Around this time I discovered an ancient pickup in the den, that upon further examination turned out to be a late 1940s Gibson P-90! How did that happen? I bought it several years ago and had installed it on a low quality '60s archtop, but took it off again as it was feeding back too much. My enjoyment of the Kent Armstrong P90 in my Epi LP Jr led to a new plan to make the Supro into a kind of Supro /Junior hybrid, complete with a route for the P-90 and a dog-ear cover and wrap tail.
But I didn't have the heart to cut up the pristine Mother Of Toilet Seat pearloid finish on the Supro, so ended up with a trad short trapeze tail instead of the bridge/tail I planned, and with the right amount of adjustment of the strange neck joint, whch I slowly figured out, there was just enough room to surface mount the P-90 with no cover. The first time I plugged it in I knew it was a match made in heaven! I still have the option to make it a Dual Tone again in the future, but for now the single pup is King. There's not much chance of finding a '55 Junior for £200, so this will do, I love it ...
I still have some shaping to do on the scratchplate /pickguard, but I'm happy with it overall. The neck joint is unusual, to say the least, secured by a long bolt through the body parallel to the neck (as shown below). Very secure, but awkward to work with. Valco patented this joint design in 1953, but dropped it as a method of attaching necks around 1958/9.
I think it's a great idea, but ultimately I think it may have worked out too expensive. As time went on Valco neck/body joints became progressively more conventional - ending up in 1968 where Leo Fender started in 1950, with 4 screws and a metal plate.
It was off ebay from a young guy, but basically brand new, with all stickers etc and protective plastic stuff intact. The yellow ones aren't available new anywhere anymore, but some German suppliers still have the sunburst. Some people have a problem with them being made in China, like it's automatically suspect, but they've been making stringed instruments there for hundreds of years, so I don't think it's an issue per se. I feel slightly bad about supporting the exploitation of Chinese workers - it's cheap because labour is cheap - but that's international capitalism, right? I didn't buy it new, but still.
All my other electric guitars are 40-50 years old, so the newness was more of an issue. It felt big and heavier than I like, almost 8lbs. Some of the fret ends were a bit sharp, but I sorted those out. Frets are chunky, but ok. The neck itself is apparently thicker than a '60s neck, but not a true '50s thickness - I would have liked it thicker but it feels fine really. The fretboard is dense-grained and dark, and felt very dry at first, not like old rosewood at all (surprise!) I dabbbed on some lemon oil and rubbed my greasy fingers into it for half an hour to simulate some kind of preliminary wear. I also sanded along the edge of the fretboard so it wouldn't be so sharp, and dulled down the finish on the back of the neck with 00 steel wool, so it wouldn't be so sticky. These things all helped a lot with the playing 'feel'.
I made some other changes too - what can I say? I'm a tinkerer. The tuners were perfectly good, but I changed them for some nickel plated Grovers I had; I cut the nut slots down by a bit and rounded off the sharp edges around the nut so my hands don't catch on them; I swapped the wrong-looking chrome wraparound compensated bridge for a repro '50s uncompensated bridge/tail, in nickel, naturally. I'm even going to change the strap buttons for nickel ones. I like it! I tightened the truss rod a bit as it was totally loose, and improved the action (though it was ok as it was). I was really willing to give the P100 a go, because I don't have any other guitars with humbuckers and I didn't want to be swayed by the fact that everyone else has replaced it, but after various experiments I decided I'd swap that out too, for a GFS P90 I had in a kind of frankenstein 
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