Gibson Midtown Custom mod

 This new Gibson Midtown Custom semi-hollow body guitar came in for a few mods. The guitar had  the following specs:

Chambered Mahogany body with Not carved bound Maple top

Mahogany neck with '60s SlimTaper™ neck profile

Black Richlite® fingerboard with acrylic block inlays

Burstbucker 1 in the neck and Burstbucker 2 in the bridge

Grover™ kidney button tuners with 14:1 tuning ratio

and a 2299 $ retail price!

http://www2.gibson.com/Products/Electric-Guitars/Designer/Gibson-USA/Midtown-Custom.aspx

 When the guitar arrived, the original Gibson BB pickups were replaced with a set of Surf 90 Guitar Fetish pickups. Though the GFS pickups are really decent ones, the P90 style and hum wasn't what the owner was looking for.

http://www.guitarfetish.com/GFS-Surf-90-Alnico-II-Rockabilly-Pickups_c_259.html

 So he brought a pair of boutique hand wound PAF style humbuckers with chrome covers to be installed on the guitar. Installing these pickups wasn't difficult as Gibson put a plastic cavity cover on the back of this semi-hollow body guitar.

 The next we had to take care of was a dead note(!) at the first fret of the high E string. The second fret was a bit high so I gently pressed it down. The dead note was gone but when I lowered the action, the first frets were buzzing a bit so I gave a bit of neck relief  to eliminate the fret buzz.  Mind you, the guitar came with a very high action, the intonation was a bit off and it cost around 2200$ new...

It seems the Gibson plek machine didn't take care of the fret and setup issues in this case.

 The guitar in now set up and ready to play right! It seems that an initial setup is necessary for any guitar, affordable or expensive!

Here are few pictures of the guitar: (click to enlarge)