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An aquaintance of an aquaintance was looking for some flame maple for tops. I just happened to have a glued up back from 20 years ago for a 17" archtop that I stupidly glued up and then cut out as a left handed back! I could have rescued it in a few different ways but was luck to have a buddy that milled his own trees and which gave me plenty of flamed and quilt maple. He offered to trade a Les Paul style body that he milled out on his CNC and I said sure, why not.

Anyway, it has a walnut top on top of an ash body. I started building archtops and then progressed to flat tops but have never built an electric. Probably not the way most people start .

The body is 2 3/16" thick where the neck pocket will eventually be cut and 1 7/8" thick at the tail end. The walnut top is 11/16" thick at the neck end and 3/8" at the tail end.

I would have liked to leave the top natural even though it's not a spectacular grain pattern. If installing binding, I'm not too excited about a nearly 3/4" tall binding at one end tapering to 3/8" at the other end in order to cover the walnut. If I want to go with lower binding, it means having walnut and then ash below the binding so I'd obviously have to go with an opaque finish of some sort on the ash etc. below the binding. Not coming up with too many color schemes that would look good with a natural walnut top.

So what would you do? Goldtop or opaque finish completely or natural top with some color for the back? It's a carved top but has a flat section about 4 1/4" wide extending back to the tailpiece.

A few pics of the body.

I don't find any of the woodgrain objectionable on the walnut or ash, so I'd go with a clear finish. The only thing I'd do is veneer the back to cover those 2 holes.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

That's cool! What Chris said go clear and show that gorgeous wood.

Thanks guys. I think that's a good idea. No binding saves time too!

Why not carve the top and set the neck at whatever angle it takes to work with whatever bridge you want to use? A LP style of carve is typically 5/8 thick in the center and 1/4 at the binding (there is a bit of weirdness in the horn). I would consider wood binding that contrasts with the walnut and ash, maybe maple, but you don't want too many woods fighting each other (part of that will depend on what you choose for neck and fretboard woods).

What is the thickness at the potentiometer holes - that may affect whether you can carve the top? Also what are the two holes in the back?

Also what scale length are the bridge bushings drilled for? That will be very important as you carve the neck you will be working back from the bridge location.

ps - my first electric guitar was a carved topped set neck les paul clone. I think that having acoustic experience let me understand set neck geometry much better.

pps - you can find LP carving profiles on line or just do like I did and wing it. I would have expected someone who makes an electric guitar on a cnc to profile the top and certainly doing in by hand will be a lot of work. I do have a set of LP profiles and could e-mail them to you

A couple more thoughts to my above comments. Both walnut and ash are porous woods and should be pore filled if you want a smooth glossy finish. If you wipe the woods with naphtha or DNA it will show you what they will look like under a wetting finish. If you like what you see then a finishing resin like Zpoxy will both fill the pores an pop the grain.

Here is a LP style guitar in a wood that is somewhat similar to yours (happens to be Spanish cedar). Binding, fretboard, pickup rings, knobs are all rosewood. Body and neck are mahogany and head is bound in rosewood. I would consider something like this for yours

Gorgeous guitar Freeman. I've used Zpoxy on a couple of builds, two being mahogany and one walnut. It definitely popped the grain especially on the stripey mahogany. I have a Taig lathe so making some custom knobs may be something I'll do once I finalize a plan.