A Tale in Guitar Restoration

Hello all,

Allow me to introduce my Ashton AG-131. Or at least, what's left of it. Purchased many years ago off that marketplace of fine instruments - Gumtree - for the costly sum of $70, I have decided it serves a better purpose to be a test bed for learning the skills of guitar refinishing/assembly.

So far it has been mostly disassembled, electronics mostly trashed (they weren't much anyway) and the body stripped of all paint and sanded to 220 grit. Future plans will be to learn the dark art of spray painting, and then if I feel like it (and the pocket money stretches that far), some new electronics to put it all back together. Probably some work on the neck too, to bring the fingerboard back to life and replace the rusty tuning hardware.

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Restorations are fun. My boss picked up a 1979 Gibson The Paul body/neck in the US and sent over to me because I'd discussed my desire to restore an old decent guitar that needed lots of work. It had no electronics, no hardware, just body and neck/headstock. I stripped that thing right back to bare timber (solid walnut body on that model - quite heavy) and poured in well over $1000 worth of hardware and electronics. Half the fun was sourcing all the parts to get it back to a functioning guitar. In the end, it's a lovely playing guitar - far from original, however.