Coming in the home stretch. Body is finished... wiring finished. Still need to figure out the pickup rings, reinstall the hardware, and shape the nut.

Headstock that's been wet-sanded lightly. I did this before I started finishing the body. I stopped about 70% of the way through the process so that any dings or handling marks during the body finishing process wouldn't negate a bunch of finish work on the headstock.


Back of guitar with Amber finish.

Front of guitar with Amber finish.

Wiring harness that's been completed.


Pickups that have had new covers soldered on.

Headstock in the process of being wet-sanded. I pulled off the tape over the letters and symbol, and then I started building up a pretty thick coating of sanding sealer, and then clear coat. Now it's finally time to sand with 1000 grit sandpaper and a small straight-edge.

Headstock

Another update. Progress has been slow but meaningful. I've been spending most of my time painting the headstock black, while trying to maintain the Epiphone logo. Not as easy as it sounds. Actually... it doesn't even sound easy. Eh. It's harder than it sounds.

I've also been spending time sanding the body with 320 grit sandpaper, getting off as much grime and dirt as possible.

More fretwork

So progress is being made... albeit slowly. I've leveled the frets, which made the guitar playable (win!) but many frets were awkwardly flat (lose!). I had to take a small flat edge file, and give each fret more of a contour. It didn't take too long, but it was tedious. I also polished the frets with 1500 grit sandpaper, and the rubbing compound to make them smoother.

Then I strung up the guitar with heavy-bottom 10's and the guitar played great!



The real excitement is that I've bought the paint that I need for the guitar (it's on the way), and the rest of the electronics, including pickup covers, and pickup rings. I should have all of these things in the next week, and then I'll fully disassemble and start painting the guitar.

frets...

Phew. Long delay - but I've been hard at work. I've been spending a lot of time working on the frets on this guitar, and I've fashioned 320, 500, and 1000 grit straightedges to attempt and get some backbow.

Without going into an insane amount of detail, the guitar doesn't naturally have relief in the neck. It's always straight. To make all the notes not just buzz out, I'm leveling the frets while the guitar is held in a backbow. Then, when the neck is released, the guitar go back to being straight, but with the slightest amount of upbow. It's been pretty cool to see the guitar go from not play well, to being pretty good.

I still need to work on my fret crowning, but I don't have the tool for that. I might need to fabricate something.

More to follow.... Including pictures.

Frets...

So I spent some time leveling the frets, and it's going pretty well. I'm using the truss rod to pull the neck into a backbow, and then sanding the frets level. When I release the tension, there more of an upbow than there was before, which allows me to actually play the guitar. I've decided that I'm going to finish the guitar myself, in a honeyburst finish. Once I get the guitar playing well, I'll pull the trigger on the electronics and the paint.

Some new challenges

So as I've been trying to figure out the next steps for this guitar, I let a guitar tech friend take a look. Turns out there's some funkiness on the fretboard. It's a bit warped, and doesn't have the upbow needed to give the guitar neck much relief. That being said, I'll have some more work to do than thought.

No worries though... I was able to get the guitar strung up, and it does sound great unplugged (although it doesn't play great... yet).

The parts start coming....

Exciting! I finally got some parts in.Tuners, nut, frequensator tailpiece, and an ABR-1 bridge.

Here are some pictures.

The booty...


Sweet!
You can see the original cherry finish in the mini-humbucker route...
I also ordered a peice to repair my '53 Gibson Es-125. The tailpiece had broken after 50 years of stress. Now she's back up and running, albeit a little shinier.

Waiting....

And so the wait begins...

This is always the frustrating part of a project like this. Everything is in the mail...

Soon, I should have enough parts to put some strings on the guitar, and see how it plays/sound unplugged. Looking forward to that very much.

Some eye candy to hold me over...

Get 'er done.

Phew. The last week has been crazy for a number of reasons, but I've made a lot of progress acquiring the parts that I need to bring this Riviera back to life.

So far I've ordered...

• Frequensator tailpiece. (Sweet!!!)
• Reissue vintage-correct Tuners
• A nut
• ABR-1 Tailpiece

Annnnd... I got really lucky and was able to snag a set of Early 70's Gibson Mini-Humbuckers for only $100 dollars! I'm super excited about that. I had resigned myself to getting cheap reissue to keep the cost of the project down. The only catch is that they have black plastic covers, so I'll need to buy new nickel covers.

A good find...

Hello, fellow guitar geeks and music folk!

I recently snagged a 1966 Epiphone Riviera in pretty sorry shape. It's been completely stripped of all finish, and has no hardware, pickups, anything, except a serial number on the back of headstock, and Epiphone identification sticker on the inside of the body.

I'm going to (attempt to) chronicle the journey of breathing some life back into this guitar, partly to get other people's opinion and thoughts, and partly to help me remember the process after it's over.

One thing that initially intrigues me about this guitar is how few were actually produced. Less than 320 per year (on average) over the course of their production. That's about one per day rolling out of the Gibson/Epiphone Kalamazoo factory! This chart on shipping totals shows that 7.5 times as many Gibson ES-335's sold, as compared to the (more expensive at the time!) E360TD Riviera.

Sales for the period 1962-1969
manufacturer	model	shipping total	price (1/10/66)
Epiphone	E360TD (Riviera)	2556	$395, $435 with tremotone vibrato
Gibson	ES-335TD	19222	$365, $380 cherry

Another thing that intrigues me is the similarity to Gibson's Es-335. Workmanship and design are identical to an ES-335 that would have been made at the time. Both are semi-hollow body with a maple block running down the center, and share the same shape. The main differences lie in the tailpiece, the pickups, and obviously the Epiphone headstock. A little more detail below...

• The non-vibrato tailpiece on the Riviera is always a frequensator trapeze style, where the strings are connected via the tailpiece to the end pin area of the guitar. This tailpiece design is unique, and it lengthens the lower pitched stings, and shortens the higher pitched strings, in effort to balance their volume.
• The pickups are mini-humbuckers, whereas the 335 uses PAF full sized humbuckers

The list of things that I'll need to complete the guitar is a bit daunting. Tuners, pickups, pots, pickguard, tailpiece, bridge, paint/finish... and the list continues.

I also have a number of options as far as the direction that I take the guitar. I could make the guitar just like an original Riviera, or like a 335, or even a casino, in regards to appearance and pickups.


Here's a mint example in Cherry...

Mint Example in Royal Tan (the other available color)

Here's the 1966 Catalog, with an example of the Royal Tan Finish (top left)...