Epi LP restoration

[pablopepper]

As I've got no active builds going on at the moment, I've turned my attention to some old guitars. This one is a bit special. My Epiphone LP100 was the first guitar I bought new and the first guitar I owned that wasn't a heap of crap. It took me more than 6 months to save up the $500 and it was my prized possession for many years. In the late nineties I gave it a rather hamfisted makeover and painted it silver.

Yuck.

It had a few issues after a bad setup 9 or 10 years ago, I was playing bass pretty exclusively so it went into it's case and has hardly been out since. For a fairly low end guitar it played surprisingly well and I realised a few days ago that I bought it at the start of 1994 meaning this is it's 20th anniversary. Time for a revamp.


I started sanding through 20 years worth of paint expecting to find rubbish wood and paint a solid colour over it. Instead the first bits of grain poking through looked quite nice.


Holy crap! It's mahogany! This bodes incredibly well.


After a couple of dusty hours all of the icky paint is gone and I'm in to fine sanding.


After I've finished sanding to 240 grit I'm going to stain and replace ALL the hardware, hopefully bringing this sentimental favourite back to something I might actually want to play again.

Stay tuned.

[wokkaboy]

nice project Pablo, that mahogany grain looks sweet, what colour you got in mind, presume you will stain it ?
must have taken a few hours sanding to get it to this stage

[pablopepper]

Looking at a red mahogany stain to (hopefully) get a deep wine red finish. The first pic is all hand sanded and, yeah a few hours....after that the orbital sander was brought in. Got to listen to the new Dead Letter Circus album a few times over, so it was time well spent.

[AJ]

/<\\/p>[]<\\/p>/Quote from pablopepper on January 28, 2014, 11:53
Looking at a red mahogany stain to (hopefully) get a deep wine red finish. The first pic is all hand sanded and, yeah a few hours....after that the orbital sander was brought in. Got to listen to the new Dead Letter Circus album a few times over, so it was time well spent.

Good choice of color pablo, will look a million bucks

[kells80aus]

I'm gunna make you cry Pablo.
I bought my epi p100 cherry burst for $80 off ebay. it's the only Gebuine store bought store thought guitar I own. I did look at doing a retro upgrade from Chrome fittings to gold, but after buying 3 supposed epi scratch plate sets off ebay that didn't fit, I sort of chucked in the towel. But I did get it serviced and the frets leveled.

Your refurb looks pretty nice. good luck with that and keep us up to date with whats going on.

Cheers PK

[pablopepper]

Thanks AJ. I'd be lying if I said your red LP wasn't an influence.

[pablopepper]

Yeah thanks Paul. These things only sell for about $250 new these days, but back in the day.....I sound old haha.

[Analyst69]

Nice one Pablo. Look forward to seeing what you do with this.

My Epi LP Standard turned 20 last year (93 model, and if you got yours at the start of 94 it may also be the same age...you can tell by the serial number).

For mines 20th birthday I gave it a much needed full rewiring and replaced the pickups with some GFS power rails (jury is still out on whether I am happy with these for the Epi, great sounding but a bit on the powerful side and not much subtlety left in its sound).

Fabulous idea to celebrate its significant years with a refinish and with all new hardware it will no doubt end up like a new one (or even better )

Cheers

Darren

[pablopepper]

Finally I've managed to get a stain on that I'm happy with. On the third attempt. I have learned some valuable lessons on stain and sanding sealer in the hardest possible way.

Just after the first sealer went on, I dropped it from head height on to the concrete. Came through with only a few major spots of gravel rash and some colourful language, but luckily was pretty easy to fix.

A bit of a rub back and I'm on to clear coat. My hardware order is waiting at the post office to be picked up tomorrow. My arms are numb from two weeks worth of sanding, but things are looking good.

[AJ]

looking sweet there