Gavmeisters 52 GoldTop Replica

[Gavin1393]

Working on a number of projects simultaneously.
I will be using Gibson cream coloured Tuners, rosewood Fretboard with Gibson Crown markers. The neck is Mahogany. For the bridge I have contacted Joe Glasser who has supplied me with a compensated bridge and is currently setting up the trapeze arms for me. Pickguards will be cream. Gold 3 way switch, with 2 volumes and 2 tone controls.
In the bridge and the neck I have secured two Lindy Fralin P90's.

[gavinturner]

Awesome Gav! What are you using for the gold paint? I've always wanted to do one of these, but I've never found a supply of decent looking paint.

cheers,
Gav.

[Gavin1393]

Layers and LAyers of good old Aussie Auto paint!

[ponch]

Soap bars and gold tops. There is none more stunning and classy.

[Gavin1393]

/<\\/p>[]<\\/p>/Quote from andrew on September 8, 2014, 21:48
Soap bars and gold tops. There is none more stunning and classy.

I completely agree!

[bargeloobs]

Now this is going be a cool build. Didn't the 52's have a dodgy trem or something? I hope you're not gonna replicate that too

[stan]

love it Gav, looks nice.

Was that an old Holden or Ford colour?

[ponch]

Kingswood gold?

[Gavin1393]

/<\\/p>[]<\\/p>/Quote from bargeloobs on September 9, 2014, 06:20
Now this is going be a cool build. Didn't the 52's have a dodgy trem or something? I hope you're not gonna replicate that too

It did have a very dodgy trapeze set up, but this has been rectified... I'll be working with the rectified version!

Here is some really cool information on the history of this model.

The 1952 and early 1953 Gibson Les Paul goldtop models are not very playable as a professional instrument because of a shallow neckset, and a badly designed trapeze tailpiece. They do have some collector appeal though, as Gibson's first Les Paul generation. The trapeze tailpiece had two problems: first, the strings wrapped *under* the bar, not allowing the player to "mute" the strings with the palm of the hand. The second problem was if the trapeze was knocked from the side, the whole guitar could go out of tune. This happened because the trapeze tail's string bar was not anchored to the top of the guitar (only string presure and a felt pad kept the bar from moving side-to-side). In addition the neck angle is also very shallow on the trapeze models, so the strings could not be looped over the top of the LP tailpiece (the string action would be too high). Also converting to a 1953 style stop-bar or a tunematic was very very difficult again because of the neck angle. The very earliest Les Paul models also had fretboards with no edge binding and the lead pickup had diagonal mounting screws. Because of the funky Les Paul tailpiece on 1952 and early 1953 models, this version of the Les Paul Standard is generally looked down on by players and collectors.

Les Paul himself has said he told Gibson about the tailpiece design flaw when he saw the first production models. He explained that the strings were supposed to wrap *over* the bar, not under it, and that the neck angle should be steeper to accomodate this difference in action at the bridge. Apparently it took Gibson a whole year to figure out that maybe Les Paul actually knew what he was talking about! Because of the 1952 tailpiece problems and complaints, by early 1953 the "wrap around stop bar" tailpiece/bridge combo was adopted by Gibson on the Les Paul Goldtop. This rectified the playability problems (the strings wrap over the *top* of the tailpiece, allowing palm mutes). These models are quite nice (though many players still complained because the stop bar can not be intonated perfectly). The early 1953 wrap-around models still had a shallow neck angle, limiting the downward adjustment of the stop bar. But this had the added benefit of keeping the strings close to the pickups, making early 1953 models with wrap tails very loud guitars. But as 1954 approached, the neck angle increased allowing more downward adjustment of the wrap around tailpiece. Regardless the 1953 stop tail Les Paul Goldtops had better playing action, and the tuning was more stable since the stop bar was now anchored to the top of the guitar allowing no movement side-to-side. The previous problem of right-hand palm muting was solved, as was the tuning problems from tailpiece movement. Although this was a big improvement on the 1952 design, it still had its limitations in respect to intonation.

The conversion from the trapeze to wrap-around tailpiece happened around serial number "3 1300" (with "3 1314" for example having a wrap-around and "3 1359" having a trapeze, so there was some overlap no doubt). Earliest seen wrap-around is serial number "3 0995", so there was definately a mix of wrap-around and trapeze tail Goldtops in the "3 1000" to "3 1400" serial number range). By 1953 a rhythm/treble plastic surround on the pickup selector switch was added. By around serial number "3 22xx", Gibson changed the control cavity route slightly too (no longer routing the ground channel going to the end pin for the original trapeze tailpiece).

The 1950s Les Paul guitars were officially called the "Les Paul" model. This quickly became known as "GoldTop" due to the gold top finish. Although most Gold Tops have exactly that, a gold colored maple top with a natural brown back, a few were made with an all-gold finish. Personally I don't like the all-gold models as much, as the gold finish does not wear well (especially on the back of the neck). The gold finish was clear lacquer with bronze powder. As a result a greenish hue can be seen on many Gold Tops where the bronze particles in the finish oxidize (mainly due to human sweat contact). The green affect shows up much greater on the all-gold models, potentially making them look pretty ugly.

[Gavin1393]

This is what I am aiming at. The first pi is the trapeze and compensated tailpiece. The other two show examples of the GoldTop but with a raised tailpiece. The one I am using will sit flush on the soundboard but has two pins that penetrate the top and hold the tailpiece in position and as such alleviate the problem that used to affect earlier Goldtops, namely that they would never stay in tune!