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| Doc,
known as DRK on the board, had a bit of a project for me. He had seen the
rattle can jobs I had done during the Guitar Summit, and asked me if I'd
do the same for a Cort LP he got burnt on via eBork. The seller claimed
it was in "pristine condition" (being sold as a shell with no guts or hardware).
Pristine my rear end! The thing had been sanded either to the stained wood
or almost over 100% of the once finished surface!
Naturally,
I agreed. He has done so many favors for me how could I possibly refuse?
Yes, it is Korean, but this was for Doc, so the rules can be bent under
certain circumstances. First order of business was gathering what parts
I had, and putting together a parts list. Since everything was missing
it was a pretty hefty list.
Had
I been thinking, I would have taken some "before" shots, but alas was so
excited to get started it I tore into the project and before I had realized
I hadn't documented from the start it was too late... |
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| The
prep work consisted of re-sanding everything that was not fine sanded.
There was a huge finish crack at the heel which had to be drop-filled and
re-shaped. There were places where the stain had been sanded into and the
wood was lighter, others appeared to be factory flaws. Since the wood had
been sealed after staining I had to resort to staining with a stain pen
or staining in between coats. After the fist coat and wet-sand I could
plainly see the dings that had to be drop-filled and did so. |
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The
shots here without hardware were after all but the final gloss coat. It
was hard getting shots that did not reflect too much of the light sources,
but using flash resulted in terribly inaccurate shots.
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Shot
of the front using items on the bench in the background as reflections.
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A
low angle shot of the back using items on the bench as reflections to show
the end result of the finish.
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For
contrast to the original shots I took the guitar outside and shot under
overcast skies to eliminate as much reflection as possible so the grain
would stand out. It's now equipped with a Schaller Roller bridge, standard
stop-tail. Schaller tuners, rubber grip vintage style knobs, and a set
of Duncan HB-102s.
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| Installing
the bridge presented me with two options. Either adapt the Schaller posts
to existing anchors I had here, or plugging and re-boring new holes for
the Schaller posts. I opted for the first since this gave me good, solid
anchors that would better transmit string vibration to the body. I had
to slightly ream the generic anchors and then press-fit the schaller anchors
into them. It took a good bit of pressure but it's a solid fit, and there'll
be no loss of sustain there! Both the anchors for the bridge and tailpiece
had to be hide-glued in since they were just a touch smaller than what
came out of it originally and I wanted a little better fit than just "snug". |
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| Here's
a shot of the back with covers installed. Doc had ordered generic LP covers
from Allparts (yeah, the over-priced guys). Unfortunately the control cavity
cover was nowhere near the shape it needed to be so the only option left
was to cut one from scratch. Luckily I had a piece of blank cover/pickguard
maeterial here so off to tracing a template I went. I don't have any of
the fancy yuppie jigs and routers like the rich guys, I have to make them
by hand, and it can be a tedious process shaping, fitting, shaping, fitting,
over and over until it's close. If you were to take it out you would know
it was not machine made, but even at close inspection with it installed
it's hard to tell. I guess I got lucky this time around. |
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| I
took a couple of shots that were not dead-on to better show the actual
color in real life. Dead-on with an overcast sky tends to sap the color
level and de-saturate the view. |
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| Another
shot at an angle. All in all nearly all of the flaws were addressed, but
there are a few spots that are only possible to find on close inspection
that despite my best efforts are still there, albeit for the most part
unnoticeable. I know they are there. |
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| It
still needs a truss cover, but I left that to Doc since it's probably not
going to be all that difficult to scrounge one that fits. The face of the
headstock had two small white "whatthehellisits" deep under the finish.
For fear of defacing the MOP inlays sanding down to them I opted to just
lay a couple of coats down and polish it out. There were a couple of dings
on the pointy parts. |
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