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1958 Les Paul Junior SC, Needs a Neck ReSet

riscado

Active member
Joined
Jul 6, 2006
Messages
1,460
not spamming, in fact I'm not even advertising or selling it here at all... I'm based in Europe, most of the audience here is US. And this one is not being shipped across the pond. So I appreciate the "shout out" but you're being overzealous!
 

MapleFlame

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Joined
Jul 3, 2005
Messages
14,044
Although minimal difference, get an after market cover and sand it down on the bottom of cover. My best suggestion, get a regular P90 baseplate from Jon at ThroBak without the ears and see if that gets the pickup lower. Any adjustment you can put foam under if needed. Also you can tame any of these guitars with Tone and Volume controls. The amp adjustments too. Maybe the amps you have aren't the right fit for this guitar. I have 35 guitars, not all of them sound great in every amp I own. Please do not rout, reset or do anything to the wood. Phil is as good as you can get to work on guitars. If none of the above works, sell it and find another.
 

toxpert

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Joined
Jul 2, 2005
Messages
3,068
Echoing Mapleflame.
My ‘58 4-digit Junior is a series with low neck angle. It was made with soapbar backplate and dogear cover. The pickup was long gone when I purchased this instrument.
I had Jon Grundy (Throback) make a replacement pickup using soapbar backplate with regular dogear cover.

The soapbar pickup mounted directly to the wood works great and fit at a workable pickup height to the strings. For the cover, I had to bring away a bit of the bottoms of the ears.

Aside...this guitar is very resonant and rings like a bell when you tap it. Mounting the pickup directly to the mahogany body gives this guitar more spank IMHO....
 

marshall1987

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
3,278
Although minimal difference, get an after market cover and sand it down on the bottom of cover. My best suggestion, get a regular P90 baseplate from Jon at ThroBak without the ears and see if that gets the pickup lower. Any adjustment you can put foam under if needed. Also you can tame any of these guitars with Tone and Volume controls. The amp adjustments too. Maybe the amps you have aren't the right fit for this guitar. I have 35 guitars, not all of them sound great in every amp I own. Please do not rout, reset or do anything to the wood. Phil is as good as you can get to work on guitars. If none of the above works, sell it and find another.

Great advice MapleFlame. I may be half way there already.... with the custom P-90 Jason Lollar made for me. In building this pickup, not only did he omit the metal base plate, but he fabricated the plastic P-90 dog-ear cover by sectioning it in half, and removing just enough material (via sanding?) so that the cover is about 2/3 the height of a stock cover. So I already have an appropriate cover with the proper dimensions. The only problem I foresee with a soapbar baseplate is that the pickup route has very little additional space for affixing a soapbar baseplate any deeper into the body. I'll have to check, but I think the dogear baseplate already rests on the bottom of the route. But this may be a function of the tabs, not the baseplate itself.

I wonder if this is the reason many 1958 double -cut LP Juniors are outfitted with a soapbar baseplate vs. a dog-ear baseplate? Why did Gibson make this change in the first place?
 

Tom Wittrock

Les Paul Forum Co-Owner
Joined
Aug 2, 2001
Messages
42,567
not spamming, in fact I'm not even advertising or selling it here at all... I'm based in Europe, most of the audience here is US. And this one is not being shipped across the pond. So I appreciate the "shout out" but you're being overzealous!

Saying it is for sale is basically "advertising" it here. Whether you intended to or not. If I thought it was intentional, I would have reacted differently. :salude

And your location makes absolutely no difference. :ganz
 

riscado

Active member
Joined
Jul 6, 2006
Messages
1,460
you still have a chance to react differently Tom, I wouldn't honestly care too much about it. Knock yourself out.
 

marshall1987

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Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
3,278
Although not the original 1958 P-90 that I want to keep in my LP Junior, this is a photo of the custom made Lollar P-90 that Jason made for me which omits the baseplate. This P-90 dog ear also features a custom made plastic cover that has been sectioned laterally, sanded down, and the two halves glued together. The result is a cover that is around 12/32" in height vs. the original that is around 14/32". This may not sound like much, but that was all that was necessary to make a P-90 with adequate clearance from the strings.



 

MapleFlame

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 3, 2005
Messages
14,044
Although I am happy for you to have a more usable guitar to your liking, I would have done the baseplate change with original pickup and sanded down an aftermarket cover. I'd leave the solder joints alone. :dude:
 

AA00475Bassman

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 26, 2016
Messages
3,769
Although I am happy for you to have a more usable guitar to your liking, I would have done the baseplate change with original pickup and sanded down an aftermarket cover. I'd leave the solder joints alone. :dude:
How without breaking solder joints ?
 

DANELECTRO

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 24, 2003
Messages
6,318
You could try pressing the bushings deeper so that they’re below the face of the guitar. This will allow for the studs to go deeper and the tailpiece to rest flush to the body. A drill press works well for pressing in bushings in a slow and controlled manner.
 

agogetr

Active member
Joined
Jan 22, 2019
Messages
451
how about the front pickup off an old es125 werent they real thin? or maybe it was the 175? they werent as tall as the lead pickup
 

Don

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Joined
Dec 1, 2001
Messages
5,732
how about the front pickup off an old es125 werent they real thin? or maybe it was the 175? they werent as tall as the lead pickup

This reminds me- I had a '64 Epiphone Olympic that had been routed for humbuckers. I wanted to put a dog ear P90 on top of the pickguard so I had Bobby Tyson wind me a bridge pickup on a neck pickup plate with a neck pickup cover. It was very low profile and worked well.

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