My dad gave me his his 79’ The Paul when I started playing guitar in the 80’s and I played the hell out of it for 6 years and then retired it later as the frets were shot and the bridge t-top quit working. I ended up getting many more Les Pauls so it has lived in the case for about 20 years. After seeing The Paul reissue it got me nostalgic so it took it out (was in worse shape then I remembered totally unplayable) and stripped off all hardware and electronics and pulled the frets. I straightened the neck repaired chips from fret removal & sanded the neck and then put on medium jumbo frets instead of the narrow it originally had. Instead of putting back the original hardware I decided to give it a 50’s vibe with Kluson instead of Grover tuners, gold top hats for the black speed knobs cream plastic poker chip and pickup rings. For the electronics I took them all out and decided to not reinstall the switch my dad added at some point to split the coils and go with straight 50’s wiring with Bourne pots and PIO with .33 bridge and .15 neck. I originally planned on Custom Buckers but went with Slash AP2 as I will be playing a lot of 80’s rock on this guitar. I went with a white bone nut but now I think I will cut an unbleached blank I think it will look better with the Kluson’s and plastic. Anyway got it back together last weekend and I can’t stop playing it, with a comfortable neck and ebony board that I compound radiused to 16” when I sanded (I know I will probably get hate for that) so it feels great playing above the 12 fret. I am proud of this restoration so I just had to post it.
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