eldegas.com

The story of my El Degas is a sad one, but I hope to give it a happy ending and a new life.

When I was a teenager I bought my first guitar from a friend. It was an El Degas Les Paul Gold Top. being a teenage punk I didn't really appreciate what a beautiful instrument it was. I spray painted it black (did a horrible job) and now that beautiful gold top is no more. Somewhere along the line, I lost one of the saddles, so I replaced it with a pebble and eventually another bridge, one that was not made for a LP type guitar. In my early twenties I began to wish it was a gold top again so I began to sand the black paint off. I quickly realized that this wasn't working and I was just damaging the original finish more (duhh) so I sanded a bizzarre pattern in to it. Not good.

Other guitars began coming in to my life, nothing spectacular but I do love my 1970's PAN Trini Lopez copy, and my El Degas was put in its case never to be seen or played for many years.

About a year ago I was longing for that big fat sound, so I pulled out the El Degas. almost twenty years after it was cast off it still sounded great even with those old strings. I put a new set of strings on it and brought it to band practice the next night. The other guys agreed that this could be, with a little work a really nice guitar again. Unfortunately the next week at practice it somehow lost the big fat sound, I don't know what happened. So it sat for another year.

I've decided I'm going to strip it right down, refinish and rewire the whole thing. Some new parts, some original. My first observation is that you can't just buy Gibson parts and expect them to fit. I purchased a LP dress up kit and the only part that fits as it should is the switch plate.

I was assuming the sound problem was originating from the pickups, so I purchased a couple of no name humbuckers from an ebay store. When I went to remove the old pickups I found that they are dimarzios (is that the stock pickup on these El Degas guitars?). Now I have no experience with these things so I am learning as I go. Perhaps someone can help me here. I am going to borrow a multi-tester to check the resistance in the dimarzios and compare that to what I get out of the new no namers. what kind of reading should I be looking for?

I will keep you all posted on this project. Photos to come soon.

Thank you

Dimarzios were, in fact, stock on many El Degas models. I'm not an electronics guy so I'm not sure of the resistance you're looking for off the top of my head. I'd say going to Dimarzio's website and finding the spec values on their pickup might be a good place to start. You likely have either two Super Distortions (SD's) or a SD in the bridge and a PAF in the neck. The style and shape of the posts will tell you which is which - SD's two rows of posts have open allen-key shaped holes in the centre of the posts - PAFs have one row of solid posts and one row of open allen-key shape hole-d posts. (Let me know if that makes any sense )

You might have better luck looking for "import" or "Epiphone" replacement parts rather than Gibson USA parts. Even then, many things will be a little out of whack.

Best of luck, can't wait to see photos.

Thanks Charles,

That is very helpful, it looks like bridge PU is SD and neck might be PAF (one row of slot screw posts, one row of plain un-adjustable posts). So here's a couple more questions. This one one of those models that has that small switch between the volume pots, what does that switch do? It really seems to complicate the wiring, do I need it? I'd like to buy a full wiring Harness for LP style guitars but that would not accommodate the little switch. Also are these typically long shaft pots or short shaft?

The mini-toggle is for a coil tap - if you bought a set of pickups that support it (should be able to with most 4-wire pickup sets), you can wire it that way again.

There are several sites online (i.e. Seymour Duncan) that can provide wiring diagrams for the coil tap if you decide to go that way again (but watch that the wire colors correspond with the pickups you bought - manufacturers change that up quite often).

I'm going to keep it simple and skip the coil tap. Though I keep wondering if I should add a single coil in the middle. but nah. I spent some time over the weekend stripping off the old finish and I would say that my vision is beginning to take shape. I'm pleased. I've been looking at the neck and it could use a fret job, so I contacted guitar tech on kijiji and found the price to be a bit high for my liking (my wife would not be pleased if I spent that kind of money on this project). Maybe I'll see if if I can acquire another neck instead.

Happy to hear you're going to restore your baby to former glory!
I would maintain the coil split though. As Charles says it should be a straight forward wire-for-wire replacement and should not be a difficult undertaking. Although a single coil sound isn't a normal Gibson offering it's nice to have the option for certain songs. Coil tapping was a common thing on MIJ guitars of the time so it makes sense to me to maintain the originality of the design. Besides, if you wire it for HB only, what do you do with the mini-switch? It's useless if left in, wrecks the finish if taken out.
If you want "simple", leave it, use it!

thanls for pointing that out Barry. I had considered the problem this would pose to the finsih, I was going to go with leaving the (inactive) switch in and pretend it has a purpose. I even thought about converting it to a midi trigger for sound effects (but not really). Maybe I could make it trigger pyrotechnics ! But you make a great point, why remove something that gives the instrument a lot more versatility.

You could try putting in a killswitch instead of the minitoggle - it's all the rage these days!

I do like coil taps, though. Sometimes adds a little bit more 'raunch'.

So what kind of wood is this anyway?

Most likely it's either a) pretty accurate in having a mahogany back & maple cap (LP Std) or all mahogany (LP Custom) or b) is some sort of plywood

Your best bet is to open the electronics cavity cover and take a look to see if it is a solid back or plywood...

I've tended to find that the solid color copies tend to take more liberties in the construction and woods... I can't say what yours is for certain.

aallen wrote:...I do love my 1970's PAN Trini Lopez copy...

Yeah, there are couple of Pan Trini's currently on Toronto Kijiji, as well as one under the Aria label, which leads me to the conclusion that Pan was made by Matsumoku. No wonder you love it!

[quote="charles"]Your best bet is to open the electronics cavity cover and take a look to see if it is a solid back or plywood...
quote]

all cavities are open now, the guitar has been stripped down to the bare wood and all parts have been organized and sorted and placed in to ziplock bags. It appears to be solid. thanks

Not unlike a trip to my Doctor for a check up these days!

Oh dear - I don't wanna grow up!


aallen, let us know how it goes - before and after photos requested!

you guys are too funny, I wish I had taken before shots but I didn't. I will guarantee after photos though.