Blog – AE Guitars

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Epiphone Les Paul Refinish

I got this Epiphone Les Paul for a good price on Ebay because it was a bit tatty and was missing a few bits. Having stripped it down I found the body was quite sound and decided to use it as base for recreating a Gibson Les Paul True Historic Reissue – a guitar which costs upwards of £7000!

The work required was fairly extensive – strip all the lacquer, sand the finish being careful not to remove the veneer, stain and refinish the body and neck.

Removing the old lacquer turned out to be a bit of a nightmare – they cover these things in a massive thick layer of poly and it takes a great deal of effort to get it off.

I also wanted to change the headstock shape whilst retaining the Epiphone logo, rework the heel joint to give a more comfortable all access joint, and add a belly contour to the back of the body.

The body is finished in a vintage lemonburst, the pickups are the originals but have been rewired to enable coil splitting on the tone controls via push pull pots. Finally the bridge was changed to a Tonepros and the nut was changed to a bone nut. The frets were given a full level crown and polish and a couple of them had to be reseated and glued to fix a dead spot.

I am delighted with the result and it is now becoming my go to guitar. And all for under £300!

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Jazz bass from reclaimed floor joist

Just finished this jazz style bass with a 2 piece body made from old pine salvaged from a victorian building which was being refurbished.

Although a softwood when pine is this old it has hardened and become much tougher and it is great for making guitars out of with fantastic resonance. The beautiful grain doesn’t hurt either!

The spec for this is: Grover tuners, Wilkinson bridge, noiseless pickups, 2 volume, 1 tone in a Music Man style control plate, through body stringing, maple neck with rosewood fretboard.

The guitar is for sale – please contact me if you are interested.

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A new build! Archtop double cutaway

I have just started work on a new custom guitar – this one is an archtop design similar to a Les Paul but with a double cutaway of my own design. I reached the design by combining a Les Paul and a Telecaster shape and tweaking them until I liked the shape. I use Photoshop on my Mac to do this and it’s a great way to finalise a shape before committing to cutting timber.

The guitar body is made from 17 strips of hardwood machined from the remnants of a garden table so the timber is probably either mahogany or iroko. There is quite a bit of variation in the colour and density of the strips which creates a great design for the back and sides of the guitar. The timber is pretty heavy so before gluing on the ripple maple cap I routed multiple chambers in the body to reduce weight. Even so it is going to be quite a weight on your shoulders while playing, but it should mean some meaty tones!

I have a pair of hand-wound humbuckers from Amdusias Devices which I will install along with a tone-pros bridge and through body stringing. If you are interested in purchasing this guitar it should be ready in about 6 weeks, so get in touch and let me know.

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Working on a Cigano GJ-10 Gypsy Jazz Guitar

This is a lovely Cigano GJ-10 Gypsy Jazz Guitar, based on the original Selmer Maccaferri guitars like Django Reinhardt used to play.
Cigano is a good quality Chinese made brand which represents an entry level for this kind of guitar, although they still cost over £500!

This one has a couple of issues so it needs a setup. First the neck has way too much relief. It looks as if someone has been playing with the truss rod and the saddle to try to get the action low and it has ended up as a mess. The action is quite low but the strings buzz at the 10th fret and some of them even stop sounding at all. That’s a sure sign that something is up!

There are a couple of high frets so they need sorting out, and the bridge will need to be raised using thin shims of timber. I will use ebony if I can find some to match so the colour is consistent. I am waiting for some new strings to arrive which I have ordered from Germany – Argentine strings are different from standard steel strings being silver coated rather than phosphor bronze to give the warm ‘crunchy’ sound associated with Gypsy Jazz.

If you don’t know who Django Reinhardt is I highly recommend you look him up – he was an astonishingly gifted player and managed to play incredibly fast despite having only 2 fingers on his left hand.

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Stop worrying! Your guitar problems are solved

Welcome to AE Guitars, a new venture for me. I have decided to put my experience of building and working on guitars to better use and have launched AE Guitars as a way to provide a really high quality guitar tech service to guitarists in Kent and Sussex.

Whilst the venture is recent, my experience of working on guitars stretches back many years, so rest assured that your pride and joy is in safe hands.

I carry out all sorts of different work on guitars so if you have a problem why bot give me a call and have a chat? There’s no obligation and I just love talking about anything to do with guitars so it will be a pleasure to talk to you.

Speak to you soon!
Regards

Andy Eaves