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.