Gibson Les Paul Custom -

This custom came to me strung up and looking like a perfectly good good guitar. When i looked at the headstock something looked very very bad. It had obviously had a headstock break and had been repaired but at the first fret the neck buldged out where the repairer had obviously tried to add a volute to the notoriously weak spot. I started to peel back the finish with a razor blade and uncovered some pretty amazing stuff. they had cut all the way through to the truss rod and just glued bit of timber and car filler try and build up the area.

I removed everything that looked foreign and what i was left with was a very thin neck at the first fret. The crazy thing was i really could find any sign of a catastrophic break, it was puzzling. I was a bit scared at this point and not really in the mood for it so it sat in it's case for a couple of months. The top has been stripped and refinished in some thick poly with a faux reliced pattern and it was just a bit too much.

Fast forward 6 months and i pulled it out again. I decided i needed to build up some material on the sides so routed some hefty chunks and glued some mahogany splines in. Next i carved a flat surface from the bottom tuners to the 3rd fret to glue a matching overlay to build up the centre section to its original thickness. This was hours of sanding and checking to make sure the surfaces matched so it could be glued up.

I stripped the top and decided to strip the whole neck, it has also been refinished in some poly all the way down to the 10th fret so there was no use keeping any of the finish. Grainfilled and ready it waited until some sunny weather.