Back in the 90s when I was a young chap, I decided I wanted some guitar lessons to complement my bass lessons.
I went out and brought the cheapest new guitar at the local dealer. I found a black & white Samick strat copy. It seemed OK, so I forked out my hard earned and went to my music teacher. One lesson was spent just on the setup. It wasn't too bad for a $300~ guitar. The fret work wasn't great, the electronics were what you expected for cheap kit and I got about doing some lessons on it.
Eventually the first fret gave me trouble. It was loose, and in the pre-Google era, I decided to belt it back in. Every so often it popped out a fraction, and one day I gave it a tap with something between the strings.. but lost a string. That string went back to its position.. right under where I was hitting, cutting into the fret. From there, it became the bastard fret. It would catch, it was noisy and I'd made poor attempts at dealing with it such as flat filing it. Mostly I brought other guitars and stopped playing it.
The fret is now too low.
Fast forward to yesterday and I decided to do something about it. I'm working on a Pit Bull TB-4 build, and I figure there's some possibility I might need to do some work on the fret board, so I'd like some practice. Thinking about the fact that I've been carting around this guitar for over 20 years and hardly used it since the start of the millennium, I figured there's some learning to be done.
After checking the neck was pretty straight, I stripped the strings off, and started checking the fret level across the board. It needs a fair bit of love. So I figured I'd order some fret wire and a fret level as I have neither. Then it dawned on me that I don't really have anything to grab the fret with nor any low tack tape to cover the fret board. More bits on order. It was probably always like this. I don't recall if ever having a low action, and that's something that older me has gotten used to with progressively better guitars.
By this point, I remembered that the electronics were pretty average, the switch used to cut out and so on. Then I figured well I might as well make this thing playable again. I hate the white pickguard (I actually hate pickguards full stop), so I wanted that to change. I found a Squire pickguard loaded with some refurbished electronics. It won't be a direct fit - Samick in their infinite wisdom used some different dimensions for their guard (and checkout the socket orientation...). Luckily with a bit of polishing, the finish under there comes up pretty well. I know I'll have at least one visible screw hole - I'll just put a screw in it and move on with my life. It cost $60. If that doesn't turn out, I'll retro fit the electronics into the original pickguard.
The machine heads were always garbage, and one had lost the top. I figure I'll replace them with Gotoh SG381-05s. A little budget, but I doubt I'd get $100 for this guitar no matter what I do with it should i try to sell it, so it's only really for my benefit. If it was worth money, I'd probably be using all Fender spec stuff. I think there's about $150 into this restoration + some tools I don't have (but are intended for the TB-4 build anyway).
The bridge was pretty average too, but I'm not sure I want to replace that. This has had some serious scope creep already.
Endgame? Make it play. I'll have a crack at getting the fretwork done properly as that's why I put it on the bench in the first place.. If I fail miserably, I'll replace the neck and move on. With some reasonable tuners, reasonable electronics and some time working on the setup, I expect this will be playable. I'm long over *cheap* crap guitars, so if I can get this performing somewhere between the Corts and Epis hanging on the wall, I'll consider it good and find it a home on the wall. If I can't, it'll go to the kids.
Hopefully I can get this done with no more money poured into it. I couldn't afford to even start this one
Reply With Quote