Description
Roadhouse USA location:
2019 Nash Conversion Gibson Les Paul Standard Cherry Burst Flame Top!
If you have never played a Nash Les Paul Conversion, you need to. They are simply awesome.
Absolutely Killer Relic-job by Nash as well as all the custom processes that he uses to turn a regular Gibson Les Paul Standard into an entirely different beast.
This was a 2003 Gibson Les Paul Classic, so it has the great 60’s neck.
It has just been set up and plays like a champ!
Nash is no longer doing these LP conversions, so grab this one while you can!
Comes as pictured with original case and Nash COA and hang tags.
Nash LP conversion process:
First step is to completely disassemble and separate the parts that will be aged and re-used, from the parts that we reject and replace. The “keeper” parts are then aged.
The finish, which is sometimes rather thick, is stripped off down to the bare wood. At this point some get stains applied, if required to get the desired color. Then the guitar gets re-finished in 100% nitrocellulose lacquer, keeping it as thin as possible to enable superior resonance. We do a variety of takes on the lemon, cherry, faded, sun-burst, plain and gold top looks.
After curing, the guitar gets the complete aging treatment and is then frets are re-worked and dressed to Nash’s specs, then they are ready for re-assembly.
The pickups are replaced with what many of you may balk at as there are so many opinions about Les Paul pickups and tone out there. As always, Bill Nash simply builds a guitar that he would use and leave it at that. So, in his arsenal of personal guitars, his favorite and most versatile LP setup is using a DiMarzio Bluesbucker in the Neck and a DiMarzio Air Norton in the Bridge.
They then re-wire the guitar so the pickups breathe better as well as use the neck pickup’s tone control as a coil tap for the Bluesbucker, which gives you an amazing strat-like sound from that pickup. Between 1 and 8 on the tone knob it works as a regular tone control, between 9 and 10 it shuts off the second/dummy coil. This gives you a tap without adding switches of push pull pots.
The Air Norton give you bigger output and rich harmonics without going over the top into the tone spectrum of faceless, modern, high output sound that so many specialized humbuckers are susceptible to. These pickups have a lower string pull and a much higher sensitivity to your dynamics and playing style.
Also, as many of you may have figured out, the method Gibson uses for wiring the pots is not optimum. The tendency towards the guitar getting muddy or sounding choked when anywhere but “10”. This gets re-worked when we re-wire.
Gibson installs frets on the fretboard prior to it getting glued to the neck and body. Maybe they do it as it is easier to do it that way, but it can really lead to all sort of fret issues (buzzing, fret outs, high action, dead spots etc). What happens is the neck and body glue, moisture, and all of the underlying structure will shrink, expand and or settle. The fretboard (and frets) will now adjust itself to the changes and you and up with lumpy gravy. The most noticeable and common issue is the hump at about the 14th fret, right where the neck gets really thick before it hit’s the body. So what Nash does is now re-work the neck and frets and take care of this to give the player better action, playability, sustain, bending etc.
Snapshot:
- Top finish will be stripped, sanded, and prepped
- Top will get re-finished, back and sides will be completed with amber coats
- Nut will be replaced
- Frets will be leveled and dressed
- Neck and body will receive aging
- Hardware will be aged or replaced
- Plastic parts will be aged or replaced
- Pickups will be replaced (Dimarzio Bluesbucker in neck, and Air Norton in bridge)
- Wiring will receive the “rolling coil tap on tone knob” feature
- Complete Nashguitars Setup
