Evolution…

60. Revamped R&B “Ian Siegal” guitar

NOT a new guitar, but a project which gave this fine instrument a whole new lease of life – and me the chance to learn some new stuff about modding guitars.

Originally built by my talented luthier friend Mark Riley as a gift from his friend Blues Boss for the brilliant British blues/Americana artist Ian Siegal, Ian never really warmed to the R&B and he very kindly offered it to me. It was an odd bird, that guitar, so, I can understand why it never found its way into Ian’s gigging repertoire.

Originally kitted out with a Telecaster pickup at the neck and a rather expensive Lollar recreation of the classic Supro lap steel pickup, there was just something about that combination that never quite gelled.

I tried a couple of things, including fitting a nice Mojo Gold Foil pickup in the neck position, but the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced the lap steel pickup plainly wasn’t working. (The same Lollar pickup would later put in a brief appearance in my USA Prototype Supro (No 58 in this blog) but never really cut it there either. Odd. Those pickups have a decent reputation. Maybe it’s just me…

The more I looked at the R&B, the more I thought, with its gorgeous mahogany slab body, the R&B was probably as close to a Les Paul Special as I would ever get (apart, that is, from guitar No 13 in this blog – the real Special I brought back from Texas in the 90s). So I needed a new pickguard and pair of nice P90 “soapbar” pickups.

The pickups came to me very reasonable priced, via eBay – not genuine Gibsons, but a very respectable set of Entwhistles. Entwhistle might not be a big name but the company’s pickups are well-enough respected. The body already had the right sized cavity in the neck position so that part was easy. The bridge pickup was the tricky one – it required a very neat, precise cavity which would have to be routed out.

After a LOT of umming and arring, I bit the bullet and bought myself a router, something I’d been threatening to make for some time.  On the recommendation of some seasoned guitar-building and modding hands on Facebook, I shelled out for an inexpensive but functional Katsu palm router from Amazon and a couple of suitable router bits.

I was never going to just get stuck in without a couple of trial runs, though. An appeal on a local Facebook group yielded a couple of lumps of mahogany on which to practice, courtesy of a Burnham guitar-playing acquaintance, Mick Taylor (not THAT Mick Taylor). Thanks Mick!

A £15 P90 routing template arrived from Amazon and I was away… The prospect of handling the little router and its fast-spinning chisel-sharp bit was rather scary. However, I found routing out a nice, clean cavity – in the practice pieces and then the actual body – wasn’t as hard as I’d expected. I was quietly pleased with myself!

It took me ages to design a pickguard – tortoiseshell of course – that suggested a Les Paul Special guard, but also fitted the quirky outline of the R&B. The final design is some way from perfect – when I have time on my hands, I may yet have another crack at it.

To cut the pickguard I again used my new router, this time fixed upside-down in an improvised router table, bolted to my trusty old Black and Decker Workmate. I made an MDF template, cut the guard, then used chamfer bit to put a neat 45-degree bevel on the edge. Progress indeed – it truly felt I’d taken a step up to the big boys’ league of guitar making, my previous pickguard efforts having involved nothing more sophisticated than a Dremel multi-tool.

About 20 minutes with a soldering iron, plus another ten to string it up and I had a guitar again…one that actually sounded pretty good and looked quite cool, too.

With its bolt-on neck, it’s never actually quite going to be a Les Paul Special, but I’m quietly pleased with the way it turned out.