After selling his beloved 1958 Gibson 335 over 50 years ago for $225, Dan is reunited with his favorite old guitar - but it needs some major TLC to get it back to playing great again!
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00:00Recently, an extraordinary thing happened to me.
00:05I was reunited with an old friend.
00:07There she is.
00:08My 58 ES-335 tobacco sunburst, beautiful guitar that I sold to my good friend Al over 52 years
00:15ago for $225.
00:18I was surprised to find that Al had made a few modifications over the years, namely removing
00:23the humbucker covers on these rare and precious PAF pickups and leaving them filthy, splitting
00:29the coils on the bridge pickup, and then drilling a hole in the body for the coil cut
00:33switch.
00:34He added a varicone switch too and dug out a large chunk of wood in the cavity to stuff
00:38it in.
00:39It's going to take a lot of work to get this beauty back to how she looked and played back
00:42then, but by the end of this video, we'll see if we can get her there.
00:46So welcome back to part two, and if you haven't seen the first one, click up here and check
00:50it out because it'll help you understand this one better.
00:53While we've been gone, I've been doing a lot of restoration on my 335.
00:58First I needed to fix the celluloid binding that was falling off the fretboard and in
01:02a very fragile state.
01:03I think Al had attempted to put it back on with some rubber cement, which unfortunately
01:08is one of the worst glues you can use for this kind of job.
01:11I had to spend an hour very carefully scraping off all the old dried glue from the fingerboard
01:16channel.
01:17The binding itself had a lot of the dried rubber cement, and I very carefully dragged
01:21that over a smooth mill file.
01:24Once the binding was clean and the channel was clean, I glued it back on with fish glue.
01:28I like fish glue because it's an animal protein glue, and it's water soluble, it's very strong,
01:33and it does bond plastic and wood quite nicely.
01:36So now it's looking pretty good and it feels good.
01:39The second thing I did was to clean those precious PAF humbuckers.
01:43They were really dirty because Al had removed the covers, and after years of playing and
01:48oxidation and dust, they're filthy.
01:51To some of you it might seem gross, but saliva is one of the best cleaning agents you can
01:55use for a job like this.
01:57I'm not a scientist, but I know from experience that saliva will dissolve and lift things
02:02off a finish that naphtha and a number of cleaners won't.
02:05Of course, these humbuckers need a lot more attention than a little bit of spit.
02:08The real problem is that at least one of them has been opened up for the coil cut switch,
02:13had some wiring done, and then taped up with electrical tape.
02:16That's not a good thing, but more on that later.
02:19The next thing I wanted to take care of was that hole that Al drilled.
02:22Even though it's going to have the long guard on it, which will probably cover it entirely,
02:26I still want to patch it.
02:28I kind of like the idea of using an old Gibson trick that I saw coming out of Kalamazoo.
02:33If they had extra holes because something got moved, they filled it with a big pearl
02:36dot.
02:37So as a challenge to my high school apprentice, Seal, I asked her to see if she could make
02:42this happen.
02:43Seal's headed to Luthry School in the fall, and I thought this could be one final project
02:48before she leaves my shop.
02:49It took her about two hours to fashion this by turning a brass bushing on a lathe and
02:53inserting a pearl center.
02:55This is the perfect size to just press fit into that hole, so it's easy to remove later
03:00if I want to.
03:01And I think it's really classy.
03:03And there were a couple other blemishes that I had to take care of.
03:06A cigarette burn up here on the peg head.
03:08That's right where the guy's playing a solo, sticks his cigarette under the low E-string.
03:13Not thinking about it, and it keeps on burning, and it scorched the edge right there.
03:17First I scraped off the burnt wood.
03:19That's actually what it was.
03:20It was all charred like charcoal.
03:22I did it with an X-Acto knife until I hit clean wood.
03:26Next I mixed up some 24-hour cure epoxy.
03:29I added some black pigment to it so I'd have black epoxy.
03:32Then I put a piece of tape along the edge of the peg head as a little dam so the epoxy
03:37won't run over the edge when I drop fill it.
03:39It's very important to keep the peg head level when you're doing this kind of touch-up, otherwise
03:44whatever you're touching up with is going to run to one end or the other.
03:48Once that had hardened, I scraped it with a razor blade using a tip that I learned from
03:52my old buddy Frank Ford.
03:54Wrap a piece of cellophane tape over a razor blade and leave only one edge exposed.
03:59So as you're scraping the surface, you're going to come within two thousandths of an
04:03inch because that's how thick the tape is.
04:06Great trick.
04:07Once the surface was pretty much level, I used another trick from another friend, Chelsea
04:11Clark.
04:12I put some black lacquer on a plastic bag.
04:14Once it's dry, you can peel that lacquer off and you have a piece of black lacquer.
04:19Then I put a little solvent onto the area that I had the epoxy on and set that layer
04:24of black lacquer down into it.
04:26And it builds up quickly that way and you're not having to spray.
04:29And eventually fine-sanded and polished it out and it's looking pretty good.
04:34Now I'm ready to hand this off to Gene Embody.
04:36He's the best pickup winder I know and the best wiring man.
04:39And since the last video came out, somebody saw that and called me up and said, Hey, Dan,
04:45I have two bumblebee caps from that same year.
04:48See, I was going to use these bigger ones that I got online.
04:51They do have the same reading and they even look the same, but they're pretty big and
04:55they're not the real thing.
04:57So I think these bumblebees will help get this 335 back to sounding like it did when
05:01I had it.
05:02Speaking of Gene.
05:03Guitar Shop.
05:04Hey, Dan.
05:05It's Gene.
05:07Guitar Shop.
05:08Hey, Dan.
05:09It's Gene.
05:10Hi, Gene.
05:11Listen, I've got some bad news here, man.
05:14What?
05:15Well, I'm looking at these PAFs and I'm not getting a DC resistance reading out of either
05:20of them.
05:21What?
05:22Yeah.
05:23So we've got some dead coils or a short and I'm looking closer here.
05:27This is my first time kind of getting up close on these and there's electrical tape around
05:32both of these and an added wire on both of them.
05:34So he's been into both of these.
05:36I just sort of unwired them and set them in that box.
05:39Yeah.
05:40Well, there's a lesson for me.
05:41I'll pull them apart and do my best here and see what we can find.
05:44And hopefully it's something that's easily repairable.
05:47Keep me informed, man.
05:49Geez.
05:50We'll get through it, man.
05:51I'll get into these and I will let you know what I find.
05:53If anyone can fix that, you can do it.
05:55Thanks.
05:56All right, Dan.
05:57OK, so when a pickup isn't reading any DC resistance, we have a break somewhere.
06:02We have something that's not allowing us to read from one end of this lead to the other.
06:06That could mean a variety of things.
06:08We have a bad solder joint somewhere in here.
06:11We have a wire that's come loose.
06:12Worst case scenario, there's a nick or a gouge or some sort of break to the coil wire and
06:18one of these two coils or both of these coils.
06:21You can see I have some form bar wire here.
06:24This is finer than human hair.
06:25There's thousands of turns of this wire inside of here.
06:28And if you just break one of these, you'll shut the whole pickup off.
06:32So we're going to take these apart.
06:33This is a really special occasion because it's rare to be able to take a PAF apart and
06:38see what makes it tick.
06:40So I'm pretty excited about this.
06:41Like I said, a bit of an unknown here.
06:43Let's dive in and see what we find.
06:45Let's start with this one.
06:46This is the one that Al has put a three conductor lead on here.
06:50What that means is I have a ground, a hot, and then the third wire is the series link.
06:56That's the union of the two coils.
06:59So since we're not getting any DC resistance, that means somewhere in that chain, we have
07:04a break.
07:05So let's get into this and see how easily this tape comes off.
07:08I'm hoping this is not a problem.
07:11Okay.
07:15So far, so good.
07:17Making sure I don't see any coil wire inside of here.
07:21If I see a piece of coil wire caught in here, I might stop.
07:25So far, we're looking good here though.
07:27This is coming off pretty easy.
07:29Oh, look at that.
07:32See this?
07:33There's another surprise.
07:36That's not original.
07:37That's some shielding tape that's been added in here.
07:40By shielding, I mean something that's shielding the pickup from noise interference.
07:45So somebody's come back in here and added some internal shielding around these coils.
07:49My guess is in an attempt to keep them a little more quiet, but that kind of defeats the purpose
07:55of taking the cover off.
07:56You're adding back some shielding.
07:58Not quite sure what the reasoning was on this, but here we are.
08:02This is what we found.
08:03We've got some shielding tape going around both of these coils.
08:06And then that explains what this extra wire here is.
08:10In order to make shielding effective, it needs to be connected to ground.
08:13So he soldered a wire to the shielding tape and connected that to the back of the cover.
08:17I'm going to go ahead and cut this ground wire out of here.
08:21I'll worry about cleaning up this solder and getting this off of here later.
08:24I don't want to get this pickup hot yet.
08:25All right, so now we need to get this shielding tape off of here.
08:30I can cut it right here.
08:31You have to be extremely careful.
08:34The last thing I want to do is pierce this and cut into the coil wires if it hasn't already
08:38occurred.
08:39So we're going to get more and more delicate as we get into this.
08:42Here we go.
08:43I'm seeing what appears to be the original tape Gibson would have used to wrap these
08:47coils.
08:48So that's a good sign.
08:49And that points that Al never got that deep into this pickup.
08:53All right, that's out of there.
08:55Okay, right here.
08:56Here's our series link.
08:58This is what I was talking about earlier.
09:00Okay.
09:01Oh, wait a second.
09:04All right, so check this out.
09:06Look how big this magnet is.
09:08This is not the original magnet.
09:10And look at these two wooden spacers.
09:12These are not original spacers.
09:14Hold on here.
09:15I've got I've got some good reference.
09:16Let's let's check this out.
09:17This is an amazing book, The Beauty of the Burst.
09:20It has great detail on Vintage Les Pauls, but it breaks it down all the way to the PAF.
09:26So I brought this today just in case we needed it.
09:28And we do now.
09:29There's some good pictures of what you'll see inside of a PAF.
09:32You can see the side view right here is not what we're looking at.
09:36That does not appear to be the magnet.
09:38Quite a bit of difference in height and spacers.
09:41The original sandcast magnet, I happen to have a good collection of those because I
09:45like doing a lot of this work and I like collecting old parts when I can.
09:50So here's a 50s era sandcast long magnet.
09:53This is the magnet you would find in a 50s era P90 or PAF.
09:58You can see there's quite a bit of difference in thickness.
10:01All right.
10:02Well, let's get further into this.
10:04I think what I'm going to do now is just cut this lead off of here.
10:07I don't want it.
10:08We're going to get rid of it anyway.
10:09And let's take this thing apart.
10:10Let's see what else we find.
10:11Got some rust going on in here.
10:14It's not unusual, especially when they've had the covers off of it.
10:17I'm not worried about that.
10:18We can clean those up a little bit.
10:20Very cool to see these old parts, though, up close.
10:23It's really neat when you get to see the original parts compared to the aftermarket parts we
10:27all get to work with these days.
10:28They're not usually identical.
10:30It's also really cool when you can look at these and note minute details that make you
10:35good at identifying PAFs, potential forgeries, because these are very valuable pickups.
10:41You can find little things like tooling marks that are unique to PAFs and corner radii.
10:47Just tiny little details.
10:49Okay, let's see what we find under here.
10:51This should tell us a little more.
10:54That's an original keeper bar.
10:56That looks good.
10:57But we have a ceramic magnet.
10:59Ceramic magnets are very powerful.
11:01A stronger magnet would have been put in to get some more power out of this pickup, to
11:05get some more grit, some more mid-range, more bass response.
11:09You generally find these in hard rock, heavy metal kind of pickups.
11:13You definitely don't find them in vintage PAFs, so we're going to get rid of that.
11:17These are some mahogany spacers that somebody has made.
11:21These are not original either, so we're going to get rid of these.
11:24These are our original slugs.
11:26That's good.
11:27And our original pull pieces and spacers, as I said.
11:30So let's get back into figuring out why there's no DC resistance to this.
11:34The DC resistance measurement has nothing to do with any of this other stuff we found.
11:38Now what I want to do is take the leads from these coils, the start and finish, and see
11:43if I can get a reading from one or both of these.
11:45Ideally, we check these and we do get a reading, and we know we don't have any sort of tear
11:49apart of these coils.
11:51It gets confusing as far as start and finish of each coil, so let's see if I can clear
11:56this up a little bit.
11:57So we have the start of one coil.
11:59The start comes in, and we wrap around our bobbin going clockwise, clockwise this direction.
12:06That wire then has a finish, so we went clockwise and came to a finish.
12:10We have another coil, identically made.
12:12It has a start, it's wound clockwise, and then it has a finish.
12:16Start, finish.
12:17Okay, so one of the criteria we need to meet is opposite travel between the two coils.
12:24So in one coil, if we start and we connect this to positive, we're going to head in and
12:29we're going to go clockwise, and then we head out our finish.
12:33So if I go from finish to start in the next coil, we're going to go clockwise again, and
12:39we're going to have a pickup that's out of phase.
12:42It's not going to be humbucking, it's going to sound thin and nasally.
12:45So what we need to do is we need to connect finish to finish.
12:49So the end of one coil connects to the end of the other coil.
12:52If we do that, we make this connection here with a solder joint, then suddenly we're going
12:57in clockwise.
12:58We leave that coil and hit the end of the other coil, and now we're traveling backwards
13:04going counterclockwise to ground.
13:06Okay, so that's just a little aside here about coil winding direction and starts and finishes
13:11of coils.
13:12Just so you understand what we're looking at a little better, let's get back to the
13:15problem at hand.
13:17So here's an important thing I'm noticing.
13:19This series link is original.
13:21This has never been untaped.
13:22What that means is there's no way that Al was doing a coil cut here as we originally
13:27thought.
13:28He had something else in mind and it really doesn't matter what that was, but I'm going
13:31to use that same principle of a coil tap in order to check these coils individually.
13:36If I can check between these two and get a resistance reading, then whatever problem
13:41we were having was isolated in that lead we cut off or in the in the connections to
13:45these coils, and that would be ideal.
13:47All right, so this should measure somewhere around 8k, a little less, a little more.
13:54Sorry, I was just like really hoping that was going to read something.
14:03Okay, so the fact that we didn't get a reading here indicates that either there's a break
14:08in this series link, which is our next option that would be ideal.
14:13Okay, here's the solder joint.
14:15That's the union between the two coils, the series link.
14:19Nothing there.
14:23All right, 4k, 4k ohms.
14:26Finally a little bit of good news.
14:27So our screw coil is good.
14:29We have one good coil, we have one bad coil.
14:32So before we go any further, let's look at the second pickup.
14:35Let's take the parts we've got here from our first one and set them aside and go through
14:39a similar process for this one.
14:41So let's get the tape off of this one and see what surprises Al left for us here.
14:47I think it's important to not be too hard on our friend Al here.
14:50At the time that all of these modifications would have been done, very few people understood
14:55the impact these guitars would have on history and how valuable they would be someday.
15:00Al was a tinkerer, and this is the kind of thing tinkerers do.
15:03I don't begrudge Al for any of this.
15:05If he had done this last month, I probably would.
15:08Dan's calling me.
15:10Hey, Dan.
15:11You guys still shooting?
15:12Yeah, I've got you on speakerphone here.
15:14I'm sorry I interrupted that.
15:16Oh, no problem.
15:17On the first pickup, one coil is dead and one coil is good.
15:21Once I got the tape off, it didn't look right to me, and I got to looking, I'm like, oh,
15:25these aren't the original magnets.
15:27And he's put...
15:28So we're going down to the bare bones.
15:30Yeah, we're down to the heart of these pickups.
15:32The good news is I am such a nerd that I collect vintage Gibson magnets, and I happen
15:38to have two 50s-era long sandcast magnets.
15:42So hope is...
15:43So it's going to be a total rewind, isn't it?
15:45I don't know that yet.
15:46I may be able to repair the broken coil.
15:49We'll find out in a little bit.
15:50I'm into the second one right now.
15:52We have the right man for the job.
15:54Okay.
15:55All right, buddy.
15:56I'll talk to you soon.
15:57Thanks.
15:58Bye.
15:59So we've got the same thing here.
16:00However, there should only be one, and they're both taller to compensate for a higher ceramic
16:04magnet.
16:05So this is original Gibson work.
16:07These solder joints, this tape job, the way this wire is run and attached, that's all
16:12good news.
16:13Let's pull these spacers out.
16:15Ceramic magnet.
16:16All right, let's see if we can figure out which one or both of these coils is dead.
16:22So here's the union between the two coils.
16:25So between the series link and the base plate, I should get a reading, and I don't.
16:32So this coil's dead.
16:33Okay.
16:34See what the slug coil is telling me.
16:37Let's check that.
16:40And it seems to be dead too.
16:43So we've got three bad coils out of four.
16:47Not great.
16:48We're going to have to get inside of the coils that are dead and not reading and see if we
16:51can figure out where it's broken.
16:53Hopefully it's not too deep inside of there.
16:55It's very delicate work, but these pickups are definitely worth it.
16:58So let's get in there and see what we find.
17:00And we'll turn our attention back to this first one and pull open that dead coil.
17:04And hopefully we have a little bit of good luck and the break is right at the end and
17:09it's superficial and easy to repair.
17:11Let's cross our fingers here.
17:13This old tape gets very dry and brittle, and it's not always easy to get apart.
17:18I want to carefully peel this off.
17:21The last thing I want to do is bite into these wires and create even more damage.
17:25So very slowly, we're getting down to the coil wire.
17:28I can see it right there.
17:30So there, we're almost there.
17:31I can see the coil wire now.
17:33See if we can get a little bit of naphtha in there.
17:35Naphtha is great for loosening tape residue and it's not going to hurt anything else on
17:40the pickup.
17:41I don't want to drench it, but oh yeah, that's way easier.
17:44All right.
17:45I'm going to save this tape here.
17:47Okay.
17:48So here is our finished lead connected to that fine coil wire.
17:53Could breathe on this and break it.
17:55What I wish I had found here is that this was disconnected.
17:59That would be ideal at this point because then I'd know that perhaps reconnecting that
18:05might solve our problem here.
18:06This isn't likely to show us anything, but let's just check.
18:10Yeah, nothing.
18:12Okay.
18:13So we keep getting more and more bad news here.
18:15We're going to have to tear into this.
18:17I'll have to talk to Dan and kind of see what he wants to do about all of this.
18:21I'll confer with him and then we'll get back to this.
18:23Well, what do you want to do about the pickups, man?
18:26So we've got three dead coils, one working.
18:29You want to, I can start tearing into them and see if I can...
18:31Do that.
18:32Go as far as you can because you might find a break and go, ah, I can fix it.
18:37You have my respect as a pickup maker, so do what you want.
18:41Okay.
18:42Do you want to cut the wires off and start rewinding?
18:44Cool.
18:45And then we'll have the frames patent applied for a sticker, the bobbin, the pole pieces.
18:49I've got a set of magnets we can use.
18:51There we go.
18:52A real set.
18:53Um, I'd rather not do that, but let's tear into it and see if, if it seems like it's,
18:57it's going to waste a bunch of times, we'll just rewind the dead coils, but let's, let's
19:01try to fix them first and, uh, see where we get from there.
19:04I'll be happy with any pickup you make, man.
19:07All right, man.
19:08We'll do it.
19:09Okay.
19:10Here we are back at the bench that you might remember here.
19:12We have the screw coil.
19:14It was good.
19:15We're still reading 4k on this one, so I'm going to set it aside and concentrate on the
19:19dead slug coil.
19:21Best case scenario here.
19:22I find the problem within the first 50 to a hundred wraps.
19:26Okay.
19:27So here's my finish lead.
19:28First thing I'm going to do is just disconnect this thing from the finish lead.
19:32This is very delicate.
19:34What I would like to see here within the next couple of unwraps is a break just for this
19:39thing to come apart somewhere.
19:41Best case scenario.
19:42I find that.
19:44I strip back a little bit of the enamel and we check and suddenly this pickup is working.
19:48That would be fantastic.
19:50This is very tedious and time consuming, but this is all worth it.
19:54And then the cool part about doing this kind of work when we start restoring pickups like
19:58this is I get a very intimate look at how this pickup was put together to begin with,
20:03how this wire was put on the bobbin.
20:05One of the big concepts that people kind of talk about is scatter wind or how this wire
20:11was put on this bobbin, having a big effect on the tone of this pickup.
20:14I don't agree that there's any real voodoo going on here about how Gibson put this wire
20:20on to begin with scatter wound or any sort of tricks.
20:23They were stacking wire quickly and neatly and whenever I pull one of these apart, that's
20:28always what I find.
20:29I'm not finding a bunch of wires crossed over one another, not finding any purposeful evidence
20:34of scatter winding.
20:37Most of the wire I've taken off of this has been isolated to the bottom portion of the
20:42bobbin.
20:43I can watch it getting skinnier right here.
20:45I'm starting now to work my way back up to the top and I'm getting to the point where
20:50I don't want to waste any more coil wire than I already have.
20:53So I'm going to pull a couple of more winds here just to make sure that I've taken one
20:57full pass through the whole width of the bobbin.
20:59Let's just see.
21:00Maybe we'll get lucky.
21:01You never know.
21:02I'm going to take about an inch or so space of this wire and use the 600 grit self-stick
21:07paper.
21:08I just like to stick it to my finger and gently pinch the wire and pull it through.
21:12It doesn't take much to get that old enamel off of there.
21:15Sounds like they're here to pick up this dead pickup.
21:18So let's see how we did here.
21:20Nope, it didn't really help, but I don't want to waste any more of this coil wire.
21:25I think what I'm going to do is take the slug coil from my other dead pickup and let's get
21:30into it.
21:31Maybe I'll get lucky and I'm able to repair this slug coil.
21:35If I'm able to do that, I can take this coil and combine it with the other good coil to
21:40make one good pickup.
21:41That will keep at least one of these pickups that much more original.
21:45Just like last time, I'm trying to go as carefully and neatly as I can for one in case I want
21:50to reuse this tape, but mainly if I see a piece of coil wire trapped between layers
21:56of tape, that's a lot of times where your break will be.
21:59Okay, so now I've exposed coil wire here, so I have to be even more careful.
22:03There we are, the finish wrap coming apart.
22:07There we go.
22:09There's our finish lead.
22:11Let's expose this solder joint here and see what we can find.
22:15Okay, that's what I expected.
22:17So now we need to just start unwrapping this one.
22:20Hopefully we'll find a problem in the first 50 to 100 winds.
22:24This one's wound a little differently, which is just further evidence that they didn't
22:27have a set pattern that they were trying to go for on any of these coils.
22:30I don't think we've discovered anything yet, unfortunately.
22:34Check a clean spot here.
22:37Nope.
22:39Okay.
22:40Well, I think what I'll do is I'll just spend a little bit of time doing the same thing
22:46to our last bad coil, just to make sure there's nothing hidden under this tape that's causing
22:50this one to not work.
22:51Just a repeat of everything we've done here one more time.
22:55Still no success.
22:56Let's turn our attention back to the original one that has one good coil.
23:00I think I'm going to do one more thing here.
23:02This is kind of crazy.
23:03I think I'm going to take this dead coil and this empty spool, and I'm going to get comfortable
23:08and by hand, I'm going to see if I can unwind this coil completely.
23:13The rest of these, we're just going to cut those down, rewind those with fresh 42 gauge
23:17enamel wire, just like the original.
23:19But it would be really cool, a good surprise for Dan maybe, that we reused all of the original
23:24wire on at least one of these pickups.
23:26So this is going to take a while.
23:28I want you to go check out what Dan's doing.
23:30I'm going to spend a little time doing this and see if we can't pull off something kind
23:33of cool.
23:34Poor Gene, he's having a lot of trouble with those pickups and poor me too.
23:38Meanwhile, while he's working on those pickups, I'm back here in the shop and I made a new
23:42nut for this guitar.
23:43I replaced the old nut because the slots were kind of crooked on it.
23:47It was made out of bone.
23:48Nothing wrong with bone, but this guitar would have had a nylon nut on it.
23:52That's what they used back then.
23:53So I found a piece of nylon online that's the exact same stuff and made a nut for it.
23:58So I'm about to slot the nut and what I'm going to do is use this tool.
24:01It's an industrial drill press for small machine work and this little sled rides back and forth
24:07on these bearings.
24:08Originally, it was made to hold the bridge pins so we could slot our own bridge pins
24:13and it's killer for working on the nut because nylon isn't that easy to use a file on.
24:18It just wants to skid across it.
24:20This is going to cut the slots, then I can clean them up later.
24:23Now that's starting to shine up and look like the top of an old Gibson nut from the 50s and 60s.
24:30So now it's all shined up and ready to go when you're ready to put the nut on it.
24:34Another thing I've been working on is the new pick guard.
24:36If you saw part one, remember the short guard that I'll put on this so we could have room
24:42to drill a hole and put the switch on it.
24:44Originally, this was a long guard.
24:46I got this one online from a friend of mine that makes pick guards.
24:50When I got it, I compared them and there were things that didn't match up.
24:54So let's check out the difference between this old guard and the new one.
24:58This is off a Gibson ES-5 from 1955.
25:01The first thing I see would be the color of the whites.
25:04This is all yellowed and this is bright white.
25:07Then I notice that the points like this, you can cut yourself on that, these are rounded
25:12just a little too much.
25:14And on this pick guard, the angle is so shallow where they beveled it compared to the more
25:19steep angle here that the bottom black line is showing.
25:23I used a scraper to scrape off the little layer of black plastic on the bottom and as
25:27I did that, I sharpened the corners.
25:29I then used some color tone stain, the straw color, and some acetone to yellow the white
25:35plastic on the edges of the bevel, making it look older and more at home on the guitar.
25:39So this is ready to put on, but I'm not going to put it on now.
25:42I'm going to wait until Gene wires it up.
25:44Speaking of Gene, I wonder how those pickups are coming.
26:14Oh, I just broke the coil wire.
26:32We're at 4,700 turns, like right on the dot and we didn't have much to go, but I really,
26:37really wanted to get all of what I had back on there.
26:40But let's, let's see where we're at.
26:41We've done what we can do.
26:43Let's strip this wire back and test it and let's hope we get a number on this meter.
26:48Yes, 3.6, 3.6 still is within the range of a normal PEF.
26:54This coil is alive.
26:56It lives again.
26:57It's got all of the original wire back on it.
26:59One of our pickups is going to be almost totally original.
27:02Once I put the right magnet back in it, it's got the right wire.
27:06It's going to read right.
27:07So the reason this coil wasn't working is that I found multiple breaks along the way
27:11At different depths, different layers, I would come to a spot where the wire would just come
27:15apart.
27:16So in order to fix that, I take some 600 grit sandpaper and remove the enamel as I did earlier,
27:21twist the two halves together and solder them and cover them with tape.
27:25So that's all that was really required.
27:27These breaks needed to be repaired.
27:28And if you solder them well, you cover them with tape.
27:31They should be good to go indefinitely.
27:33So let's get this wrapped up.
27:34Literally, we'll get the finished lead attached and we'll tape this coil up.
27:39We're done.
27:40Now for the final cherry on top.
27:43Let's take our original tape and the last couple of wraps, we'll use it to give this
27:47more of an authentic look here.
27:49It's lost a little of its stickiness, but that's actually fine.
27:53It kind of makes it look more authentic.
27:55Okay, there you have it folks.
27:57Two almost original 58 PAF coils.
28:01Here's the screw coil that was working from the start.
28:03Let's connect them together and see what our final output is going to be.
28:07Now I know this still works, but it's still kind of nerve wracking and yes, all right.
28:147.7 K, I will definitely take that.
28:16Let's build on that success and get to winding the two other coils that we stripped down.
28:21This should go a lot smoother than what we just did.
28:24So when you're doing a job like I'm about to do, which is wind a fresh coil, you need
28:28a coil winder.
28:29Coil winders come in a lot of different variations.
28:32Something simple that you can make at home with a hand drill.
28:35All the way up to very complicated computer controlled machines like you'd find at Seymour
28:40Duncan or DiMarzio or one of the big manufacturers like that.
28:44I'm using this Shatton Pro coil winder we sell.
28:47I like this one a lot because it's very simple.
28:49All it does is spin and count and it gives me the ability to easily turn by hand as well.
28:55So this crank handle I actually made myself.
28:58Pretty simple, but I just brazed a brass rod onto a collar and attached it to this side
29:03so I can use it as a crank.
29:05Let's start with the screw coil.
29:07So I'm able to just tape these bobbins as is right on the side of this machine.
29:10I want to make sure I don't have a bunch of this tape sticking out the edges that might
29:15catch this wire.
29:16It's very fine and very delicate.
29:18The wire I'm going to use is the same exact wire that came on it originally.
29:22This is 42 gauge enamel coated copper coil wire.
29:26I want to get my start lead attached to the coil wire.
29:28This is the original one from this bobbin.
29:31Soldered onto the end of this fresh coil wire.
29:35Clean soldering iron.
29:36That's all it takes.
29:38Okay, let's get this taped up.
29:40I'm going to do it exactly like I saw on the coil that I unwound by hand.
29:43I got a really clear view of how they attach this lead wire.
29:47So let's get this wire put in here and heading the right direction.
29:51That means if I'm going to wind clockwise, I'm flipping this machine to counterclockwise,
29:56it will turn this way, which means the wire will go on clockwise.
30:01So I just need an inch, inch and a half or so sticking out here.
30:05The rest of it's going to kind of strain relieve on the inside of this.
30:08I'm just going to use that little tag of exposed tape to hold us in place here.
30:14We're going to pile about 5,000 turns of coil wire over this and that's going to hold it
30:18down good and tight.
30:19Now we are ready to make some turns.
30:22I'm going to take my spool of coil wire and I'm going to set it on the ground like this.
30:26It's logical to think you would want the spool of wire to sit like this so it unwinds, it
30:31unspools.
30:32That would be a great way to just end up with a bird's nest.
30:34If this thing starts spinning faster than you're putting winds on here, it's just going
30:38to bird's nest before it gets a clean wrap.
30:40So if you set it this way, the wire comes off nice and easy above the spool.
30:45So let's just set it down here on the ground.
30:47The first few winds I am going to do by hand just to get it started and to get the wire
30:51secure.
30:52We're going to turn it on real slow.
30:55I like to start slow and just get the feel.
30:59As I get more comfortable, I'm going to turn it up.
31:03So I'm moving slowly left to right.
31:06We'll stop every now and then and make sure we don't have any bulges anywhere or we're
31:09not packing too much wire in one spot.
31:12But I'm just going back and forth, just trying to put some neatly onto the bobbin.
31:17See how we're looking here.
31:18So that looks really good.
31:21It's all going on there really neatly, evenly.
31:24We're about halfway through now, so let's get this machine back on and maybe this time
31:28we can even speed it up a little more.
31:34Okay, let's attach our finished wire and tape it up.
31:40Test this out.
31:44And look at that, we've squeezed 3.8 solid out of it.
31:47I'm pretty happy with that.
31:48Okay, so that went really well.
31:50We've got one more coil to go and we'll have two functioning pickups.
31:53While I get this on the machine, how about checking on Dan and seeing how he's doing.
31:57Okay, I'm ready to take this down to Gene and drop it off.
32:00So when he's ready, he'll have it.
32:02Except for one little detail and it's all the little details that make the difference
32:06in a restoration.
32:07It's deciding what knob is what I put on it.
32:09When this guitar was built and when I got it, it had these knobs on it, the top hat
32:14knobs.
32:15However, before I got this guitar, I had a 54 Goldtop Les Paul that I got from Mike Bloomfield
32:20and these were the knobs on that old Goldtop.
32:23Speed knobs and I loved them because you can wrap your finger around it.
32:26It's harder to do that with this because there's nothing to grab.
32:29This, your whole finger can roll it.
32:31So when I sold that Goldtop, I took the speed knobs off of it and I put them on this one.
32:36Probably shouldn't have done that in today's vintage world.
32:40When Al had this, all these knobs were set aside and he lost them.
32:43He had one knob left when I got it back this year.
32:46It was all dirty and moldy.
32:48So in keeping with the nostalgia of this whole thing, I'm going to go with the old speed
32:53knobs because that's what I had on it.
32:55That's a little unorthodox, but that's what I want.
32:58One of the old and three new ones.
32:59Most people couldn't tell the difference.
33:01There's the old one.
33:02A little bit darker than these, but that's a heck of a good replica.
33:06So let's get this 0335 down to Gene and ready to wire it up.
33:13Okay, our pickups are all done.
33:28It's time to wire this guitar up.
33:30So obviously on a 335, it's a little more difficult because we can't wire inside the
33:35guitar.
33:36We have to wire up a harness first that will then fish through the F holes and connect
33:40the pickups.
33:41So I've got the harness I've wired up for practice so I can make sure that I have all
33:44the lengths I wanted and then the wires are all heading the direction that Gibson would
33:48have done it.
33:49A template like this is really easy to make.
33:51This is just some thin eighth inch plywood.
33:53You could even use cardboard.
33:54I took a piece of wax paper.
33:56I laid it over top of the guitar and I took a pencil and I poked through and marked the
34:00center of all my different holes.
34:02Then I took that, laid it onto my plywood or your cardboard and transferred those locations
34:07onto it.
34:08Okay, let's start with our pots here.
34:10So these are the four pots that I think turned out the best that I've aged.
34:14They look really close to the original.
34:16Let me take you through real quick how I did that.
34:19First thing, I'm going to disassemble the pot into four separate components.
34:23Let's focus on relicking the cover first.
34:25On a vintage pot, you won't see any of this lettering on the back of the cover.
34:29You only see writing on the side.
34:31So I'm going to use a belt sander to sand all of this off in a straight line.
34:35If you look at an original pot, you'll often see long straight streaks.
34:39And I reinforced those straight lines by dragging the cover across some sandpaper on a flat
34:44block.
34:45So this looks pretty good, but let's make it better with some tarnish.
34:47I'm going to use ferric chloride or etchant solution for this.
34:50It works great.
34:51I'm going to dab some all along the cover and then in straight lines again on the back.
34:55Then we're going to wash it all off and make sure it's clean and then repeat this process
34:59on the top plate and threaded collar.
35:01It's not going to be exact because this collar is brass, but it's going to be close and at
35:05least it doesn't look brand new.
35:07Next I work on the printed circuit card on the inside that contains the resistive strip
35:11that makes up this pot.
35:12You'll notice that the new circuit boards are more of a tannish yellow color, whereas
35:16the old ones were more of a dark brown reddish color.
35:19We're going to use a red mahogany touch-up marker.
35:22It's perfect for this.
35:23The color matches really well.
35:24I'm going to take a glue looper and carefully spread it all around the circuit card.
35:29After it dries, I'll come back through and remove the gloss so it has a matte patina
35:33just like the original.
35:34After all this, I'll come back through with some micro mesh pads and put some shine back
35:38in some strategically placed areas.
35:40If you look at our pot compared to the original, we've got some of that same shine right on
35:45the edges.
35:46So after thoroughly washing and drying all of these separate pieces and removing any
35:50trace of acid, we need to put them back together with some grease.
35:53This extreme pressure lube is what we use in our own shop when we make tuners and it
35:57works great for this, but any sort of thick grease or Vaseline would work fine too.
36:01We're going to grease any friction point inside of this pot.
36:04Including the shaft inside of the threaded collar, which they don't do originally.
36:07When we're done, this pot will turn smoother than it did when it was new.
36:11My process for aging bridges and humbucker covers is a little bit different.
36:15You're going to need to do this outside because we're going to be working with some really
36:18nasty acids.
36:19The first thing I'm going to do is take this muriatic acid.
36:21I'm going to put this in a little cup with some cotton balls.
36:24This will help the acid to fume faster, but it's also going to keep me from spilling this
36:28acid when the inevitable point comes that I knock this cup over.
36:32So here's a jig I made that has four different sets of tunamatic posts on it.
36:36I like to do these parts in groups because it's not an exact science and all the parts
36:40don't come out looking the same.
36:42So when I do a batch, I get to choose from the parts that I want.
36:45So I load my bridges onto my jig, I put that into my plastic tote with my acid and close
36:50it back up.
36:51Next I'm going to take some humbucker covers and some soapy water and I'm going to just
36:54lightly spritz them.
36:56The soapy water speckles are going to tarnish at a different rate than the metal around
36:59it and it's going to create more of a natural look.
37:02Then I put my humbucker covers in the container with my acid and my bridges.
37:05I put the whole container out in the sun and let it cook for a couple of hours.
37:09At this stage I'll take my humbucker covers and put them in this humbucker routing template.
37:13This is going to simulate a humbucker pickup ring.
37:15The other thing this jig does is simulate the shadowy string lines you often get from
37:20an old humbucker that's been living under dirty strings for decades.
37:23Then I'm going to take a mixture of my etchant solution in a spray bottle.
37:27One part acid to four parts water and then I spritz the whole thing, let it sit for a
37:31few seconds, pull it back out and wash the cover off and judge how my string lines look.
37:36At this point I might be ready to just stick it back into my box and let it fume for a
37:40few more hours.
37:41If I don't like the look of my string lines I might put it back in and spritz it again.
37:45Like I said this isn't an exact science, use your best judgment and have in mind what
37:49look you're going for.
37:51So I load everything back up into the box and from here on out I check it every couple
37:54of hours.
37:55Eventually I reach a level of tarnish that I'm after.
37:58I make sure I wash all the acid off and dry all the parts.
38:01You could stop here and depending on what you're after this may be good.
38:04Or you can take this up another notch and do things like buff out certain parts or reshape
38:09areas that are worn from playing over the years.
38:11These days aged hardware is readily available.
38:14So if working with a bunch of acid is more than you want to deal with, no problem, you
38:17can easily find what you need.
38:19But let's get back to wiring this guitar.
38:21So I've gone ahead and installed all my parts onto my template.
38:23I've got my pots, my jack and my switch.
38:26We're all ready to go.
38:27So check this out.
38:28This is super cool.
38:29This may be the only spool of original Gibson braided shield wire in existence.
38:35Dan got this in the 60s when he did Gibson warranty work and I got to imagine that there
38:40aren't many if any others that have survived this long that haven't been used or gotten
38:45rid of.
38:46You can still get this wire and the new stuff looks just like it, but this is really the
38:50actual wire that would have been in this guitar and we're going to use this to wire up our
38:55harness here.
38:56We also have the caps that were generously sent to us, which is great.
38:59So we get to use those.
39:01So there are a couple of different ways to wire a circuit like this.
39:04We're going to do it exactly how they did it in the 50s.
39:29Okay so there we have it.
39:31There's our completed harness.
39:32I'm going to clean my bench now and I'm going to prep the guitar and get ready to put this
39:36in.
39:54And the cherry on top is Dan's pearl dot to cover that excess hole.
39:59So this is the moment we take a big deep breath.
40:02Everything's in place.
40:03I've tested it with my meter.
40:04I'm seeing all the numbers I want to see.
40:06Oh, one second.
40:08I just realized I put this pickup in backwards.
40:10No big deal.
40:11And we're just going to flip this around real quick.
40:13If this is the worst mistake I've made so far, then I will still call this a major success.
40:19So we just passed a major milestone in the restoration of this guitar.
40:23All the wiring work is done.
40:24Let's get all the knobs and the hardware put on it.
40:27We'll get this back to Dan so he can finish it out and get some strings on this thing.
40:31I'm super excited to hear how this sounds.
40:33Oh buddy.
40:34Yeah.
40:35Well.
40:36It's time.
40:37Oh boy.
40:38Moment of truth.
40:39You've tested this.
40:40I've tested it.
40:41I know it works.
40:42I have not listened to it.
40:43I want you to be the first one to hear this.
40:44I'm excited.
40:45I'm excited.
40:46I'm excited.
40:47I'm excited.
40:48I'm excited.
40:49I'm excited.
40:50I'm excited.
40:51I'm excited.
40:52I'm excited.
40:53I'm excited.
40:54I'm excited.
40:55I'm excited.
40:56I'm excited.
40:57I'm excited.
40:58I'm excited.
40:59I'm excited.
41:00I'm excited.
41:01I'm excited.
41:02I'm excited.
41:03I'm excited.
41:04I'm excited.
41:05I'm excited.
41:06I'm excited.
41:07I'm excited.
41:08I'm excited.
41:09I'm excited.
41:10I'm excited.
41:11I'm excited.
41:12I'm excited.
41:13I'm excited.
41:14I'm excited.
41:15I'm excited.
41:16I'm excited.
41:17I'm excited.
41:18I'm excited.
41:19I'm excited.
41:20I'm excited.
41:21I'm excited.
41:22I'm excited.
41:23I'm excited.
41:24I'm excited.
41:25I'm excited.
41:26I'm excited.
41:27I'm excited.
41:28I'm excited.
41:29I'm excited.
41:30I'm excited.
41:31I'm excited.
41:32I'm excited.
41:33I'm excited.
41:34I'm excited.
41:35I'm excited.
41:36I'm excited.
41:37I'm excited.
41:38I'm excited.
41:39I'm excited.
41:40I'm excited.
41:41I'm excited.
41:42I'm excited.
41:43I'm excited.
41:44I'm excited.
41:45I'm excited.
41:46I'm excited.
41:47I'm excited.
41:48I'm excited.
41:49I'm excited.
41:50I'm excited.
41:51I'm excited.
41:52I'm excited.
41:53I'm excited.
41:55Sounds like T-Bone Walker, man.
41:57It sounds great.
42:00Nice.
42:01Nice.
42:02Thank you so much.
42:03Hey.
42:04I haven't heard that sound in 57 years.
42:06I'm excited, man.
42:07It sounds great.
42:08I can even remember the smell.
42:10Mm-hmm.
42:11They do have a smell.
42:13Let's play this thing.
42:14You should give me one of those lessons you used to give Al.
42:16Let's do a blues in A.
42:18All right.
42:19Let's do it.
42:25All right.
42:46I really love my Gibson.
42:47That's a natural fact.
42:49I'm going to play my guitar.
42:51You can have yourself a strat.
42:54All right.
43:12Thanks, man.
43:13Yeah, we should start a band.
43:15Congrats, man.
43:16You made it happen.
43:17That sounds awesome.