Epiphone LP Goldtop MIK

Epiphone guitars made in Korea (MIK):
This is an old Epiphone Les Paul standard goldtop model. It's made in Korea and it was probably made by Cor-tek(Cort) or Samick guitars back in the day. It's a fine example of that production era, just before the Qinqdao factory started producing most modern Epiphone guitars.
This guitar was heavily used and there were a few issues with it, the main problem being that there were no pickups or electronics on it. So we decided to go for a full on  restoration and modification (restomod) of the guitar, with a twist...
Active pickups on a goldtop guitar?
The owner had a set of active EMG 81 and 85 pickups and so all I had to do was to install them on the guitar and wire all the new electronics inside the control cavity. An for those who think that these pickups are a modern twist for this old Epi guitar, we should remember that Emg pickups were developed back in 1979(!) and so they are considered "classics".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMG_81

But wait a minute, which pickup should I install in the bridge position?
Well, there's no right answer here.  Both emg 81 and 85 pickups could be installed in the neck or bridge position. We decided to place the ceramic pickup in the bridge position for a hotter output and place the AlNiCo one in the neck position. The EMG 81 has a ceramic magnetic bar:
http://www.emgpickups.com/guitar/humbucking/active-humbucking/81.html#info
The EMG 85 has an AlNiCo magnetic bar:
http://www.emgpickups.com/guitar/humbucking/active-humbucking/85.html#info

The new pickups were bolted on the cream plastic pickup rings and the pickups were then installed on the guitar.

Electronics:
Most active pickup systems use 25K pots instead of 250K and 500K pots used on passive electronics. This is due to the different output impedance of the active pickups. A 500K pot wired on an EMG active pickup would be an "impedance mismatch" case. Therefore, I bought two A25K (logarithmic) pots plus a set of B25K linear pots. We also got two 100nF ceramic capacitors for the tone controls.
The new pots got wired up and all the electronics were checked for continuity and resistance with a digital multimeter (DMM). Once everything was put together, a fresh 9V battery was fitted in and the electronics were tested. Everything worked just fine!

New strings and setup:
The next step was to put new strings on the guitar and have it set up properly. The frets were a bit nasty looking so I decided to polish them using a Dunlop fine sandpaper polishing kit and a fretboard guard metallic plate. The fretboard was also cleaned up. The nut and fretboard were lubricated with lemon oil and the guitar was ready for a new set of coated strings. I use coated strings a lot simply because they last longer.
The action was set low and the intonation came out just right. This guitar was really sing now and it's ready for some heavy riffing and soloing.

Here are a few pictures of the guitar:

-Cheers,
Thanos
guitardreamer.gr@gmail.com