Well, no, I’m lying. It’s not really a Les Paul Junior. Here’s the story:

I went by the San Francisco Guitar Center on President’s Day to check out the sale with a buddy from work. He was amp shopping and I figured I’d tag along to see if I could find one of those amazing deals I keep reading about. Nope - I didn’t see any of the $400 USA Jazz Basses that I read about, nor did I run accross any screaming, $600 deals on Music Man Bongo’s. What I did spot was this little, piece of shit, Epiphone, Les Paul Junior for $80. I played the little guy for a few minutes and figured $80 was a no-brainer.

I don’t know if I even bothered plugging the guitar in. Obviously, I was going to mod the thing so no use wasting time hunting down a sales guy to grab me a cable. What I did do was swing by the accessories department and pick up a Duncan JB humbucker. My goal: get this guy playing decent and have it put some good punk rock tones like what Green Day’s Billie Joe got on Basket Case.

Back in the Dookie days Billie played a Fernandez, Strat clone that he called Blue. Blue was modded with a Duncan JB in the bridge so that’s how I decided to let go of my DiMarizo kick and go with the JB.

Alright - so, I got the JB but there were a few more things to take care of:

1. An Epiphone isn’t cool.
2. The tuners are crap.
3. I assumed the bridge was crap.
4. The black pickguard was boring.
5. The creme pickup rings looked stupid.
6. I didn’t like the black knobs.
7. The guitar was just too clean. It had no soul - well, it didn’t look like it did. I had to give him a soul.

So, what do we do? The knobs, pickup ring and pickguard were no brainers. They had to go and replacements are easy to come by. A couple mouse clicks later those details were all taken care of.

Now, the bridge. I order a Wilkinson Adjustable bridge from Stew Mac. The description said that this bridge is like the ones used on PRS McCartys. I had one of those once and I figured it would be a nice addition to the guitar. Actually - turns out it sucked. LOL. The stock, shitty, bridge that came with it sounded better to me. The Wilkinson had this magical ability to suck the life out of the guitar. The tone got warmer and lost the top end zing. Some people are into that but that’s not the goal for this project so the stock bridge went back on.

The rest of the cosmetic changes required a few basic tools: A screwdriver, a drill, a lighter, a Dremel, sandpaper and a hammer. Yup, I was going to beat this shit out of this guitar and make it look like it was an old road dog. I couldn’t imagine having a clean and shiny Epiphone. There’s just no character to that look. I mean - it would look like an $80 guitar with new pickups. Fuck that! So, I beat the bastard senseless to give it a relic look.

The last piece of the puzzle was the tuners. I’m a fan of the Schaller Mini Locking Tuners but there’s a couple problems with those:

1. I’d have to order them and wait a whole week.
2. I was worried they wouldn’t fit the holes in the Epiphone’s peghead.
3. They wouldn’t fit the relic look I was going for.

So, out went the Schallers and in came some Gibson Historic Tuners. These tuners look just right. Quick tangent: These “to historic spec” Gibson parts are made in Japan… Ya, I’m sure that’s where they made ‘em in 1952. Fucking, stupid Gibson. Anyways - I got the tuners today and they didn’t fit either. Out came the Dremel and a hammer and 15 minutes later, voila, they fit just fine

So, what’s the little fucker look like now?

Not too shabby huh? Personally, I’m into it.

set:72157604017995522

Some of you may recognize the look. It pretty much looks like the Billie Joe Armstrong Signature Les Paul Junior.

Was this on purpose? Not really, but, sure, kindof. I’m a pretty big Green Day fan and I have wanted Billie’s signature guitar. I’ve always wanted an LP Junior and figured BJ’s signature would be a good one to get. So, ya, I’ve admired his signature but I didn’t set out to copy it’s look. If I ever do get his signature I’d actually opt for the white one. Right off the bat I knew I wanted a tort pickguard for this project and pretty quickly after that it clicked that I was cloning the sig. model. I figured “fuck it” and went for it and I’m pretty stoked.

The main lesson I learned here was pretty big: The bridge has a huge impact on a guitar’s tone. I was shocked at how different the guitar sounded with the 2 different bridges.

Anyways, there’s the long and short of this little project. All in all it wasn’t much work at all and I’m very happy with how it turned out. I got the guitar playing great and it definitely cops that tone I was going for.

I chalk this one up as a win