Aria LP Custom Black Beauty Rebuild
This one started, as so many of them do, with a browse through the Musical Instrument listings on Craigslist and Kijiji one quiet Saturday morning. "70s Aria LP copy, $100, as is" - no picture. The listing went on to say "just needs the switch wired up", or words to that effect. Right place, right time. I made arrangements to pick it up the same day. Not so much an attack of G.A.S., but rather what sounded like an interesting rebuild project. Here we go.
This guitar apparently lived in a bar in Joliet, Quebec (Canada) for at least a decade. According to what I was able to piece together, it was rescued from the bar a couple of years ago, but then, unfortunately, it was massacred by the rescuer - someone calling himself a luthier no less. Let's just say that freehand routing for pickups and using a handheld jigsaw to install a strat-style 5-way switch on a LP-style guitar is not my idea of craftsmanship.
Anyway, this might have been a nice specimen at one time, but by the time it ended up in my hands, it had seen better days. Here are some pics of the guitar, pretty much in the state in which I found it.
Once I got it home, some research was in order, of course. I needed to satisfy my curiosity, and find out when and where this guitar might have been made. It didn't take long before I ended up at matsumoku.org, a website which contains a wealth of information on guitars built at the famous Matsumoku factory in Japan, which is where this one seems to have come from. Apparently, the Aria LP Custom copy was in production from 1968-1975, and was Aria Model No. 5522. Mine has a serial number stamped into the fretboard between the last two frets, but the case with most early Arias seems to be that the serial number is only useful as an approximate indicator of age. #25283 - could this mean 1972 (#2XXXX)? Maybe. According to one of the previous owners, this guitar was sold to him as a '73. Seems about right, judging from the mother-of-pearl headstock inlay. The gold-colored Aria logos seem to be common on earlier models, and later models typically seem to have the "diamond" inlay. In fact, some misguided individual at some point apparently thought they could add value to the guitar by inscribing a diamond logo on the headstock. They managed to scratch through the clearcoat and black lacquer coat, right down to the white undercoat, but they certainly did not add any value to the guitar. The body was pretty roughed-up too.
Anyway, I let it sit on the stand for about a day, before deciding that, there's nothing to lose here - that headstock definitely needs re-finishing. I've done guitar set-up and some electronics projects before, but I had never really tried my hand at re-finishing. Things certainly have changed since my younger days, when I all I had to go on were Donald Brosnac's book for guitar electronics, and Hideo Kamimoto's book for everything else. Kids these days sure have it easy. Anyway, after a bit of internet research on refinishing materials and techniques, starting with the Guitar ReRanch 101, I figured, yes, I can do this thing.
Living in Canada means that some things are harder to come by than they might be south of the border, so sourcing materials typically means including "Canadian Tire" in a search string. Lo and behold, it turns out that Quebecers can get nitrocellulose-based ("nitro") clear lacquer in a spray can at the Rona hardware store chain. The brand is Watco, and again according to my research, the clear gloss dries harder than the satin finish (fewer additives), so that's what I got. I also discovered that Rona carries their own brand of gloss black lacquer, so I got a can of that too, knowing that the base coat would need to be built back up to hide the scratches.
I did do a brief bit of soul-searching on whether or not I should be using this stuff at all, knowing that this type of lacquer is laced with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), but concluded that I'm only doing the headstock, so I'm not going to drive myself nuts feeling guilty about it.
The Canadian Tire automotive department had all the wet/dry sandpaper I needed, so I stocked up with a variety pack of the coarser grades (up through 320), and separate packages of 1000, 1500 and 2000 grit (3M brand). I also picked up a hand drill buffing set, which cost a little more than I'd have liked, but then, investing in tools somehow seems to be okay with the wife (why can't it be that way with guitars?)
After disassembling, I sanded down the headstock with 320, using a freshly planed block of hardwood.
There were some holes to fill - looks like someone got overexcited during a previous tuner replacement, and drilled right through the headstock. I used some old LePage's plastic wood, which I happened to have on hand. I let the plastic wood dry overnight, then shaved down with a box-cutter blade and sanded down with a sanding block using 320 grit dry. I then masked the side of the headstock mother-of-pearl logo with painters masking tape. I put on three coats of black lacquer, each about 3 hours apart, with no sanding between coats (I did use a couple of shots of compressed air from electronics duster before spraying though - "100% non-Ozone depleting" hoorah!) Did this outside, in the shade, and sheltered from the breeze. Brought the neck inside to dry between coats, although the stuff does dry quickly. I repeated this the next day, for a total of six coats black (or maybe 5 - I think I got interupted on day 2). I sanded with 320, 400 & 600 grit, dry before the first coat on the second day, and stopped when there was enough paint built up to hide the scratches.
Turns out I should have used a pore filler on the plastic wood, because the lacquer soaked right in, resulting in an uneven finish. Well, knowing that I had to sand out anyway, I sprayed some lacquer into a small plastic container and used a small squirrel hair brush to dab the filler spots with lacquer, until no more was absorbed and the surface dried to an even gloss.
I used a similar technique on the holes at the 5-way chainsaw massacre. Filled with plastic wood, shaved down and sanded-out, then applied several coats of black lacquer. There was also a small divot on the neck, at the edge of the fretboard, where the original paint had been chipped down to bare wood. Same treatment.
Time now for a careful sanding of the black lacquer on the headstock, looking for a feather edge around the logo, and no ridge at the binding. Went through 320, 400 and 600 grit (dry), being careful not to sand through the colour coat. Ready for the clear coat. Same deal really, but I went back and re-read the ReRanch 101 about 101 times. The rule of threes makes it easy to remember. Three coats per day, three hours apart, repeat three days running. That's 9 coats total. It's easy to plan the coats too: 12pm - 3pm - 6pm. No sanding between coats unless they're more that three hours apart, but I switched from dry to wet-sanding on the clear coats between each day. 320, then 400, then 600, but I used a small plastic sanding block this time, and water as a lubricant, which seems to eliminate the dust altogether. I did bother to soak the wet/dry paper overnight, as many sites suggest, but then I found that the grit wore down rather quickly. I got better cutting action with fresh dry paper and surface wetting only. The clear coats went on over two weekends, since three-day weekends are relatively hard to come by (and this is not my day job).
Now I knew I'd have to wait for at least three weeks before the final sanding and polishing, so I started looking for other things to fix. I had decided that the face of the headstock would get the full colour coat and clear coat treatment, but I wasn't ready to commit to re-finishing the body. The black lacquer where the 5-way screw holes had been filled had been on for a couple of weeks at this point, so I tried polishing out. The results were encouraging, so I decided to polish the body, instead of re-finishing it.
Polishing seems to be somewhat of an art form, not unlike plastering walls. On the other hand, I was doing it with sub-standard materials, and no experience. Just the same, once I got a feel for which compound to use, how much to apply to the buffing wheel, how fast to run it, and how much pressure to apply, it got easier. I had best results with wet sanding using 400, 600, 1000, 1500 and 2000 grit, then buffing with white ("diamond") compound, followed by blue and then raw cotton for the final polish. Still had some light swirl marks, but nothing I was going to get too worried about (it's a 35-year old guitar, with a nitro finish after all). I found several websites with useful polishing tips, such as don't change compounds on the same wheel, to avoid cross-contamination. The red compound (aka jewelers rouge) turned out to be a pain in the butt, because it tended to leave red wax colouring behind in all the small scratches and dents in the body. I wasn't intending to polish out the deeper scratches and dents (this was a re-polish, not a re-sand), and although I might've been able to clean the wax off using lighter fluid (naptha), I don't smoke, and I certainly don't need another can of hazardous petroleum distillate sitting around the house. More to the point, I couldn't be bothered to go out and get a can, so I just used the blue compound instead, which seemed to work fine.
The original nitro clearcoat polished up pretty well, but the black lacquer at the spot in-fills remained somewhat visible. Not a perfect job, but good enough, since the alternative would have been a complete re-finish of the body. I suppose I could have tried using clear coat at the spot fills and blending in, but from what I've read, it's next to impossible to feather clear into clear. This'll have to do this time around.
Back to the headstock, about two weeks later. Polishing the body had been good practice, and so the headstock polishing went pretty smoothly, although the new lacquer was a fair bit softer than the old nitro and took some getting used to. Wet sanded with 600, 1000, 1500 and 2000, to get rid of the orange peel, before buffing. Sanding was only complete when there were no more shiny spots. Then on to buffing. And here's the result.
That was it for refinishing - now on to the electronics. This Aria LP was originally a two-pickup model, but our luthier friend had decided it would make a better three-pickup custom. Jimmy Page, Ace Frehley, or Peter Frampton - I don't know who the inspiration was, but the damage was done.
This would never be a restoration, just a re-build, so I figured I'd work with what I had. On the other hand, I wasn't exactly sure what I had. I knew the middle pickup was an MMK45, possibly from some other, newer Aria, and that the neck and bridge pickups were original. My research led me to suspect that the original humbuckers were actually single coil fakes, with humbucker covers, but this turned out not to be the case. The punched steel plates used in place of polepiece slugs are somewhat off-putting, but these pickups do in fact have two coils each.
The original neck and bridge pickups each measure 9.0 kOhm. The MMK45 measures 12.8kOhm across both coils in series (white lead) and 6.9 kOhm at the coil tap (red lead).
So, three humbuckers it was, but should they be wired up like Jimmy, or like Ace? In the end, neither. The 5-way switch that was on the guitar when I got it was poorly installed, but the idea didn't seem so bad, and again, this was a re-build, not a restoration. I was somewhat surprised to find that a 5-way toggle designed to fit a LP is not easy to come by. So, taking inspiration from another recent acquisition (a '76 Gibson L6-S), I decided that a 5-way rotary with a chicken-head knob might not look so bad in place of the of the 5-way toggle which I couldn't find (and a strat-style slider was definitely a non-starter). Turns out the nearby electronics surplus store had a small selection of bakelite chicken-head knobs going for $.99 each. I also found a 6-way 2-pole rotary switch there for under $10. I couldn't find a 5-way switch, but six seemed to offer even more possibilities for custom wiring. Good to go.
Now for the wiring diagram. The Gibson schematics site has a great selection of original wiring diagrams, including a few 3-humbucker setups. Unfortunately, none were quite what I was looking for, since they all seemed to feature a 3-way switch, and most of them seemed to be based on 2 volume controls and 2 tone controls. I looked at LP Custom 3-pickup wiring, and Ace Frehley wiring, among others, but I ended up with something closer to this 3-pickup mod, where the neck tone control becomes the middle volume, and the bridge tone control becomes a master tone. Add the 6-way switch for pickup selection into the mix, and the rest falls into place. Wiring the 6-way involved a quick study of the switch mechanics, then laying out the jumpers on paper, based on 3 inputs (one per pickup) and one output. With 3 pickups and a 6-position 2-pole switch, any combination of one or two pickups is possible (but not all three at once). Good enough. Here is the wiring diagram (laid out as seen from the rear):
I briefly toyed with the idea of "50's wiring vs. modern wiring", but concluded that it was easiest to stick with the original Aria tone and volume wiring arrangement for the controls which were not changing (which is "modern" - where turning either volume to zero will turn off both pickups, when two are selected). I also read somewhere about avoiding ground loops, and decided to go with the "tree branch" wiring, just in case. I must admit, however, that it did feel odd to be running a shielded cable from one component to another, then just leaving one end of the braid just hanging there...
It was also at about this point that I realised that the MMK 45 comes pre-wired for coil tapping. A helpful post at the matsumoku.org forum mentioned that the red wire on an MMK45 is the tap. A quick check on the resistances confirmed this. Couldn't let an opportunity like this pass me by, so it was time to order a push-pull pot. Went for a match with the stock pots; 500K B (linear taper) for the volume. For the record, the stock tone pots are 500K A (audio taper). Wiring the push-pull for a coil tap is pretty simple: connect red (the tap from the pickup) to one of the middle lugs, and connect the other lug to ground. This basically shunts both ends of one coil to ground when the pot is pulled up, but leaves the second coil running in single coil mode. This meant a small adjustment to the wiring diagram, but the only change is at the connection between the middle pickup and its volume pot.
Once the schematic was finalized, it was time to start wiring. The new wiring arrangement meant that some of the existing wire lengths were definitely too short. A wiring template was needed, which ended up being a piece of corrugated cardboard with cut-outs for the pickups and accurately spaced holes for the pots and for the rotary switch.
After pre-wiring as much as I could on the template, it was time to install the various electrical components and wire up permanently on the guitar. The pickup wires had been clipped pretty short at some point in the past, so some very short splices were necessary, and protected with shrink wrap for good measure.
The chicken head knob and 6-way rotary were easy to find, but something would need to be done about the switch plate. "Rhythm" and "Treble" engraved on a plastic ring was not going to cut it with a rotary switch. The always inspirational L6-S has the numbers 1 through 6 engraved on the pickguard at the pointer positions, which I would have considered trying too, if only I had a numbered punch set. Dots would have to do. The original ring and plate were missing when I got the guitar, so I ordered a new black switch plate. Flipped over, I had a good round blank of the correct diameter. Marked out the pointer positions, then drilled down partway to create a series of concave dots. Filled with gold paint, and I had my markers. Sanded out to remove any spill-over with 400/600/1000, then polished up, and I was all set. But looking at the switch and switch plate with the chicken-head knob mocked up on the body, it seemed that something wasn't quite right. Not quite enough golden glitz there for a custom black LP. A golden ring is what seemed to be missing. Nothing suitable was available on hand, so a search through the aisles of the local Canadian Tire was in order. This turned up something of about the right size, with almost the right gold colour. As chance would have it, a toilet tank bolt kit comes with 8 brass-plated washers, of just the right diameter, and thin enough to not stand out. Good enough.
Now, in addition to the original switch and switchplate, there were a few other pieces of the original hardware missing, and in need of replacement. The tun-o-matic bridge had been replaced with a chrome model, which was an easy fix. No functional difference, but a little more golden bling was available for $14.99, so I went for it. The pickguard was also gone, and this would have been an easy replacement too, if I hadn't decided to cut my own.
I bought some pickguard blank material, mainly because the e-bay store where I got my other parts didn't have any LP style pickguards in stock. PDF pickguard templates are readily available on the net, which is a big help. The first one I cut turned out to be too long, and didn't match the pickup ring spacing on the Aria. Also, the pickguard blank material I had ordered was 3-ply, which just didn't look right on a custom LP copy. I ended up gluing 2 sheets together, face to face, which made for a good heavy 5-ply blank. Not sure what kind of plastic the blank was made of, but plumber's ABS cement seemed to do a good job of bonding the layers together. My router setup is somewhat primitive, and I didn't want to bother cutting out a guide template for a one-shot deal pickguard, so I free-handed it instead, using a jigsaw, hand planer, metal scraper, and flat file. The bevel is not perfect, but I think it turned out okay, with a bit of that old school charm.
The pickup rings were next. Slight dilemma here. The stock Aria rings were on at the neck and bridge, but the middle pickup had been installed with a hacked-up softer type of plastic ring, which had to go. I wanted all three rings to match, but the original Aria rings were wider than the modern standard, and I couldn't find anything wide enough to match. I sadly decided that the two original rings would have to go into storage, and ordered three new matching black rings (all bridge height, for arched top). After using the old rings to trace the original heights and profiles onto the new rings, I proceeded to cut the new rings down to match (again using a metal scraper for most of the cutting work). The middle ring was profiled to sit at an in-between height, matching the neck height on one side, and the bridge on the other.
Next was the nut, which was poorly seated, and turned out to have been roughly hand whittled on the underside at some point. I sanded this down, by squaring-up against a metal block, and managed to even out the base without cutting down too much on the depth. With the neck already off, I decided that this would be a good time to level and polish the frets. I masked off the fretboard with painters masking tape, marked the top of the frets with a black permanent marker, then gave it a very light sanding with 320 grit wet/dry paper (spray-glued to the face of a long flat metal block). I sanded up & down the fretboard, until the top of each fret shone through, then crowned using a small hand file (which has no cutting faces on its sides). I really need to buy a proper crowning file one of the days. I finished up by lightly polishing up & down the fretboard with 0000 steel wool - in another room, to keep the steel wool particles as far away from the pickups as possible. I also applied a little lemon oil to the fretboard for good measure, which came from the grandly named, and grandly priced, Gibson Vintage Reissue Restoration Kit.
Now another slight dilemma. The original tuners were still on the guitar, but they were definitely never very good, quality-wise. I wanted to keep the guitar as original as possible, but on the other hand, the original bushings were missing when I got the guitar, someone had over-bored the tuner holes at some point, and I just happened to have a set of early 80s gold Gotoh keystone tuners kicking around. So, the original tuners were packed away, and the Gotoh tuners were installed in thier place. The original screwholes are still slightly visible on the back of the headstock, but I consider it an acknowledgement of the original setup - and I was too lazy to bother refinishing the back of headstock (after all the work it took to get the front done).
Finally, it was time to put the strings on and do the set-up (nut, neck angle, and intonation). With the nut held in place with string pressure only, I checked the height at the nut, which seemed okay. I had ordered a new bone nut blank, just in case (for $2), but didn't end up needing it. I glued the nut in place using standard garden-variety white glue, which provides a decent thin setting bed, but would allow for the nut to be removed in the future, if that ever became necessary.
At the bridge end of the neck, the strings turned out to be a little too high, even with the bridge down at it's lowest setting. It looked like a neck shim would be needed. When I first got the guitar, it did have had a plastic shim in the neck pocket, but I had lost it somewhere during disassembly, or shortly thereafter. No matter, I had plenty of cedar shim stock on hand, and so I cut a new shim to match the pocket width. I blacked-out the side of the shim with a permanent marker, since it would likely be slightly visible from the side of the neck pocket. I then re-installed the neck with the shim in place, but now, although the strings could be raised to the proper height, the bridge needed to be raised a tad too high for my liking. I took the shim out, planed it down a wee bit, re-installed, and now all was good.
One last thing. I had only ever tested the wiring by tapping the pickup pole lightly with a small metal screw-driver. Now that the guitar was strung, it didn't take long to discover that the middle pickup was out of phase with the neck and bridge pickups - there was an unmistakable drop in volume and hollow tone when the middle pickup was switched on in combination with either of the others. Since middle pickup was an MMK45, which only has two wire leads in addition to the shielded ground (one of which is the coil tap), simple re-wiring would not be the best solution for a phase reversal. This would have meant making the shielded wire hot, and the pickup base plate too - not a good idea for a pickup meant to be used in single coil mode with a coil tap (and no longer humbucking in that mode). Luckily, it turns out that a simple magnet rotation also does the trick nicely. DIY directions can be found here: the magnet flipping post at the MyLesPaul forums. I did the same by unscrewing the four small screws which hold the bobbins down, gently prying the base and coils apart, extracting the ceramic magnet, rotating it 180 degrees, re-inserting it and re-tightening everything. I then plugged in, turned on and... phase problem fixed! By the way, the old analog multimeter pickup phase test works well for checking, before and after.
Now that the guitar was finally ready for playing, I discovered, to my relief, that the 6-way switching and pickup selection scheme that looked so good on paper, actually sounded great in real life. I have a nice smooth transition from warm & fat to thin & sharp as I rotate through the six positions. The pull-up coil tap adds an extra sound dimension, with clear single coil voicing, and provides three more distinct sounds to choose from - for a total of nine. In fact, the middle pickup in single coil mode actually has a bit of the strat scoop sound to it, when played in combination with the neck pickup. Lucked out with winding and polarities, I suppose.
Anyway, here she is, in all of her re-built glory. This guitar is more of a player than a collector's piece, but the re-build project was fun and rewarding, and to me, that counts for a lot.
Thanks for reading.
This guitar apparently lived in a bar in Joliet, Quebec (Canada) for at least a decade. According to what I was able to piece together, it was rescued from the bar a couple of years ago, but then, unfortunately, it was massacred by the rescuer - someone calling himself a luthier no less. Let's just say that freehand routing for pickups and using a handheld jigsaw to install a strat-style 5-way switch on a LP-style guitar is not my idea of craftsmanship.
Anyway, this might have been a nice specimen at one time, but by the time it ended up in my hands, it had seen better days. Here are some pics of the guitar, pretty much in the state in which I found it.
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Thanks and credit goes to citrixmeta, from the mylespaul.com forums, previous owner of this guitar (twice removed), for the images above.
Once I got it home, some research was in order, of course. I needed to satisfy my curiosity, and find out when and where this guitar might have been made. It didn't take long before I ended up at matsumoku.org, a website which contains a wealth of information on guitars built at the famous Matsumoku factory in Japan, which is where this one seems to have come from. Apparently, the Aria LP Custom copy was in production from 1968-1975, and was Aria Model No. 5522. Mine has a serial number stamped into the fretboard between the last two frets, but the case with most early Arias seems to be that the serial number is only useful as an approximate indicator of age. #25283 - could this mean 1972 (#2XXXX)? Maybe. According to one of the previous owners, this guitar was sold to him as a '73. Seems about right, judging from the mother-of-pearl headstock inlay. The gold-colored Aria logos seem to be common on earlier models, and later models typically seem to have the "diamond" inlay. In fact, some misguided individual at some point apparently thought they could add value to the guitar by inscribing a diamond logo on the headstock. They managed to scratch through the clearcoat and black lacquer coat, right down to the white undercoat, but they certainly did not add any value to the guitar. The body was pretty roughed-up too.
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Living in Canada means that some things are harder to come by than they might be south of the border, so sourcing materials typically means including "Canadian Tire" in a search string. Lo and behold, it turns out that Quebecers can get nitrocellulose-based ("nitro") clear lacquer in a spray can at the Rona hardware store chain. The brand is Watco, and again according to my research, the clear gloss dries harder than the satin finish (fewer additives), so that's what I got. I also discovered that Rona carries their own brand of gloss black lacquer, so I got a can of that too, knowing that the base coat would need to be built back up to hide the scratches.
I did do a brief bit of soul-searching on whether or not I should be using this stuff at all, knowing that this type of lacquer is laced with volatile organic compounds (VOCs), but concluded that I'm only doing the headstock, so I'm not going to drive myself nuts feeling guilty about it.
The Canadian Tire automotive department had all the wet/dry sandpaper I needed, so I stocked up with a variety pack of the coarser grades (up through 320), and separate packages of 1000, 1500 and 2000 grit (3M brand). I also picked up a hand drill buffing set, which cost a little more than I'd have liked, but then, investing in tools somehow seems to be okay with the wife (why can't it be that way with guitars?)
After disassembling, I sanded down the headstock with 320, using a freshly planed block of hardwood.
There were some holes to fill - looks like someone got overexcited during a previous tuner replacement, and drilled right through the headstock. I used some old LePage's plastic wood, which I happened to have on hand. I let the plastic wood dry overnight, then shaved down with a box-cutter blade and sanded down with a sanding block using 320 grit dry. I then masked the side of the headstock mother-of-pearl logo with painters masking tape. I put on three coats of black lacquer, each about 3 hours apart, with no sanding between coats (I did use a couple of shots of compressed air from electronics duster before spraying though - "100% non-Ozone depleting" hoorah!) Did this outside, in the shade, and sheltered from the breeze. Brought the neck inside to dry between coats, although the stuff does dry quickly. I repeated this the next day, for a total of six coats black (or maybe 5 - I think I got interupted on day 2). I sanded with 320, 400 & 600 grit, dry before the first coat on the second day, and stopped when there was enough paint built up to hide the scratches.
Turns out I should have used a pore filler on the plastic wood, because the lacquer soaked right in, resulting in an uneven finish. Well, knowing that I had to sand out anyway, I sprayed some lacquer into a small plastic container and used a small squirrel hair brush to dab the filler spots with lacquer, until no more was absorbed and the surface dried to an even gloss.
I used a similar technique on the holes at the 5-way chainsaw massacre. Filled with plastic wood, shaved down and sanded-out, then applied several coats of black lacquer. There was also a small divot on the neck, at the edge of the fretboard, where the original paint had been chipped down to bare wood. Same treatment.
Time now for a careful sanding of the black lacquer on the headstock, looking for a feather edge around the logo, and no ridge at the binding. Went through 320, 400 and 600 grit (dry), being careful not to sand through the colour coat. Ready for the clear coat. Same deal really, but I went back and re-read the ReRanch 101 about 101 times. The rule of threes makes it easy to remember. Three coats per day, three hours apart, repeat three days running. That's 9 coats total. It's easy to plan the coats too: 12pm - 3pm - 6pm. No sanding between coats unless they're more that three hours apart, but I switched from dry to wet-sanding on the clear coats between each day. 320, then 400, then 600, but I used a small plastic sanding block this time, and water as a lubricant, which seems to eliminate the dust altogether. I did bother to soak the wet/dry paper overnight, as many sites suggest, but then I found that the grit wore down rather quickly. I got better cutting action with fresh dry paper and surface wetting only. The clear coats went on over two weekends, since three-day weekends are relatively hard to come by (and this is not my day job).
Now I knew I'd have to wait for at least three weeks before the final sanding and polishing, so I started looking for other things to fix. I had decided that the face of the headstock would get the full colour coat and clear coat treatment, but I wasn't ready to commit to re-finishing the body. The black lacquer where the 5-way screw holes had been filled had been on for a couple of weeks at this point, so I tried polishing out. The results were encouraging, so I decided to polish the body, instead of re-finishing it.
Polishing seems to be somewhat of an art form, not unlike plastering walls. On the other hand, I was doing it with sub-standard materials, and no experience. Just the same, once I got a feel for which compound to use, how much to apply to the buffing wheel, how fast to run it, and how much pressure to apply, it got easier. I had best results with wet sanding using 400, 600, 1000, 1500 and 2000 grit, then buffing with white ("diamond") compound, followed by blue and then raw cotton for the final polish. Still had some light swirl marks, but nothing I was going to get too worried about (it's a 35-year old guitar, with a nitro finish after all). I found several websites with useful polishing tips, such as don't change compounds on the same wheel, to avoid cross-contamination. The red compound (aka jewelers rouge) turned out to be a pain in the butt, because it tended to leave red wax colouring behind in all the small scratches and dents in the body. I wasn't intending to polish out the deeper scratches and dents (this was a re-polish, not a re-sand), and although I might've been able to clean the wax off using lighter fluid (naptha), I don't smoke, and I certainly don't need another can of hazardous petroleum distillate sitting around the house. More to the point, I couldn't be bothered to go out and get a can, so I just used the blue compound instead, which seemed to work fine.
The original nitro clearcoat polished up pretty well, but the black lacquer at the spot in-fills remained somewhat visible. Not a perfect job, but good enough, since the alternative would have been a complete re-finish of the body. I suppose I could have tried using clear coat at the spot fills and blending in, but from what I've read, it's next to impossible to feather clear into clear. This'll have to do this time around.
Back to the headstock, about two weeks later. Polishing the body had been good practice, and so the headstock polishing went pretty smoothly, although the new lacquer was a fair bit softer than the old nitro and took some getting used to. Wet sanded with 600, 1000, 1500 and 2000, to get rid of the orange peel, before buffing. Sanding was only complete when there were no more shiny spots. Then on to buffing. And here's the result.
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That was it for refinishing - now on to the electronics. This Aria LP was originally a two-pickup model, but our luthier friend had decided it would make a better three-pickup custom. Jimmy Page, Ace Frehley, or Peter Frampton - I don't know who the inspiration was, but the damage was done.
This would never be a restoration, just a re-build, so I figured I'd work with what I had. On the other hand, I wasn't exactly sure what I had. I knew the middle pickup was an MMK45, possibly from some other, newer Aria, and that the neck and bridge pickups were original. My research led me to suspect that the original humbuckers were actually single coil fakes, with humbucker covers, but this turned out not to be the case. The punched steel plates used in place of polepiece slugs are somewhat off-putting, but these pickups do in fact have two coils each.
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So, three humbuckers it was, but should they be wired up like Jimmy, or like Ace? In the end, neither. The 5-way switch that was on the guitar when I got it was poorly installed, but the idea didn't seem so bad, and again, this was a re-build, not a restoration. I was somewhat surprised to find that a 5-way toggle designed to fit a LP is not easy to come by. So, taking inspiration from another recent acquisition (a '76 Gibson L6-S), I decided that a 5-way rotary with a chicken-head knob might not look so bad in place of the of the 5-way toggle which I couldn't find (and a strat-style slider was definitely a non-starter). Turns out the nearby electronics surplus store had a small selection of bakelite chicken-head knobs going for $.99 each. I also found a 6-way 2-pole rotary switch there for under $10. I couldn't find a 5-way switch, but six seemed to offer even more possibilities for custom wiring. Good to go.
Now for the wiring diagram. The Gibson schematics site has a great selection of original wiring diagrams, including a few 3-humbucker setups. Unfortunately, none were quite what I was looking for, since they all seemed to feature a 3-way switch, and most of them seemed to be based on 2 volume controls and 2 tone controls. I looked at LP Custom 3-pickup wiring, and Ace Frehley wiring, among others, but I ended up with something closer to this 3-pickup mod, where the neck tone control becomes the middle volume, and the bridge tone control becomes a master tone. Add the 6-way switch for pickup selection into the mix, and the rest falls into place. Wiring the 6-way involved a quick study of the switch mechanics, then laying out the jumpers on paper, based on 3 inputs (one per pickup) and one output. With 3 pickups and a 6-position 2-pole switch, any combination of one or two pickups is possible (but not all three at once). Good enough. Here is the wiring diagram (laid out as seen from the rear):
I briefly toyed with the idea of "50's wiring vs. modern wiring", but concluded that it was easiest to stick with the original Aria tone and volume wiring arrangement for the controls which were not changing (which is "modern" - where turning either volume to zero will turn off both pickups, when two are selected). I also read somewhere about avoiding ground loops, and decided to go with the "tree branch" wiring, just in case. I must admit, however, that it did feel odd to be running a shielded cable from one component to another, then just leaving one end of the braid just hanging there...
It was also at about this point that I realised that the MMK 45 comes pre-wired for coil tapping. A helpful post at the matsumoku.org forum mentioned that the red wire on an MMK45 is the tap. A quick check on the resistances confirmed this. Couldn't let an opportunity like this pass me by, so it was time to order a push-pull pot. Went for a match with the stock pots; 500K B (linear taper) for the volume. For the record, the stock tone pots are 500K A (audio taper). Wiring the push-pull for a coil tap is pretty simple: connect red (the tap from the pickup) to one of the middle lugs, and connect the other lug to ground. This basically shunts both ends of one coil to ground when the pot is pulled up, but leaves the second coil running in single coil mode. This meant a small adjustment to the wiring diagram, but the only change is at the connection between the middle pickup and its volume pot.
Once the schematic was finalized, it was time to start wiring. The new wiring arrangement meant that some of the existing wire lengths were definitely too short. A wiring template was needed, which ended up being a piece of corrugated cardboard with cut-outs for the pickups and accurately spaced holes for the pots and for the rotary switch.
After pre-wiring as much as I could on the template, it was time to install the various electrical components and wire up permanently on the guitar. The pickup wires had been clipped pretty short at some point in the past, so some very short splices were necessary, and protected with shrink wrap for good measure.
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The chicken head knob and 6-way rotary were easy to find, but something would need to be done about the switch plate. "Rhythm" and "Treble" engraved on a plastic ring was not going to cut it with a rotary switch. The always inspirational L6-S has the numbers 1 through 6 engraved on the pickguard at the pointer positions, which I would have considered trying too, if only I had a numbered punch set. Dots would have to do. The original ring and plate were missing when I got the guitar, so I ordered a new black switch plate. Flipped over, I had a good round blank of the correct diameter. Marked out the pointer positions, then drilled down partway to create a series of concave dots. Filled with gold paint, and I had my markers. Sanded out to remove any spill-over with 400/600/1000, then polished up, and I was all set. But looking at the switch and switch plate with the chicken-head knob mocked up on the body, it seemed that something wasn't quite right. Not quite enough golden glitz there for a custom black LP. A golden ring is what seemed to be missing. Nothing suitable was available on hand, so a search through the aisles of the local Canadian Tire was in order. This turned up something of about the right size, with almost the right gold colour. As chance would have it, a toilet tank bolt kit comes with 8 brass-plated washers, of just the right diameter, and thin enough to not stand out. Good enough.
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Now, in addition to the original switch and switchplate, there were a few other pieces of the original hardware missing, and in need of replacement. The tun-o-matic bridge had been replaced with a chrome model, which was an easy fix. No functional difference, but a little more golden bling was available for $14.99, so I went for it. The pickguard was also gone, and this would have been an easy replacement too, if I hadn't decided to cut my own.
I bought some pickguard blank material, mainly because the e-bay store where I got my other parts didn't have any LP style pickguards in stock. PDF pickguard templates are readily available on the net, which is a big help. The first one I cut turned out to be too long, and didn't match the pickup ring spacing on the Aria. Also, the pickguard blank material I had ordered was 3-ply, which just didn't look right on a custom LP copy. I ended up gluing 2 sheets together, face to face, which made for a good heavy 5-ply blank. Not sure what kind of plastic the blank was made of, but plumber's ABS cement seemed to do a good job of bonding the layers together. My router setup is somewhat primitive, and I didn't want to bother cutting out a guide template for a one-shot deal pickguard, so I free-handed it instead, using a jigsaw, hand planer, metal scraper, and flat file. The bevel is not perfect, but I think it turned out okay, with a bit of that old school charm.
The pickup rings were next. Slight dilemma here. The stock Aria rings were on at the neck and bridge, but the middle pickup had been installed with a hacked-up softer type of plastic ring, which had to go. I wanted all three rings to match, but the original Aria rings were wider than the modern standard, and I couldn't find anything wide enough to match. I sadly decided that the two original rings would have to go into storage, and ordered three new matching black rings (all bridge height, for arched top). After using the old rings to trace the original heights and profiles onto the new rings, I proceeded to cut the new rings down to match (again using a metal scraper for most of the cutting work). The middle ring was profiled to sit at an in-between height, matching the neck height on one side, and the bridge on the other.
Next was the nut, which was poorly seated, and turned out to have been roughly hand whittled on the underside at some point. I sanded this down, by squaring-up against a metal block, and managed to even out the base without cutting down too much on the depth. With the neck already off, I decided that this would be a good time to level and polish the frets. I masked off the fretboard with painters masking tape, marked the top of the frets with a black permanent marker, then gave it a very light sanding with 320 grit wet/dry paper (spray-glued to the face of a long flat metal block). I sanded up & down the fretboard, until the top of each fret shone through, then crowned using a small hand file (which has no cutting faces on its sides). I really need to buy a proper crowning file one of the days. I finished up by lightly polishing up & down the fretboard with 0000 steel wool - in another room, to keep the steel wool particles as far away from the pickups as possible. I also applied a little lemon oil to the fretboard for good measure, which came from the grandly named, and grandly priced, Gibson Vintage Reissue Restoration Kit.
Now another slight dilemma. The original tuners were still on the guitar, but they were definitely never very good, quality-wise. I wanted to keep the guitar as original as possible, but on the other hand, the original bushings were missing when I got the guitar, someone had over-bored the tuner holes at some point, and I just happened to have a set of early 80s gold Gotoh keystone tuners kicking around. So, the original tuners were packed away, and the Gotoh tuners were installed in thier place. The original screwholes are still slightly visible on the back of the headstock, but I consider it an acknowledgement of the original setup - and I was too lazy to bother refinishing the back of headstock (after all the work it took to get the front done).
Finally, it was time to put the strings on and do the set-up (nut, neck angle, and intonation). With the nut held in place with string pressure only, I checked the height at the nut, which seemed okay. I had ordered a new bone nut blank, just in case (for $2), but didn't end up needing it. I glued the nut in place using standard garden-variety white glue, which provides a decent thin setting bed, but would allow for the nut to be removed in the future, if that ever became necessary.
At the bridge end of the neck, the strings turned out to be a little too high, even with the bridge down at it's lowest setting. It looked like a neck shim would be needed. When I first got the guitar, it did have had a plastic shim in the neck pocket, but I had lost it somewhere during disassembly, or shortly thereafter. No matter, I had plenty of cedar shim stock on hand, and so I cut a new shim to match the pocket width. I blacked-out the side of the shim with a permanent marker, since it would likely be slightly visible from the side of the neck pocket. I then re-installed the neck with the shim in place, but now, although the strings could be raised to the proper height, the bridge needed to be raised a tad too high for my liking. I took the shim out, planed it down a wee bit, re-installed, and now all was good.
One last thing. I had only ever tested the wiring by tapping the pickup pole lightly with a small metal screw-driver. Now that the guitar was strung, it didn't take long to discover that the middle pickup was out of phase with the neck and bridge pickups - there was an unmistakable drop in volume and hollow tone when the middle pickup was switched on in combination with either of the others. Since middle pickup was an MMK45, which only has two wire leads in addition to the shielded ground (one of which is the coil tap), simple re-wiring would not be the best solution for a phase reversal. This would have meant making the shielded wire hot, and the pickup base plate too - not a good idea for a pickup meant to be used in single coil mode with a coil tap (and no longer humbucking in that mode). Luckily, it turns out that a simple magnet rotation also does the trick nicely. DIY directions can be found here: the magnet flipping post at the MyLesPaul forums. I did the same by unscrewing the four small screws which hold the bobbins down, gently prying the base and coils apart, extracting the ceramic magnet, rotating it 180 degrees, re-inserting it and re-tightening everything. I then plugged in, turned on and... phase problem fixed! By the way, the old analog multimeter pickup phase test works well for checking, before and after.
Now that the guitar was finally ready for playing, I discovered, to my relief, that the 6-way switching and pickup selection scheme that looked so good on paper, actually sounded great in real life. I have a nice smooth transition from warm & fat to thin & sharp as I rotate through the six positions. The pull-up coil tap adds an extra sound dimension, with clear single coil voicing, and provides three more distinct sounds to choose from - for a total of nine. In fact, the middle pickup in single coil mode actually has a bit of the strat scoop sound to it, when played in combination with the neck pickup. Lucked out with winding and polarities, I suppose.
Anyway, here she is, in all of her re-built glory. This guitar is more of a player than a collector's piece, but the re-build project was fun and rewarding, and to me, that counts for a lot.
Thanks for reading.
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posted by Hanz Petrov at
9:07 PM
6 Comments
