The headstock is the one of the most defining aspects of any guitar.  Most manufacturers have been using the same headstock profile for almost a century.  You can tell a Gibson from a Martin from a Epiphone simply by looking at the headstock.  Sticking with tradition, I used the standard Gibson shape for this guitar. I started by getting the […]

I’m making progress on bunch of fronts at the same time.  While I finish up the body details like the electronics cavity covers, binding, and detail sanding, I’ve started in on the neck.  I’m doing a one-piece neck from a nice piece of mahogany.  I started out by making sure that all sides were flat and square, then rough-sketched the […]

There has been no shortage of work on the Les Paul.  So now I feel I’m playing a bit of catch up with the blog.  I was able to have the garage door open in shop this weekend, so that was a nice treat. I tapped into my growing stack of templates for cutting out the pickup cavities and the […]

How can something as small as a guitar have so many bits and pieces?  Here’s a list so far: Body wood (mahogany) Deck wood (hard maple) Neck blank (mahogany) Fret board (rosewood) Headstock veneer (holly) Frets Fret board inlay (mother of pearl) Binding (neck and body) Nut Tuning pegs Bridge Tail piece Pickups (two humbuckers) Pickup rings, plus screws Pick […]

The next step in the top carve is creating the neck and pickup planes.  The neck plane, especially, is one of those ‘get it right’ moments.  Gibson uses an angled neck on many of its guitars to compensate for the high, adjustable bridge.  If the neck were parallel to the body of the guitar, the strings would get progressively higher […]