Model: Gibson Les Paul Studio

Mfr Date:  Spring 1990, bought January 1993 used

Color:  Ebony

Pickups: Stock Gibson pickups.  Nobody has actually been able to give me an official name for these.  These are usually referred to as "Lawrence" or "circuit board" pickups.  The switch was made sometime in 1990 to the 490 series humbuckers.  They're labeled HB-R and HB-L on the neck and bridge respectively.

See Gibson's Page here. 

Mods: 

• Added Schaller strap locks, 1993

• Added new "dressing" components.  Bought new knobs, pickup rings, pickguard, switch washer, switch cap and a 496R neck pickup.  5/2001.

• Refret job done 4/2006.  Used kind of an odd fret wire I had used before.  It's tall, but not too wide.  Measures 0.095"Wide x 0.046" Tall.  I wish I had done this a long time ago.

• Jimmy Page mod done, 4/4/2006.  I used 4 DPDT push/pull pots to make this setup.  The two volume pot switches split the coils of their respective pickup.  The bridge tone pot switch reverses the phase of the bridge pickup so that when you have both pickups on, you have that cool out of phase sound similar to the Peter Green mod.  The neck tone switch puts both pickups in series (a stock Gibson is wired with its pickups in parallel).  This is a lot of fun to play.  It's also a cool mod because you can still just get regular Les Paul tones out of it when all the switches are off.  It gives you a ton of versatility of tone, yet doesn't change the appearance of your guitar or its ability to have its tone from the factory.  Read about this mod here.

• Had microphonic feedback issues with this guitar, so I decided to learn how to pot pickups.  I did this for the first time and did 4 pickups.  Worked like a charm.  Read about it here.  Did this 9/2006.

• Had this guitar refretted and Plek'd by Phil Jacoby of Baltimore.  The frets were not really installed well from the previous refret.  Since they weren't seated that well, but had already been leveled, there would have to be a done of material removed to get them even, and they could still move.  Phil recommended a total refret, which I had considered anyway, and I went a long.  It now plays great and I'm glad I did it.  It wasn't cheap, but he does great work and was very easy to talk to and deal with.  Even with shipping, I'm planning on sending future work to him as it comes up.  Check him out at www.philtone.com.

• 1/3/09 - Haven't been playing this dude much.  It plays great, but it's always been a little muddier than I've wanted since I've done the Jimmy Page Mod.  I've decided that I hate using those CTS push/pull pots as volume pots.  Since I never really liked the "series/parallel" switch much, I decided to remove the full Page mod.  Replaced the volume pots with 500k Superpots from RS Guitarworks.  Left a 500k push/pull pot in the neck tone position to do phase reversal on the neck pickup.  Installed a CTS 500k audio pot (long shaft) for bridge tone.  Installed two mini toggle switches under the edge of the pickguard to cover the coil tap for each pickup.  It's pretty much the same setup as my Treble Bleed Switch, but with two switches, one for each pickup.  I did actually put in a treble bleed cap on the neck pickup, but it's not switched like my other guitars.  Turns out I kinda like the sound of these pickups even though they're kind of strange.  They're sometimes referred to as "Lawrence" pups or "Circuit Board" pickups.

• Installed Wolfetone Dr. Vintage humbuckers.  11/1/09.

• Removed the treble bleed circuit from the neck pickup.  Wanted to make the tone control more functional and the treble bleed messes with this.  2/28/10.