Last month a friend of mine gifted me his 1997 Epiphone Les Paul 100. He bought it at a pawn shop 15 years ago, played twice and left it at his parents' house since.
It was all beat up and dusty, the wood was so dry and brittle that when I poured olive oil in the truss rod shaft, it made the sound of someone taking the last sip of soda with a straw.
The stock electronics were really cheap to begin with and all this time made them disgustingly crunchy.
And one of the previous owners swapped the stock knobs with four Strat style tone knobs, which should be enough to be condemned for war crimes and be waterboarded for years.
So I spent the last month rummaging second hand websites and shops for spare parts. The best deal I got was finding these wonderful Tesla Opus-2, humbucker sized P90 pickups that sound wonderful. Even at full price they are crazy value for the money, and I paid a little more than half of it.
I also gave it a new guts transplant with full sized potentiometers, shielding with copper tape and alluminum foil and a different knobs configuration: both volume knobs on top, both tone knobs on bottom. Gibson purists are gonna hate me, but I feel it more natural for me this way.
Unfortunately I got ripped off by the guy who sold me the tuning machine heads, as one was broken (I should have checked better). So for now I kept one of the old ones for the low E string. I wasn't really happy at first but it's slowly growing on me. I might end up keeping it this way.
As for now I'm really pleased with the result: this is the first Les Paul I ever owned and also the first guitar I fully renovated from the ground up.
Giving a second life to this beautiful instrument has been super fun and taught me a lot, so if you have any questions feel free to ask
