New Guitar Day: Epiphone ES-335 Pro With a Lot Of Work

I bought an Epiphone ES-335 Pro at an extremely discounted price due to it having a cracked neck.  I knew I would have to put in a lot work to make it playable and to my liking.  However, due to being a full service luthier, I knew I could put in a lot of time to make it perfect.

For the longest time I had always wanted an Epiphone ES-335/Dot/Sheridan type of guitar.  So when I saw this one at such a reduced price I knew it was perfect for me.

First, let's start with the neck crack.  It wasn't a bad break at all.  But that also made it difficult to squeeze enough glue in the cracks.  The luthier I learned from taught me to use extremely hot water along with Titebond 2 to penetrate the cracks. I was also taught that if you have an additional person to help you out, use them.  In this case I put pressure on the neck, thus opening up the crack, while someone else forced glue into the break.  After that I could clamp it and let it set for 48 hours.

After I had made sure the neck was holding together I fret dressed the guitar.  I've found that anytime a neck is broken on a guitar to just go ahead and fret dress it.

The next step was to change out the pickups.  I'll admit, I always change out the pickups, but this time I had a dang good reason.  A month ago I wrote about my trip to the Orlando Guitar Expo.  It was there I bought a set of TV Jones Super'tron pickups.  So they were destined to go into this guitar.

Epiphone didn't make it easy.  First off, there has never been an access panel on the back of their thinline semi-hollowbody guitars.  Then, they decided to install push/pull pots on this guitar.  Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but it means that Epiphone decided to use plug type of pickup attachment.

That means instead of soldering the pickup to the pot, the pot now has a place for the pickup to be plugged in.  That makes it a pain to switch pickups since five small wires have to now be attached to the plug.  And that's for each pickup.  It's more time consuming than it is hard.  I just had to be careful of the wire codes.  Not all companies use the same wire color coding.

My next step was to create a bone nut.  This was one of the things that took me the longest time to learn.  However, over time I have become very adapt at creating them.  This one turned out perfect.

Next it was time for some easier things.  I installed locking straps.

I also decorated it with chrome knobs adorned with black pearl.

Since this is an archtop/hollowbody style of guitar I decided to string it up with a .012 - .053 gauge set.  Next it was time to set the guitar up.  Everything went smoothly, and I was anxious to hear what my "boutique" TV Jones pickups sounded like.

The bridge pickup is awesome. It reminds me quite a bit of a Bill Lawrence L-500-R.  However, the neck pickup is quite strange. It's overly bassy which is odd considering it's a filtertron pickup. To correct it I did something that I've never had to do.

I lowered the bass side quite a bit and raised the treble side very close to the strings. I could get away with it since it's a bladed pickup. That seemed to bring out the best in the pickup.

I still find it kind of strange that it's so unbalanced. Especially since it's a boutique pickup as well as a filtertron pickup.

Overall I have to say it's a pretty awesome guitar.  I hate that I've been wanting one for over a decade, and just got around to buying one.  But it's not like I don't have other guitars, right?  This one will keep me busy for a while.