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77-79 Unknown Les Paul Copy

Year: 77-79
Brand: Unknown
Model: Les Paul Copy
Class: Guitar
Scale: 24.75
Owner: Greg Kaynak

Status: SOLD

Phillip and myself found a couple of Les Paul copies at a pawn shop, this is what I did with mine. This guitar was in bad shape, poor finish, missing binding, bad wiring, flaking chrome.

I after getting it home and pulling the strings, the frets were way worse than I had thought. Tons of wear, pulling from the fret board, and the zero fret was worn down. First I went after the binding with some I had stripped from an old neck.

Next on the list was the finish. It was in bad enough shape I used a heavy wax and the buffer on it. It really helped alot. The existing pickups were 2 lead humbuckers, and working. The pickups measured 8.6kÎ© and 8.9kÎ©. Phillip wasn't going to use the only working pickup in his, a hot Seymour Duncan Invader (16kÎ©). So I decided a 3 pickup setup would be cool.

I pulled the poles and put a chrome cover on it and the Duncan became the middle pickup. The routing for the middle pickup was fairly easy.
I wanted to keep things cheap, but I love the look of a bigsby on a paul. Phillip pulled an old gold plated bigsby copy from the parts bin to check the look.

It was in bad shape, I had pulled it from my Silvertone because it looked so bad.

I decided it's trash, so lets go to town. I took it to the wire wheel and stripped the finish. Once the gold was gone I went after it with the buffing wheel and some metal polishing compound. It looked perfect for this guitar by the time I was finished.

I went ahead and ordered the new parts I wanted; aged speed knobs, knob indicators, and 3 push pull pots. I wired the center pickup coil-taped (single coil) since it was so hot, pull for the humbucker. The other I wired as pull for coil-taps on the neck and bridge. The last one puts the neck and bridge in series.

Instead of the standard pickup selector I used a rotary pickup selector. (6 way) The old pickup selector switch was modified to center off and wired as a tone switch (Thank you Chet).

The only bad part of this guitar is that someone glued the neck in. So there is was adjusting the neck angle. A little experimenting work and clean and I was able to free the neck. I checked and reset any loose frets back in place, then I pulled the zero fret. I replaced the zero fret, leveled, and set up the guitar. The original Japanese pots dated to 1977 so I'd guess the age as 77-79. This guitar is heavy, weighs in around 10lbs. It's solid wood with no weight relief alot like a vintage paul.