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| This
was one of those "whim" snags. The original pics showed a good bit of abuse
and neglect, but I was confident I could turn it back into at least a decent
stage guitar. I did have my work cut out for me since both lower points
looked as if they had been a puppy's chewtoy. |
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| These
are the original pics from the auction. Not the best, but they were enough
to let me know I had taken on a bit of a challenge. The image just above
barely shows what is left of the silk-screen logo, series, and model nomenclature. |
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| Here
you can see the progress on re-crowning the points long lost to fido. Epoxy
in this case was the best option. If the guitar had been a more expensive
model and solid mahogany I might have actually cut the points off and glued
and pinned small blocks of mahogany instead. |
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| The
bridge had to be replaced, but I used the original cast saddles over the
sheet metal options. The pickups were cleaned up, dipped, and ready for
installation. The specs call out DiMarzio, but as you can see there was
no nomenclature on the backs of them. I have no idea if DiMarzio was manufacturing
OEMs back in the 1980s when this model was available. I will give them
this, if they are not, they did a good job of replicating the tone. The
guitar came factory equipped with a boost-preamp that when engaged added
+3 db to the signal. It was disconnedted and took a little trial and error
to figure out how to wire it back up again, but it's there, and unlike
many other preamps of the day adds to the guitar's capabilities rather
than detracting from it. |
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Now,
the end result.......
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idea behind resurrecting this guitar was to end up with a decent lookng,
good sounding stage guitar that could be easily touched up when stage life
takes it's inevitable toll. The re-finish was done with readily available
inexpensive rattle can (color and clear) so that when dings and scrapes
happen it's not a major investestment to tidy things up. Since the covers
were obviously mis-matched they were wet-sanded and painted a contrasting
black with clear, and all match now. The pickup rings were beat badly so
they received the same treatment. |
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Direct
sunlight is probably not the best light source to shoot this guitar (fine
metalflake finish), but I don't have any decent indoor lights and using
flash on a guitar is nuts.
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| The
three toggle are from top to bottom: Neck series/parallel, bridge series/parallel,
and boost. |
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| The
black covers IMO look much better than one cream, one white, and one off-white.
Hmmmm. Wonder how that happened. All the paints used are easily re-applied
to hide wear and tear, and should melt right into the existing finish. |
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| I
was worried the cream bobbins might look odd, but after everything came
together they look no more odd than guitars with zebra pickups. |
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| The
Grover minis were still in good shape with no rust and only took a little
polishing to bring them back to life. |
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| The
contrast between the black and red turned out well, It was either that
or white and red, and that wasn't necessarily the direction I wanted to
go.
All
in all it turned out well, but I did manage to put a couple of my own small
dings in it. While I was buffing the clear the chair I was sitting in gave
out and myself, the guitar, and the buffer went crashing to the floor.
I manageg to throw myself under the guitar but not before the buffer took
a nip at the heel and the tips of the lower points kissed the floor. Nonetheless,
it's hardly noticeable. Hopefully this makes a decent first stage guitar
for an aspiring rocker. |
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