The original Les Paul Standards are legendary. All the guitar heros had one, I want one too! They are so collectible and expensive it is not possible for me to own a real one. Fortunately, unlike most people, I have the guitar building chops to make myself a really accurate copy. It was a labor of love and now I am enjoying the results.
I have built a few of these guitars in the past. For this project I decided I wanted to be super authentic in the execution. I started by reading "Beauty of the Burst" which is a book that thoroughly documents '58 through '60 sunbursts. I also read a 300 page build thread by Gil Yaron in the Tele forum that inspired me. I decided to copy all the details as closely as possible and not to make any "improvements" to the iconic design.
Fortunately I have been saving the appropriate wood for quite some time. The neck and body are made from Genuine Mahogany that I have seasoned at least 10 years. The top is flamed hard maple that I bookmatched. The fingerboard is chocolate colored Brazilian Rosewood that I had put away for something special. The wood is all lightweight and the guitar weighs in at 7.5 lbs. I love light guitars. The inlays are cut from vintage celluloid and the headstock has a thin holly veneer as per the original.
I used a no wire ABR-1 bridge and a light weight tailpiece. They are required if you really want a vintage sound. I used modern Gibson PAF copies for pickups; a PAF pro at the bridge and a Burstbucker 1 for the neck position. I aged the nickel plated parts to a light patina.
I copied the original binding style, showing the maple in the cutaway. You can see the hide glue between the neck and body binding. The fingerboard uses the exact 50's scale and fret placement.
The logo was silk screened over the lacquer.
The extended dovetail extends under the neck pickup. Maple was used for the truss rod filler.
I found some vintage bumblebee capacitors that really sound great.
So now you are asking "How is it? Did it pay off?"
Absolutely! The combination of materials and construction techniques really pays off. The sound is very loud acoustically and sings with a mid peak. The the sound of the bridge and tailpiece combine with the Brazilian Rosewood and hide glue to really resonate. It is very open and resonant and responsive. It's light weight, really balances well yet retains that solid feel we associate with a Les Paul. The sound electrically is unbelievable. It is fat and flutey. The tone controls really sound great, when you roll a little treble off, it really starts sounding like all the best woman tones you could never quite find. Full on it sounds rock and roll, even with the amp set clean. I hope I can afford to keep it.
