Honestly, I am not particulary skilled on soldering. For my Warmoth "Strat" I had Fralin do a preloaded pickguard so I only needed to solder to the output jack, and ground to the bridge. For my Warmoth "Tele" with the Fralin P92 neck and Fralin Tele bridge pickup I had Fralin build the control wiring and I had my son-in-law help finish it. For my Warmoth Thinline "Tele" with Fralin humbuckers, I had it rear mount (mistake, wish I hadn't done that!) and I ended up having a luthier finish the wiring. So, that is a long way of saying, I prefer to avoid messing with replacing pickups. But, never say never, so it is an option. But it does add ~ $500 to the cost of the guitar.Again, just do a pickup swap. What it comes with isnt what it has to have forever
Oh i dont do my own swaps, but most of my guitars end up with them for one reason or another. Buy the pickups used and save 40% before taxes maybe more. Should be more like $250-$300 parts and labour depending on prices of used lollars.
Had not heard of Kim La Fleur but looks like he does great work. I will research about Filtertron just out of curiosity of what type of sound they are best for. But for this guitar I do want humbuckers. I will also look into ThroBaks further. I wonder how they compare to Fralins? I am really interested in a Collings, but also might look into an interim Warmoth build. Something like a Thinline Tele with ThroBak's.Throbaks are great pickups - they are what I have in both of my humbucking Les Pauls, which were both rebuilt by Historic Makeovers in Florida - if Kim La Fleur from HM recommends Throbaks, that's more than good enough for me! With regards to the Collings - those are definitely Filtertron pickups and that guitar will sound great, but NOTHING like a Les Paul
On a simple guitar like a 290 you can find a Gibson LP special that will be almost it's equal but avoid the really budget ones unless they are all your budget. Throbak Pafs and P90s are as good is it gets for vintage Gibson tones defiantly better than Frailins for this application but we are talking about the last few %. As for Historic makeovers; the things I have seen are good but I would still go for a Murphy that you could play before you guessed how good it might be after you spent a LOT of money on a rebuild. As with all guitar buys I would say go and play a LOT and buy what you like because the best instrument you find when you do this is rarely the one you may have gone to the shop to play.
I will admit the Historic Makeovers guitars were a risk/experiment on my part to see just how good an already pretty good Custom Shop Les Paul could become with (admittedly a lot of) work. I had been following Kim's work for a couple of years, and was working in a shop in Sydney (Australia) that sold more 59RIs than every other store in Australia combined, so I got to play a LOT of them, and while they were reasonably well built and sounded usually pretty good (about 1 in ten sounded great and about one in 25 - 50 sounded astonishing - worth remembering that during the period that I worked in said shop we got five or six 59 Les Pauls and maybe a dozen or so 57 Goldtops come through the shop - amongst the 59s was I believe the only documented Birdseye Maple topped one, so I had some pretty good comparison points. None of them blew me away, but one or two of the 59RIs absolutely killed them tonally much to my shock/horror/surprise - but every RI just felt stiff and awkward). They are great, they kind of exceeded my expectations in almost every way, and I got to have them rebuilt exactly as I wanted, with Callahams steel ABRs and tailpieces, and 6100 fretwire with no fret nibs, giving the guitars a little more fretboard realestate and huge frets. Are they better than a Murphy? I really don't know, we don't get that many Murphy Les Pauls here in Australia and you'd best have a heart fibrillator close at hand when you find out the price. All I could conclude that other than having a replica hand made by Gil Yaron or Bartlett I don't think I could have got closer to the real deal at about one fiftieth of the cost! (I don't like the Les Paul scratchplate by the way - looks like some awful gimcracked afterthought to me!) - anyway - fret ends!
I checked out the Gibson LP Specials and at least on their website, other than the cheaper ($999) models, they only have P90's. Were there older models that I would have to find used, that would have humbuckers?
Where do all of you go to find many options in stock, on the floor, to play? I can't find anywhere with a large, in stock inventory locally, and I don't live in a remote area.
The search should be fun. Hit many stores, drive the distances and if you find one you connect with buy it.
Your Les Pauls are wicked.......very nice! Just had to chime in here with a plus 1 for Kim at Historic Makeovers........my '04 R0 that I sent to him
That would for sure be what I would do. But I checked all of the "local" stores and most have little to no in stock items. Most say order and have it in 3 to 5 days.
What's the deal with the multicolor inlays pic? They don't look like either the before state or the after state. An idea you tried and thought the better of?
Wow.
What year? I like the black case's not really fond of the turd brown ons that came with both of my Pauls.
