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.