1979 Gibson The Paul Project

Before	During	After

I had the pleasure to try one of these guitars out back in the early 80's at a music store in Atlanta when I was broke and going to school. I told myself then that this was one guitar that was a real player so I found one that had some miles on it and decided to give it a second life. This guitar was not abused but obviously played daily for it's 20 years life as all the electronics were not worth saving so I removed them all. It was in need of a professional fret job not just a dressing and the body had way too much grime to clean. I sanded the whole guitar down (except the front and back of the headstock for obvious reasons) to the bare walnut which revealed a beautiful grain. I applied several coats of non-gloss tung oil to the whole body but I am still undecided what to seal it with but I'll update this when I make that decision. The electronics were replaced by all Gibson replacement parts except the tuners which are Grovers and the pickups which are both Dimarzio Super Distortions wired with a coil split switch on the individual volume pots. I also replaced the bridge and all the other metal parts with new Gibson replacement parts to finish the overall look since they all had some oxidation issues.

Final thoughts are that all the hard work and money paid off because this guitar screams like my Standard but at half the weight and with the coil splits can achieve some interesting sounds.

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