Lestercasters

The Covid Guitars

Goldtop and Sunburst Lestercasters, with ebony and Brazilian rosewood fretboards

I stopped making guitars for a while but since I was essentially stuck at home to avoid the nasty pandemic I thought I’d keep busy. I wondered what kind of guitar would’ve come from a collaboration between Les Paul and Leo Fender. What if Les went to Leo instead of the Gibson company back in the early 50s? Would this be the guitar they might develop? I made a goldtop using mahogany for the body and neck with a maple cap covered in the exact same Cres-Lite gold tone powder that Gibson used in the 50’s. It’s mixed into nitrocellulose lacquer and covers both the body and headstock. I made the fretboard using nicely grained Gaboon ebony. The ice tea sunburst model is also made of mahogany with a curly maple cap. But I made the fretboard using Brazilian rosewood repurposed from flooring in a house in Washington state. Both guitars use my own hand-wound pickups which I potted using wax from our backyard beehives. I even made the decals and hand painted the one on the sunburst guitar in gold tone paint. The goldtop has a Bakelite pickguard.