'95 Korean Epiphone Les Paul 100

I picked this one up at High Voltage Music up on Capital Hill.

She's a 1995 Epiphone Les Paul 100, made in Korea (before production was moved to China)
They're slimmer than Les Paul Studio models, and have a bolt-on neck instead of a set neck.

It was hanging high on the wall for $49.99, minus a bridge and a tailpiece, and plus some stickers. I had to grab her! She had to be saved! I had a feeling she could be quite lovely.

The first steps were to document issues and abuse and formulate a plan.

Obviously, she was missing a bridge and a tailpiece - no way to string her up! The bridge is a metal plate with saddles that the strings pass over, which can be adjusted to set string height and intonation. Below it goes the tailpiece, which holds the strings and provides a connection to the body for resonance. Both important bits and both obviously missing!

Hmm. Something's going on with those pickup rings too! They're all cockeyed. Turns out they're the wrong size and have been stretched to fit the screwholes - these Epiphones have odd sized pickup rings.

No pickguard either - but screws have been driven into the body where one used to be. Yuck!

Interesting jack situation here too - it's a plastic jackplate with no screws, held on with tape. A cracked plastic jackplate, no less. Also, one of those tone knobs is badly cracked. Hmm!

Missing the top to the rhythm/treble switch too.

Some very attractive sticker selections, no?

 Johnny Bravo. You can see the Korean neckplate here. I used the serial number to look up the year.

Indie girl? Also, some packing tape to keep the control plate on. Nice!

Nice alien sticker for the headstock, and a missing truss rod cover.

The tuners were INCREDIBLY floppy, and not tightenable. Also filled with bits of food. Yum.


After cleaning off the goop and gunk and stickers, I made another discovery. The bridge pickup was dead ( or nearly so ) - just a very faint clunking when tapped with a screwdriver. I did a resistance test with a multimeter all the way back to the pickup, but no dice - very dead. I unwound the tape around the coils and found frayed bits of bobbin wire. No wonder! Beyond my powers to resurrect (maybe someday!)

Nice Switchcraft jack already installed though! (Even if barely soldered on)

I headed to the Trading Musician and picked up a used pearloid pickguard, a used pickguard bracket, a replacement knob, a switch top, a new chromed 'rhythm/treble' plate, and an 'incorrect' truss rod cover from another guitar model, as well as a new GOTOH bridge and tail piece, and a new set of Ping aftermarket tuners that were exact fit matches for the existing ones. I also picked up a silver 'football' style jackplate to replace the old plastic one.

I additionally got a used bridge pickup - what I believe is a 5416 Parsons Street humbucking pickup from StewMac for thirty bucks - it had a 5416 bridge sticker on the back and was in the used bin. It sounds nice!

Couldn't find any pickup ring matches though - for that I had to drop by Guitar Center, where, after some measuring, I found the right match.

Time to clean her up!

With all the hardware off, I polished and buffed several times, to get out the finer scratches. This is an 18 year old guitar that has seen a lot of action, so she'll never be showroom perfect without a full patch and paint job, but I think she's pretty the way she is, and a buffing makes her look very nice indeed.

Wiring was next-

Several wires had come disconnected in the cavity, and the jack had been only barely wired in, with the hot and ground joined up bare next to each other. After separating and insulating them, resoldering the borked connections, and wiring up the new pickup, I tested all the switch positions and pickups with a screwdriver and my test amp.

With that job done, I affixed the humbuckers with the new pickup rings, and added and grounded a silver cover for the neck pickup (which was bare) so that it would match the new bridge pickup (and also because it is sexy).

The new pearloid pickguard took some work - it didn't exactly match the pickup layout. I had to use a dremel to carve it out to the appropriate size, and then sand and carve the rounded corners. It worked out great though!

I took my nonstandard truss rod cover and cut it down to size after some careful measuring, and put it in place.

I attached the bridge and tailpiece, and installed the new tuners, and it was time to string her up!

After stringing her, I set the neck relief, the action, and the intonation to spec.

Uh oh! Fret buzz! Most frets above 12 were pretty buzzy. No fun.

I used my homemade fret rocker ( an old Squier neckplate ), and rocked it back and forth across triplets of frets to find the high ones, and marked them with a magic marker. Then I bent the strings aside and CAREFULLY filed down the problem spots until the buzz JUST disappeared. A tiny bit is ok, because the final sanding and polishing will remove a little more material.

The strings all then had to come off, and I taped the fretboard, and sanded the frets until the scratches were gone, then used 0000 steel wool to polish them (as well as the REST of the frets on the board ).

I also took this opportunity to re-oil the fretboard.

Stringing her back up again, the buzz was gone!

Oh, and did she ever sound lovely. That neck pickup is KILLER - a warm, round sound, very very bluesy, and the new bridge pickup sounds awesome and crisp with distortion. They sound great together as well.

I'm so happy with how she came out - I think she's a looker!
Here's a bunch of beauty shots!

 

  

Plywood Joe

Oh, Plywood Joe. You'll forever hold a special place in my heart.

This is my oddest and probably most ambitious project so far.

Plywood Joe started as a Bullet Strat I got at the Salvation Army for twenty bucks.

I didn't know it was plywood at the time ( the weight should have tipped me off right away, but I'm still learning )

Anyway, a twenty dollar guitar is almost always a good deal, no matter what - the parts alone are worth that.

This one was especially creatively decorated -

Yeah, those are ducks. Pretty sure that's nail polish.

 This might be a submarine? Covered in, I dunno, some sort of glue?

Pretty sure that is also a submarine. Or maybe a tank with a tornado coming out the top? Tough to say.

Took it apart, and started the process of cleaning it up. I had to use acetone to wear off the nail polish, and goof-off to get rid of the glue.

Underneath, I discovered that something sharp had been used to pre-inscribe the shapes ( what's with etching guitar bodies? How can that ever look good? )

I also discovered the plywood nature of the body in the neck pocket. Aha!

It was at this point that I decided to relic the thing. It's a piece of junk, so why not make it a little different?

I took off all the hardware and put it in a container with a small bowl of muriatic acid to etch and pit the metal for a 'worn' look. 

I also started more aggressively sanding the body, primarily in the regions where it would naturally wear, looking at some reference photos -

I decided I wouldn't stick with the stock pickup setup - I wanted to try something a little different.

I had a blank mint pickguard which it turns out looked awesome on the body.

I also had a pair of 'Texas Blues' telecaster pickups from TNT guitars. Cheap and hot.

I routed out the locations for a Telecaster style pickup configuration, with a lipstick at the neck - and wired it with a three-way switch, a new Switchcraft jack, and shielded audio wire. I also shielded the cavity.

Now, setting up the lipstick pickup was a HUGE pain, because there are two trenches on either side of the routing - they're incredibly thin, so you can't get the neck pickup mounting screws into them. I ended up cutting extra little bits of wood to fill in there, and also building a 'shelf' on top of the platform which I used to line up the pickup and get it angled just right, and at the right height.

There was a lot of trial and error to this process - way more than I had anticipated.

I had to do some routing down near the bridge area to fit the angled Tele bridge pickup, and also had to dig out some space in the control area, since every three-way switch I tried was too high for the default. It had originally come with an incredibly tiny 5-way PCB switch.

I also got two sweet retro style knobs that go great with the overall look.

The bridge turned out to be awful - it rattled no matter what I did to align the saddles. The grub screws had irregular bottoms and shook when played with any pick attack.

So I stole the bridge from my daughter's Squier Mini (which she never plays) and swapped them. She'll never know! The new bridge is much more solid though!

I also got the bright idea that I'd put a custom logo on the headstock, since this guitar no longer in any way resembles a Squier Bullet.

This turned out to be more of a pain than anything else!

I sanded the logo off the headstock, and then had to do a relatively long search for a method of getting a logo on there. I ended up with the equivalent of a 'wateslide decal' - except that it was a rub-on. After MANY aborted attempts and tests on a junk headstock, I finally got a process that works. 

(Note, clear coat applied to these decals basically eats them away and bubbles the edges!)

I had to use Birchwood Casey Tru Oil to cover the logo to protect it ( that's gunstock oil, it smells great!)

The final guitar has a sort of snappy, twangy sound - I was hoping the plywood body would pair pretty well with twangy Telecaster pickups, and I think it worked out pretty well.

More than anything, I think it looks unique, cool, and is fun to play.  I might not be able to give this one up!

Plywood Joe rocks.

Squier Strat

This one was pretty nasty to begin with - an old first guitar that had endured a lot of decoration, neglect, and grime sitting in a closet over many years.

I got this beaut from a guy named 'Wolfy' on Craigslist.

I think this is a Lake Placid blue.

There were some magic marker 'additions' to the logo-
Ballpoint pen had also been used to draw little 'bars' in various locations on the fretboard.

It was covered in sticker goo - nasty, nasty sticker goo.

Underneath that blue piece of tape was the name 'Wolfy Bauer', inscribed into the surface with a knife - and then decorated with red magic marker.

On the back - Rasta! Also a very deep inscription. There were a bunch of back and forth scratches on the horn too.

The pickguard was an ugly one-ply, the knobs were missing, and it was generally just filthy.

Fortunately, the neck was still straight and the frets were in good condition.

In fact, I was originally planning to put this neck on another Squier Strat body (black) that I had, which was in better condition, but the neck holes didn't quite line up. Different manufacturing country, I'd guess.

Anyway, after that setback, I decided to attempt to clean up the body as best I could.

I replaced the pickguard entirely with a nicer three ply white-black-white - unfortunately the screw holes didn't line up. I had to do a little surgery  on the base to make it fit properly around the bridge, and had to drill new holes for the pickguard.

I shielded the back of the pickguard and connected it with a foldover to the graphite paint in the cavity.

I got most of the ink off with naptha, but the ballpoint on the neck was really stubborn, and I had to use acetone. Ditto for some of the more ground in sticker gunk.

I upgraded some of the audio wiring, and added a switchcraft jack ( because they are just so satisfying )

I also added two more trem springs and decked it, and added a white backplate I had laying around.

I did a certain amount of sanding and buffing to get the worst of the scratches out - I got all of the name off the front, although there are a few spots where I burned a little too far through the clear. Overall though, it's miles better.

Tightened the tuners, oiled the fretboard, intonated, set everything up and now it plays nice and looks respectable!

There's still a little 'Rasta' on the back though  Forever embedded.  This one is going to a friend!

Ibanez AX120

This one was pretty funny - I picked it up on Craigslist.

When I got it, I noticed that playing it, it would 'clunk' -

That's because the humbucker screws were missing, and the pickups would 'flop' out onto the strings if you tilted it just so! The method they were using to maintain the pickup height was....amusing, as I later discovered.

The strings were also wound wrong on the tuners so it was binding badly in the nut, and the action was predictably pretty crummy, with a lot of relief in the neck.

One of the tuners was missing the plastic compression ring that keeps it tight, so it was flopping all over the place, and the bridge pickup appeared to be dead.

The neck was also just super, super filthy - gross with finger cheese.

The bridge pickup was an easy fix - just a loose wire.

I stole the compression ring from a cheap Squier tuner to replace the missing one.

Looking at the pickups themselves, I discovered the previous owner's height adjustment method - balls of paper shoved under the pickups! What people will do to avoid buying a few screws...

I put a full set of pickup screws in, and while I was at it, added chrome pickup covers which looked really nice and also warmed up the tone a little (or at least, I think so).

I cleaned the neck - repeatedly - until it finally didn't leave gunk on the rag, then polished the frets and oiled it up.

Strung it up (properly this time!), adjusted the neck relief, action, and intonation, and she was ready to go!

This one went to a friend from work. I really liked the way it played! (Although the visual change wasn't that dramatic)

Done-

Terrible Guitars - The Beginning

I've been fixing up junker guitars as a hobby. I head to Goodwill, or the Salvation Army, or Craigslist, and get cheap, busted or cosmetically destroyed guitars and try to make them into something playable, and if not 'great', then at least 'pretty good'.

Plus, some of them are just hysterically ugly and it is very satisfying to turn them around.

Enjoy!


Here was one of my first 'saves' - unfortunately, I didn't take any 'before' pictures. I ended up reselling this one to a good home on Craigslist.

The particulars -

I got this Squier Strat for thirty bucks at a local Goodwill. The headstock was split in half, knobs missing, scratched, covered in stickers, jack non functional, and just generally gross and non-usable.

I did a neck transplant, sanding and fitting a skunk stripe Squier neck salvaged from a 20th Anniversary junker. Fitted and tightened tuners.

I tweaked the neck angle, adjusted the truss to spec relief, then went through and identified a bunch of fret buzz with a homemade fret rocker, and sanded and polished the high spots to eliminate it.

I rewired the whole guitar from scratch, using a 50's era Gibson wiring style. All new 250k pots, a new Orange Drop cap, a sturdy new Switchcraft jack and a beastly YKE switch.

I decked the 2-point trem for nice sustain and tuning stability.

Removed all the gunk and stickers, and polished out the scratches, and cleaned up and bored out larger knob holes on the (nice!) pearl pickguard.

I shielded the body cavity and pickguard and set up a star ground for the whole system.

Now the action is low, there's virtually no hum, even in single pickup mode, everything works like it should, it plays fast and great, and the tone is really ballsy and fun, especially with only bridge or neck pups.