very well. You should definitely adopt it. It's a very beautiful instrument, congratulations !!

With the Korina SC22 now finished, this is the end of a successful experience: to drive two builds pretty much in parallel and to re-build what were essentially copies of the previous two builds. The Korina guitar plays beautifully, and as it has been the case for the last three builds now, the fretwork was very good. After stringing up to pitch for the first time the guitar was perfectly playable. Only fret polishing was required. I'm liking the neck profile I'm achieving these days, slightly more slender than a 50s rounded neck, it plays great. And it is also deliciously light (7.25lbs )!! The sound is very interesting. A lot lighter and high-mid focused. It's a fresh new sound compared to the other guitars I own. Just the single mandatory picture to close this thread, as there are more pictures in the "finished" thread. Thanks for reading.

Thank you guys, you're too kind !! The bridge is an ABM aluminum wraparound. I was originally going to use a TonePros and the guitar was designed for that, but it is a bit heavy. I have used the fixed version of these ABM bridges before and the manufacturing precision is outstanding, so I decided to give the adjustable one a chance. It is a bit pricey, and a bit taller than the TonePros (or the Pigtail). So far I'm liking it, and it certainly looks different and sounds very good. The fit on the provided posts is so good that I decided not to use the locking posts of the TonePros (which are a pain for adjusting action). The action now is perfect for me (1.7mm low E and 1.4mm high e @ 12th fret), but this bridge will not go much lower than that. If there were a need for lower action I would have to change it for the Pigtail. Thanks for such kind words, but it isn't perfect, believe me... I am adjusting my technique and now it is indeed much better, thinner finishes and good polishing results. The one I finished for my friend-customer a couple of months ago was very close to perfect. But I still need to learn a lot about finishing. My technique is anything but traditional, and very time consuming. Thanks Drak !!! I'm honoured !!!

After a lot of struggle with the very soft korina back, I got to finish this one. The top was triple-stained for the deep contrast and the edge sunburst, and the neck P90 cover was cut from the same wood and stained in the same way. It gives sort of a stealth effect, and from a distance the guitar looks like a single-pickup. It plays very well, and tone-wise it is really different from my other guitars (all mahogany bodied), this one sounds lighter and with a distinct upper mid focus. The neck BKP90 is a bit underwound and in this guitar has a nice stratty snap to the sound. Not perfect, but still very satisfied with the general results. Finally today got the time (and natural light) for some good pictures... BTW, in some of the pictures you'll see normal (plastic) amber speed-knobs, and in others the flamed maple knobs stained like the top and lacquered. Not sure about what looks best, they both look good to me... Ah, and excuse the hair in the last picture shown... :