1977 Ibanez "lawsuit" SG

[Sonic Mountain]

Check this bad boy out.

I've been doing a fair bit of work on other peoples guitars of late, but been a bit slack sharing. Can't resist with this one, in for a total overhaul and clean up as much as possible without removing any of the history.

Its a May 77 from the Terada factory in Japan. This is one of the specific models that Gibson sued over in the 70's and one of the few actual success's of that approach. This is actually a 'post' lawsuit as the headstock is different to the Gibson open book one which they were upset about, but 77 is the year it came into effect so this must be one of the first ones with the revised design.

It's in pretty good nick really, but you could drive a truck under the action and the frets are all buggered. Still has the original Gotoh 'Star' tuners.. which on their own seem to fetch a decent price. The guy has no intention of selling it as it was his dads, but has a few more interesting sounding projects for me after this one.

Anyway.. some pics. I'll post up some more when I'm done.

[Sonic Mountain]

And I'm all done. It's been a lot of fun working on this guitar and I actually cannot believe how nicely it plays now.
The main reason this initially came to me was bad fret buzz on the bass strings, especially on Fret 1, hence the crazy raised action to make it playable It turned out to have a fair bit of back bow in the neck. I backed the truss rod off a bit and left it overnight.
While I was waiting for that to settle I had a look at the electrics. The owner was complaining of the pots being scratchy, so I soaked them in contact cleaner and blew them out with the air compressor. Easy fix. The switch feels like the little spring plate is going in it, but I'll just tell him to be gentle, it'd be nice to retain the original bits.

Re-checked the neck in the morning and it looked nice and flat. So I levelled and re dressed the frets. The fret work from the factory was really impressive, but you can see in the pic where I started leveling the amount of wear on them.



Nearly there, you can just see a few bits of ‘flat’ on the tips of the frest here and in the middle.

After that I gave it a really gentle clean. I used a vinegar/water solution and the air compressor to clean all the gunk out of the nooks and crannies and then gave it a light wipe over with finishing polish. Mostly just wanted to clean it without getting rid of the wear and tear/ history of the guitar.


After doing this I noticed it actually has dark pinstripe around the body contours front and back as well as one all the way around the outer edge. It's subtle, but looks really cool. I sent the guy a pic and he didn't even realise it was there!


I cleaned up the bridge and then re-installed the E strings. There was still a bit of buzz on the low e string. After double checking everything I decided the next step would be to replace the nut. It actually didn't look like it was original, it wasn't quite wide enough.
Removing it confirmed that. I think they used epoxy to glue it in and it was a mess. The old nut basically shattered when I took it off. Cleaning up the surfaces you could see where the removal of the previous nut had taken some wood with it.


Cleaned it all up with files and a razor blade and then set to work on a new nut. This the first one I've had a go at doing myself and I'm very happy with the results. I got a bone blank with the string spacings started on it.



Cut the slots down so the strings just sat below the top surface. Filed about a mm off the bottom and installed it.

Then it was a some what tedious process of testing string height with feeler gauges to the first fret and creeping up on just the right height for each. I used a couple of small files I had and oxy tip cleaners to do this. Will definitely be investing in some proper files for the next one.




Once I had them all to a nice height and feeling right I did a setup and intonation. I then checked for sharpness at the first fret and lowered the G string just a fraction. Then strings off again and reshaping of the overall nut shape to look right - got a bit slack on photos here as I got really absorbed in it. I used the dremel with a light sanding disc (bone stinks for sure) to get it roughed out and then some fine grit sandpaper to clean it up.

Then basically reassemble, setup, play and tweak. It's incredibly nice and has really highlighted that all my guitars are due for a bit of a going over. Owner is super happy and it looks like I'll have a few other interesting ones come in for some love.

Oh I also repaired and reinforced one of the case hinges

[JohnH]

What a great project! I absolutely love this kind of thing, and you've done a really wonderful job

[blinddrew]

Nice work all round!

[FCD]

Well done and great job

[FrankenWashie]

Fantastic work SM!

[Sonic Mountain]

Cheers guys, went home yesterday.