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Jun
How Would I Change The Hardware On A Gibson Les Paul?
Author: admin // Category: UncategorizedIf I had a Gibson Les Paul Studio Guitar with gold hardware (pickups, bridge, knobs etc.) and wanted to change to chrome hardware. Where can I find just the chrome hardware and how would I go about changing it? Thanks.
June 11th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Well we have something in common, I changed stuff on my studio to cream ie the plastic parts, but now to you problem.
Firstly the bridge and tailpiece. These are simply held on by string tension. If you were to loosen the strings sufficiently then the tailpiece will move back off those two screws. The tailpiece lifts off the two pins and hey presto, do the opposite and voila. watch your finish though.
Be extremely delicate since I believe that these settings with the screws and pins change easily, however I did not have a problem.
On to the pickup covers. I DO NOT reccommend changing these yourself, they are very delicate since expsed to too much heat needed to melt the wax off can damage it. The mounting rings. Remove the four screws on the edges leaving the adjusting screw. Lift the whole thing out not too high though and unscrew the adjustment screws. Now place the same spring between the metal extension on the pickup and the new ring. You may need another pair of hands, i didnt. now do not apply a compression force to the spring while you screw back in the old screw into the adjustment centre. Screw in the whole thing again. To make matters simple take off the strings. For optimal support I did this procedure in my guitar case.
Knobs now. I used a car tool to pry them off. Be careful about your finish you definitely want to put a guitar cleaning cloth between your guitar and the tool. If you want something more reliable then http://www.stewartmacdonald.com sells a tool ideal to do this.
Now the pickup selector switch. This plastic piece simply screws off. The washer around it: Take off the back plate for the selector switch ( for better support) and unscrew the nut on the selector ring on the top of the guitar. holding the device in place through the back replace whatever parts and screw back the nut. Place back the strings and enjoy. Be very careful doing all of this and I am not resposible for your mistakes. However http://www.gibson.com sells all of these parts under shop, since a retailer might not carry all of these parts. However why not just pick a guitar already with chrome, eg. wine red is either gold or chrome as is ebony, if you want a burst finish then you have to do it yourself. Good luck and if there are any questions ask me again and more details with pics will be available, the reason i am doing this is because when I wanted to change stuff there was no useful info online, so I hope this helped. Feel free to ask for more help if you need it.
June 12th, 2009 at 1:46 am
You can get in touch with Gibson for the parts. Most of those can be changed by hand or with a screwdriver, but the pickups would require some soldering. (Unless you’re just talking about the covers, which may fall under the screwdriver heading) You might be better off getting the parts and finding someone locally that does guitar repairs. If you wanted to make it easy but had $$$, you could just hand the guitar to a repair guy and say “make this chrome instead of gold”…
June 12th, 2009 at 2:59 am
you can find the parts through most music stores but you should have a qualified tech do the work.
June 12th, 2009 at 4:09 am
You’d have to contact Gibson for that.