Today I had the pleasure of a 2007 Gibson Les Paul Supreme come in for some work. This was an interesting instrument, something I have not had my hands on before. Not only that, this was a limited edition model, with only 400 Made for Gibson’s Guitar of The Week series in 2007. Some of the unique specs include a figured ebony fretboard without any inlays and a unique ‘Autumn Burst’ finish.
The client had concerns with the frets, asking for them to be polished up and some concerns with the electronics being crackling. As a result, I gave the guitar thorough cleaning and got to work on the frets. After taping up the fretboard and polishing the frets out with some fine sandpaper and steel wool, the frets are looking better than ever! They have a super smooth texture and mirror shine! By the way, I LOVE the gold fret wire, they really pop! Once done with the fretboard and frets, I moved onto the electronics concerns.
Les Paul Supreme’s do NOT have easy access to their electronics. Everything is accessed through a larger than normal jack plate and the pickup cavity routes. This proved spraying out the crackling and gummy feeling potentiometers difficult. However, with some finagling, I was able to reach all four potentiometers and get them lubed up with some Deoxit. The toggle switch was also sprayed out, and was accessed through the neck pickup cavity route. Now the electronics were as good as can be. The output jack was crackling when moving the cable around, so I used some steel wool to remove any corrosion that was built up on the internals of the jack.
After the electronics were sorted out, I moved onto the general setup. The client supplied some D’Addario 10-46 strings to be used. I noticed the bridge saddles had groves where the wound strings sat, so I went ahead and removed those grooves using the correct gauged nut files, to increase tuning stability. Once I strung it up, I adjusted the truss rod to have a tiny bit of relief and moved onto the bridge height. Once adjusted, the bass side action at the 12th fret was about 4/64ths of an inch and the treble side about 3.5/64ths of an inch. This results in a super fast and low action to play. Luckily the fret work was great on this guitar already so no buzzing issues with the low action. I then went ahead and stretched out the strings and intonated them using the saddle adjustment screws.
After all this work, the guitar was playing and feeling the best it could! I could not be happier with the way it came out!
See the pictures of progress below.
Serviced on 10/15/2024.
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