Time to throw a thread up on this one before I get too carried away. I actually made a start on this while I was waiting for the Shoegazer kit to arrive.
So this is my first ever electric guitar - if you don’t count a horrible SG copy I bought off a mate for the grand sum of $25, which was just about unplayable. After watching me mess around trying to get the SG to play and sound nice my parents clearly realised I was serious and I received this on Christmas day 1990. It was a total shock and one of the best presents I’ve ever received.
In the 27 years since then this guitar has been everywhere with me, played almost every day, used abused and generally thrashed. It’s been the one constant in my stable for all that time, and has been used in countless terrible bands and recordings. I love playing it, even though it’s nothing special to most people.
Its had a few patch jobs on the wiring, I lost a humbucker screw at some point and so just put some self tapping wood screws in to hold it in place. The wheels really started to come off a bit a couple of years ago when the volume pot died right before a gig. Rather than replace it, it was hastily bypassed, along with the tone. This resulted in a sound not unlike tearing paper, but we still played and I doubt anyone even noticed given the style and distortion of the music
Since then I had been tossing up between restoring and replacing it. Eventually I bit the bullet and bought a new guitar and this one just sort of sat in the rack - until I discovered this community.
So now I’ve got the JMA-1 build under my belt I thought I’d look at doing a minor resto and upgrade on the old girl.
Given the history I didn’t want to remove too much of the personality of the guitar itself. So a basically started by pulling it all apart and giving it a really good clean. Its covered in nicks and dings, but I’m not really bothered by that, you can also see a huge amount of pick wear on the front face and the frets were well and truly worn down.
So once 27 years of sweat, beer and god knows what else was cleaned off, it actually came up pretty well.
I did find a bit of a crack in the neck pocket which I glued and clamped.
I steam cleaned the neck with a hot iron, huge amounts of muck came out. Probably not a recommended technique, but I didn’t want to use any cleaners or abrasives to get the finger goo build up off. Seems to have worked well with no adverse affects.
I ordered a radius block for fret levelling and a crowning file and set about doing my first levelling job. I think its come up really well, but the proof will be in the playing.
I’ve lemon oiled it a lot and its still soaking in so I’ll keep doing that for a while.
I also knocked out the old plastic nut and installed a Tusq one - perfect fit using a curved base stratocaster one - the truss rod goes through the cavity so a flat bottomed one wouldn’t work.
I put an order in with Adam for a few bits and pieces which turned up this week, most exciting are new Benson neck and middle pickups. I’ll be very interested to see how the staggered poles sound. From what I’ve read I’ll need to get the ‘g’ string intonation spot on. There wasn’t any rhyme or reason behind the pickup choice, I’m still learning a lot about the differences between all the different styles, so this is an exploration as much as anything.
I have an Entwistle Zebra hum bucker and Babicz trem bridge on back order - apparently some of the wild weather in the states has caused some issues that end. Then it will be new pots, jack and capacitor.
I have also fitted some grover locking tuners - I had to enlarge the holes to fit them which was scary but its worked out fine. I really love those things, so easy to do setup and re string.
Anyway, so here is where its up to - new decal I picked up at a guitar store in Japan applied to signify its new lease on life.
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