- Les Paul Junior copy by Columbus
The video is not this guitar but just to show other work I do.
This came with a humbucker that was loud but toneless; I prefer Juniors with a P90 for a sweeter tone and clearer chords. The frets are as good as the day they were made. I re secured the nut and cut the nut grooves to bring the strings down to half a mm or less across the first fretwire, so you will have super light chords and barre chords in the first few frets.
I re set the neck angle a degree or two so there is now adjustment of the bridge either up or down if needed, but I have set the action to what I feel is an optimum for an old MIJ; remember it is not fretted like a new Schecter or Ibanez... still lovely to play though.
The strings fitted today, are Ernie Ball .009 to .042 and the strap buttons now have white felt washers for a touch of class.
For playing it without reading glasses (older eyes), I added white braille spots to the fifth, seventh and twelfth frets on the facing edge of the neck.
In photo four you see the P90 has the poles progressively raised under the thinner strings; this is to unify the signal strength across the neck; on a humbucker I might tilt the pickup in its frame for the same reason... fat strings create for magnetic flux.
Funny after talking on some forums about the fashion now to make a fixed saddle wraparound bridge have two staggered rows of three saddles, and I had mentioned that back in the sixties and seventies books said that to intonate the bridge it should be a straight but angled line with just the B string saddle set back... well this old wrap around bridge has that straight line with the B string set back... though to my ear the B is just a few hertz flat!
A nice bit of very playable and equally collectable history. Thanks for looking, Mark D Phillips.......
PS. Find my novel Virginia to Greece out on Amazon, and written for the inspired dreamers in their middle years whose eye still searches the horizon and dreams still seek romance.
