Lotus “Pawn Shop” Les Paul – Setup

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I don’t usually blog about setups… they’re… well… there’s nothing all that interesting about them. It’s very important aspect of guitar maintenance, but there’s not a whole lot of magic that goes into the process. This guitar, however, made the cut. It was almost like something out of a movie. It was too bad to be true and yet, there it was.

The customer said she bought this from a pawn shop in her hometown of Burnet, Texas. It was purchased “as-is” and from the looks of it, whoever sold it to the pawn shop, had no idea what they were doing, and like the patron trying to make a quick buck, neither did the manager of the pawn shop.

The strings were fed through the bridge, some of them rested on the saddles, others were not so fortunate. The strings were string up backwards into each tuner. The pickups lost their soldering on their underside and were falling apart, the saddles of the tune-o-matic saddles were all screwed as far forward as possible (not measured and offset for actual intionation purposes)… Aye yey yey.

Well, with a set of new DR Pure Blues and a few turns of the screwdriver, this guitar cleaned up nicely and was back to the customer within the hour. So remember, even if it’s a good deal to you, pawn store guitars usually need a check up after purchasing.

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