MY FIRST GUITAR
AVILA LES PAUL COPY
No, I do not still have the first guitar I ever owned. But I did make a really good clone of it 33 years later!
I tell this story all the time. With the first paycheck from the first real job that I had, I bought a guitar. It was early June 1983 and I got my first paycheck from Baskin-Robbins. I walked over to Balboa Music down the street by the IHOP, and dropped the cash for a cheap Les Paul copy I had been eyeing. It had a tobacco sunburst finish and I remember thinking at the time that it looked like the guitar Steve Clark played in Def Leppard. I really didn't know anything about guitars at the time. It had one pickup, but I didn't know if that was a big deal or not. It had a bolt-on neck, and I eventually found out it was a plywood body. I had no clue. The headstock had an Avila logo, and I didn't know anything about that brand. I just knew I wanted a guitar and this one was $99. They threw it in a cheap chipboard case, and I walked out feeling like a rock star.
My guess now is that the guitar was a 1982 model, but there is hardly any information on Avila on the Internet. I had seen it in the shop in the weeks and months prior to purchasing it, so I backdated it a year. It's not like Balboa Music was selling dozens of guitars a week or anything. I played it stock for a while, but my own curiosity about how the thing worked (definitely inspired by EVH's own tinkering detailed in guitar magazines) led me to modify it and eventually destroy it after three years.
I don't have any pictures of how the guitar looked off the rack, but I do have some photos of it after the first modification - when I replaced the stock neck with a garbage Hondo neck in early 1985. I trashed the original neck and when taking out the electronics in 1986, I made two startling revelations: the body was plywood and the "humbucker" only housed a single coil (I've since found boutique pickup manufacturers that make humbucker-sized, single-coil pickups to achieve a very specific sound, but I'm quite sure Avila was just trying to save $$). As my guitar gear education has grown over the years, it was easy to think back to this guitar and realize that it was a piece of junk. The neck and the body. The pickup and the electronics. The tuners. All garbage. Probably the only part worth salvaging on the guitar was the wrap-around tailpiece, which ironically I did save.
Over the years I've looked on eBay and other sites for an Avila Les Paul-looking guitar, but haven't found any. (My original Avila was not so much an actual Les Paul Standard copy, but a more-simple Les Paul Junior copy.) If I did, I would most certainly buy one, as I have gotten sentimental over time about all the old gear I used to have. I guess all of these old Avila guitars ended up in landfills! So anyway, during the summer of 2016, I decided to actually try and re-create my first guitar and since I couldn't go out an just purchase it again, I had to be creative. Enter the tobacco sunburst Epiphone Les Paul Junior.
Epiphone has been making these inexpensive Juniors for a number of years, and while it's not a perfect match, it certainly has a lot in common with my first guitar. Bolt-on, Les Paul style. One pickup. Flat top with a wrap bridge. Neck and body back painted black. (See the Similarities and Differences list below.) I found a cheap used one (2014 serial number model) online sitting at a Guitar Center in Lakeland, FL, and I'm happy to say it was cheaper than the Avila model I bought 33 years ago! But I would have to make some modifications.
The first thing I did was track down someone who could make me an Avila decal for the headstock. I painted the headstock black and applied the new decal, and buffed it out. That was the first mod. Second, I purchased a G.M. (Guitar Madness) chrome 57 Special humbucker and wired it into a new harness with 500K Alpha pots, an Orange Drop cap, and a Switchcraft jack - all top-of-the-line components. No garbage electronics in this new version.
Of course I also added Schaller straplock buttons, replaced the stock tuners with 3x3 Gotoh locking tuners (I had to re-drill the holes), and removed the stock pickguard - my original Avila didn't have a pickguard. I also swapped the stock cream humbucker ring for a black one, and replaced the plastic side jack plate with a metal one and the stock plastic nut with Graph Tech Black Tusq graphite. Lastly, I aged the body just a bit to match it with a nice chip in the lower bout by the output jack (probably due to shipping), but I touched it up with some black paint. So the only stock parts left on this Epiphone are the neck wood, body wood, and control cavity cover. Everything has been swapped out - even the truss rod cover and the neck plate (both had the Epiphone logo).
And then there was the bridge. This Epiphone model comes with a nice, cheap wrap-around tailpiece, but I had my own that I wanted to use. The original one from my old 1982 Avila. Of course, it didn't fit on the Epiphone posts (they were too thick), so I searched my endless boxes of old guitar parts and came across two thinner posts that thankfully work in the Epiphone threaded bushings. Hmmm. I wonder where these came from? When I part out a guitar, I make a point to always save the hardware, so I'm 99% sure these are the original posts from the '82 Avila. I haven't owned too many LP-style bodies that would use these, so that's the story I'm sticking with. And yes, it means A LOT to me that there is at least something on this re-creation that was from my original guitar. My first guitar. (I believe the black speed knobs from my original Avila are on my EVH Shark.) I had quite a few spare speed knobs laying around - I only swapped out the original Epiphone knobs because one was slightly cracked.)
This version is way better than my first guitar. No plywood here. The necks plays great and the G.M. humbucker does the vintage tone as advertised. My first G.M. pickup and I would go that route again. Very inexpensive and they seem to have a great selection. I typically use 10s on 24 3/4"-scale guitars, but I used 9s on my original Avila, so I string this baby up with 9s, too.
I'll keep looking for a real Avila Les Paul Copy on eBay, but until I find one, this satisfying project is my first guitar.
More photos and info on my original Avila Les Paul Copy.
Similarities between the new Epiphone and the original Avila:
--Les Paul-style, flat-top body
--tobacco sunburst face with black back
--rosewood fretboard with black back
--24 3/4" scale
--bolt-on neck with tilt-back headstock
--1 pickup with chrome cover and black pickup ring
--1 volume, 1 tone with black speed knobs
--chrome wrap-around tailpiece (original from '82 Avila)
--Les Paul-style 3x3 black headstock with Avila logo
Differences between the new Epiphone and the original Avila:
--solid mahogany body (original was plywood)
--no body binding (original had a white/cream face binding)
--standard 22-fret neck with standard face dots (original had a zero fret and a face dot on the 1st fret)
--locking tuners (originals were standard [cheap] 3x3)
--nut is Graph Tech Black Tusq graphite (original was black plastic)
--Epiphone headstock shape (original had a different headstock outline)
--Schaller straplock buttons (originals were standard buttons)
--pickup is a G.M. Alnico 2 humbucker (original was a stock single-coil pickup [garbage] housed inside a humbucker casing)
--side output jack plate (original had the output jack on the face)
--500K potentiometers (Alpha), output jack (Switchcraft), and .015uf tone capacitor (Orange Drop) are first quality (original electronics/harness were cheap garbage)
--came with a Les Paul Junior-style pickguard - holes remaining (original never had a pickguard)
--electronics cavity is narrow like a Telecaster (original had a larger, rectangle-like cavity to account for the output jack)
--transport is a super-tough Gibson gig bag (original guitar had a cheap chipboard "case" purchased from Balboa Music)
August 2016
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