I'm probably not alone in this. Has anyone else found themselves at a point in a build where they're waiting on hardware from overseas, or waiting for something to cure and jonesing for a hit of craftsmanship?
I'm at a point where a I'm either waiting on hardware I've already ordered or saving up for stupidly expensive hardware, but I'm itching to build. So the challenge I'm setting myself is to build something amazing from whatever rubbish I have lying around. The goal is to spend literally nothing.
So where to start? With this marvel of shoddy craftsmanship of course!
This is an eBay job that I'd originally bought about 10 years ago for about $20 that I was going to give a swimming pool rout and use as a pickup test bed. Until I discovered it is completely unplayable. The intonation is complete rubbish. My first thought was an incorrectly located bridge but as it turns out:
It's just the worst nut placement in history. About 3-4mm out on length, and a few mm out laterally. Soon the plus side, the actual frets are pretty much bang on for a 25.5" scale length - so my plan is to experiment with a zero fret, and clean up the shabby fret ends. Since I'm on $0, I can't buy fret wire, so the 21st fret is going to be relocated.
But first I need to test out the kerf of my various saws to find the narrowest.
Having a close look at the body, there's really nothing I want to keep beyond the cheap, nasty hardware:
But that's good, because I can make a new body using some old bench tops we saved from a reno a free years back. I want to stick with a fairly classic offset shape so I'm going for a twist on the slightly oddball Danelectro 1449. Seen here in glorious two tone because printer ink is more costly than GAS.
It won't look quite as tropical, I'm going to pop the grain of whatever this random timber is and give it a tru-oil. The pickguard will be improvised from something, and I'm considering bending my own Tele style bridge from aluminium scraps.
The only thing I'm genuinely concerned about is the knobs, but I think I can pilfer some from an old stereo.
Game on.
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