Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Went from this:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-7/7 ... lo-res.jpg

To this:
http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-7/7 ... lo-res.jpg

Nice!
What's the story?

This guitar is a 1955 Les Paul Custom. It was in a fire and the insurance company covered a major portion of it's value. A few years later a friend of mine told me about it and brought it over to my house. He said, "my mom says she has to get $50 for it." I gave him $100. I told him what it was worth and what it would be worth once I had it restored. He and his family didn't care to get involved in the restoration process so, here we are.

The guitar was owned by my buddy's mom's boyfriend who bought it new in
'55. When he died, he left it to her. She said, "Well, if none of you want it, (her sons), I don't want my loser grandkids to get it. Will this 'Bob guy' take care of it and get it fixed?" My buddy told her "yes." He brought it over the following day in a Home Depot Lawn and Leaf bag. The rest is history!

Everything is original except:
the tuner buttons, (tuners still work)
pickup covers, (the pickups actually still work!)
Volume and Tone knobs, (the pots and wiring is all original)
Input jack Plate. (I need to buy one.)
All the inlay is still intact.
The binding on the back side is original.
The binding on the headstock, neck, and front of body was replaced.

I was just playing it through my '67 BFSR and it really sounds sweet!
I also need to buy a pickguard and truss rod cover

"Only a Gibson is good enough."

Does it smell like it was in a fire? That would be awesome. I had a music professor who bought some sax reeds that were in a building that was on fire. They tasted like mesquite.

Cool story! It's great to see things like that come to a happy ending.

No Jason, it didn't smell at all. It didn't actually get burnt. It was in it's case and the it got hot enough to melt the plastic on the front of the guitar and blister the paint, but it didn't get charred anywhere. In fact, the pickups still work and the all the plastic on the back of the guitar was fine.

That is a great story! Thanks for sharing that with us, Bob.

I never dreamed I'd ever own a 50's Les Paul. They're just totally out of sight in price these days. The truth of the matter is, I'm not even really a "Les Paul guy" as I much prefer other brands and styles. This one is an investment piece that will come out to play occasionally. It does sound really good and it plays awesome too.

I had to buy a vocal monitor so I brought the guitar with me to Guitar Center yesterday to see what they thought it was worth. While I was there I played it side by side against a couple Les Paul Historics with P90s. No contest! This little black beauty smoked 'em hands down!

Guitar Center started telling me that is looks like a '60s Les Paul and started doing the "dance" so I left. There was nothing like this made in the 60's. Oh well.

Quite a story. Bob. Great to hear that it could be rescued.

Excellent recovery of a classic guitar Bob, I bet you felt like you were swimming with sharks when you took the guitar into GC. Good to see it brought back to it's former glory, and an interesting story to go with it as well. Grannie doesn't seem to rate the grand kids too highly LOL

It's kinda crazy. The reality hasn't sunk in yet. I believe there were only about 900 of these made which makes this piece extremely rare. Many of them have been hacked up and converted to flame tops with PAF's. I sure do enjoy playing it though.

http://www.tdpri.com/telephoto/showgallery.php/cat/648

Here's some studio photos I took the other day that show the guitar in much greater detail.