Collection: Historic Makeovers

Kim LaFleur, founder of Historic Makeovers, has been involved with vintage guitars for over five decades: playing, restoring, buying and selling with a focus on 1950s Les Pauls and vintage parts. Since buying a 1952 goldtop in 1970 at Drome Sound Music, Kim has been obsessed over the sound, feel, and look of vintage Les Pauls and others. Attending guitar shows and dealing vintage parts under the business name Vintage Checkout, he saw prices rise out of reach for most players and old guitars become impractical for road use. Kim started Retrospec to develop and sell reproduction vintage guitar parts. By 2006, the rise in popularity of Historic Reissue guitars inspired the Historic Makeovers® concept: to make modern guitars look, sound, and feel like vintage. Historic Makeovers® represents Kim’s vision and tireless efforts to develop the processes and materials to make reissue guitars more like vintage guitars. He helped develop the proper cellulose nitrate inlay and side dot material, and his library of vintage guitars provides invaluable reference material for reproducing old finishes. After almost two decades in business, with thousands of satisfied customers, Historic Makeovers® continues to refine techniques and methods so every guitar they finish is better than the one before.

THE MAKEOVER PROCESS
After nearly two decades in business, Historic Makeovers has developed and refined their makeover process to achieve the most authentic, vintage correct results for your guitar:

- The contour of the maple top is adjusted using referencing templates taken from a real ’59 Les Paul. The result is a carved top with softer lines and a more vintage look.

- The dimensions for a '50s neck profile were taken from a real vintage Burst; in addition to the softer vintage correct taper, the shoulders are removed to form a more comfortable C shape neck.

- Historic Les Pauls from model year 2012 and earlier use Franklin style white glue for the neck joint. The neck is removed using a steam system and the old glue is cleaned from the pocket. The neck is then reset using old school hot hide glue.

- The look, feel, and sound of Brazilian rosewood is essential to the character of vintage guitars. The Indian rosewood Gibson uses for their historic fingerboards is replaced with finest quality Brazilian rosewood blanks. Every fingerboard is CNC cut to vintage specs for accuracy and playability, then inlayed, fretted, and bound by hand using vintage spec materials.

- Mazzucchelli in Italy was commissioned to custom fabricate actual cellulose nitrate sheets to the exact specs used by Gibson in the 1950s. These sheets are custom laser cut to produce exclusive vintage correct fingerboard inlay sets. Because these inlays are 100% vintage correct, they will shrink and darken in time, just like the originals.

- The factory ABS cream binding is removed. Then the guitar is re-bound with authentic Royalite binding. This is the same material that Gibson used on their guitars in the 1950s and 1960s. The color is a vintage correct bone white.

- The same aniline dyes Gibson used in the 1950s are hand mixed. These dyes cause the classic Cherry Sunburst to fade to the now well-known Tea and Lemon bursts when exposed to ultraviolet light. If left in the sunlight, these finishes will fade just like a real Burst, leaving behind the distinctive unfaded areas below the parts.

- Lacquer used by Historic Makeovers is custom mixed, containing zero retarders or plasticizing agents. As a result the lacquer cures extremely quickly which means you get an old looking finish without 50 to 60 years of waiting. It also makes these finishes very hard and brittle, allowing for zero damping of the instrument’s natural resonance.

- Because a specially formulated nitrocellulose finish is used, 100% authentic ‘cold checking’ can be produced that doesn’t just look real, but IS real. When exposed to extreme temperatures, the air and moisture content in the wood causes it to expand and contract. This cracks the extremely thin and brittle layer of finish on the surface, resulting in the very fine ‘checking’ seen on almost all vintage instruments.

- At Historic Makeovers, ‘relic’ is a dirty word. Great pride and care are taken to provide our customers with the most natural and realistic feeling aged guitars money can buy. Every method that used has been painstakingly developed using close attention to detail and with complete authenticity in mind. Because Historic Makeover finishes will continue to age on their own, the mantra is “less is more.”

- Every Deluxe Makeover also gets a new 6/6 nylon nut, for the most vintage tone possible. Nylon is a self-lubricating material, which saves strings and makes for more precise tuning and easier bending.

- The font, thickness, and size of the text in the vintage correct silkscreens is an exact match. It is printed directly on the headstock using a special gold ink on top of the finish, just like the originals.

- Your original guitar's serial number is re-stamped using a vintage spec typeface that was custom designed by Historic Makeover. The application is done by hand using an old school rubber ink stamp made for each individual guitar. For black guitars or walnut-back Goldtops, a white ink is used that turns yellow under the ambered clear coat.

- One of the final steps for each Deluxe Makeover is a meticulous in-house setup, which gives the guitar a comfortable “broken-in” feel, and ensures optimal playability and stability. In addition to standard setup appointments, this step includes a full fret-dress, nut slotting, shaping, and polishing, as well as softening and beveling the fretboard binding edges for maximum comfort.