In addition to the 1974 1111, I'll be rebuilding a 1985 Legend at the same time

I was alerted to this guitar by a friend on FB. As luck would have it, the guitar was being sold in the condition shown here by a fellow living close by me, so I was able to pick it up in person rather than having it shipped.

Even though the guitar came with no top I was able to test the OP24 preamp by plugging the pickup on my 1617 into it. Overall, the finish on the neck is in good shape, so it won't need refinishing. The fret board is also in good shape, though the frets are very worn and will need to be replaced. I'll be using EVO gold frets. The tuners are also in good shape.

I'm going to use an ebony Custom Legend carved bridge with a black pickup instead of the usual white one, which should look pretty cool. It will get the standard pearloid rosette.

As I've said before I'm going to use torrefied Sitka spruce for the top and I'm going to use A-braces on this one. I've got two examples of an A-brace top. The first one came off a 1976 1619, which was an engineering example. The A-braces are pretty simple.

The cross brace in the middle of the A is not notched. The fan braces below this are simple 1/8" thick pieces of wood with a tapered scallop. The sides of the A were joined with a single piece of spruce forming a lap joint.

The second came off my 1617 and are quite a bit more complicated. The cross-piece is almost twice as thick and is notched for the fan braces. The fan braces are also more complex. The have the same tapered scallop, but they're also milled so the cross-section is like one half of an I-beam, with the wider part forming the base that is glued to the top wood. The ends of the fan braces also have a dap of epoxy securing them to the top wood, no doubt to keep them from popping up if the guitar is bumped. Instead of a single scrap of spruce lap-jointed to connect the upper and lower parts of the A braces, it's got a molded fiberglass reinforcement.

The braces I'm going to use on this guitar will be a hybrid of the two styles. I'll use the wider, notched cross-brace with the fiberglass reinforcements. The fan braces will have the tapered scalloped profile, but without the milled cross-section. I could make a tool to mill the wood, but I suspect the cross-section had more to do with reducing warranty work than with sound quality.

Thanks. I already have the bridge and the pick-up.

Interestingly, the finger braces and tone bars on the LX bracing used on my 50th Anniversary CL were also made with the same milled cross-section. Here's a couple of pics I took of the braces in my 2077AV50.

Another example of A-braces:
Custom legend 1769:

2. old custom legend 1619 (looks awful, sounds better)

I forgot to tell you that I meanwhile carefully fine-sanded the braces, I cannot live with such a mess, and see the real big hole in the top where the cables come out. It was so big that the low E string had barely material under it. The stereo pickup was broken anyway so I decided to transform the guitar into an acoustic.I filled the drilling hole with top-wood,

and made an exact matching piece of ebony to replace the pickup

and cut a nut for a bone saddle.

The guitar now sounds better than ever.

But enough from me, now I`m eager to see upcoming sequels of your new guitar series, which I follow just like I did with "Breaking Bad"

I jointed the top wood for this guitar today. I've made an appointment with my sanding guy for Monday to thickness sand the top.

While the glue is drying I cut the brace stock. Here's the basic A-braces.

And here's what it looks like compared to the original braces. The angles on the fan braces are approximate. I'll measure them for exact angles once the top is thickness sanded the top and cut out the outline and the sound hole.

Here's the aluminum A-brace reinforcements. The braces will be glued to the top wood using OBG, and the reinforcements will be glued using epoxy.

I would also make all of the other brace wood 1/2" thick instead of the 3/8" it is now.

A while ago I read the patent description for Adamas quintaid bracing pattern. One of the things I remember is the description of how a guitar top vibrates. Basically, it twists in torsion. The quintaid braces allow more twisting and the lack of a center sound hole prevents the top from warping due to string tension.

The A-brace looks to me, like a quintaid brace pattern that allows for a center sound hole. It seems to me that using taller braces that are still 1/8" thick, like the fan braces would help prevent the top from warping due to extra string tension, but still allow it to twist.