Gibson SG - Matching Its Parts to Its Original Era Part 2

Everyone, take a look. It’s a wild swan. Isn’t it cute? It came up close to us, and we were happily chatting, saying things like “How cute!” when suddenly, an old man with a kei truck appeared. To my surprise, he started feeding the swan... It turned out that the swan only came up to us because it thought it was going to be fed, which was a bit of a shock to me just the other day.

In the previous blog, I only replaced the nut and rod cover on the SG, but this time, I want to take the work a bit further.

So, here we go...

Ta-da! I’ve prepared the Kluson tuners, conversion bushings, Gibson ABR-1 bridge, and conversion posts.
As mentioned in the previous blog, I’m aiming to match the specs from around late 1962 to early 1963, so I selected the parts accordingly.

The tuners are these, and the bridge is this.

I feel like single-line tuners would be more authentic, but the two 1963 models I’ve played in the past both had double-line tuners. So, I decided to go with that memory. Well, this period was a transitional one when parts specifications were frequently swapped, so I think it’s okay. The rest are conversion parts to match the specifications of the parts.

The conversion bushings aren’t that rare, but I did have to search a bit for the conversion posts. Some products even had a 1.5mm hex wrench hole in the head, which made it hard to find the right one. But in the end, I managed to secure it successfully.

Now that I have all the parts, let’s get started with the work from the headstock side. First, I need to remove the original tuners, but...

There were washer marks left on the paint around the tuner holes. The original Gibson tuners were of the type that use a nut to tighten from the front, similar to a Rotomatic, so this was unavoidable. But I’ll just move forward with the work without worrying about it...

The back side is perfect. No need to change any screw positions or anything.

Here’s how the front side looks. The washer marks are visible, but it actually looks better than I expected…! There’s definitely a unique vibe that only the Kluson tuners with the clean tuner post area can bring. The switch from single-ring to double-ring seems to highlight the distinct characteristics of this period’s Gibson.

Riding on the momentum, I went ahead and swapped out the bridge as well. The bridge I prepared this time doesn’t have the string grooves cut, so I needed to cut the grooves to fit based on the original bridge. I cut the grooves to match the original bridge this time.

After installing it...

It looks so good...!? Compared to the Nashville-type, it's slimmer, so the space between the pickups and the spring is a bit cleaner. It looks great!

So, I’ve replaced the tuners, rod cover, nut, and bridge.

Here’s the before-and-after. It’s really a subtle difference, but once I hold it, the overall vibe has changed quite a bit. The satisfaction is really high. Also, with these changes, I’ve managed to somewhat unify the reproduction era, so it feels cleaner in that sense as well.

With that, I’ve finished working on the SG. I’m satisfied, but also a bit tired (mainly from cutting the nut and bridge grooves), so I’ll say it’s done for now. When I’m feeling up to it again, I’ll work on some of the other guitars. See you then!