It was shipped in an Epiphone shelf box (equivalent to a cereal box) with a few pieces of foam, a handful of foam peanuts, and a couple pieces of paper. There were chunks of wood gouged out of the body along the edge of the control cavity. The worst yet was the neck had prevoiusly come loose and been re-glued, at the wrong pitch, with SUPERGLUE! In order to get it to play someone had filed the saddles down flush with the bridge, cut grooves in the bridge for the strings, and set the bridge down flush against the body. I was told it played great. I guess if you didn't strum, pick, or bend the strings it was okay. I get the impression these people would be perfectly happy with a stringless Tiesco!

After 3 hours of cooking, pressure, and a bottle of super glue de-bonder,  I had body and neck seperated only to find out why it was set wrong in the first place. The wood at the back of the neck pocket had de-laminated along the layers of grain. It took anther bottle of de-bonder to get the superglue out. The neck pocket was too deep to replace the damaged portion of wood so I filled the gaps between the layers with a mixture of hard maple sawdust and 3600 lb epoxy and clamped over night. I only had one shot at a re-set with the epoxy, but I had prepped the pocket and neck well, and had the pitch correct with good surface-to-surface contact. The next morning was a good one! Good solid bond with the perfect pitch to the neck! It's taking a lot more work than I had anticipated, but I'll win this one yet!

Update: Well, I slapped it back to together some time back but have not yet decided how to re-finish it. All the original electronics went back in it and considering it's previous condition, it has done a 180! It has that classic '80s tone. Pardon the slop, but the sound samples will at least give you an idea. =] More pics coming soon!