New guy…old guitar

Guildedagain

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It was love at 1st sight, asked someone to hand it down to me and it didn't go back up on the wall.

1st thing I noticed was that it was light.

Looked like this. I restored it to my liking, over a year's, a couple year's time.

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EMG's and Schallers, very common period mods, were all reversed.

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Couldn't handle the thick lacquer on the fingerboard, scraped it off, tough job. Did it two more times over the next couple years until I finally got it where I wanted it.

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This baby really sings, some unusual tones and amazing playability.

This is it now.

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jp

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Love both of yours! And Guildedagain, that's amazing that you have all that case candy!

Unfortunately, I don't have mine anymore. :C( I had to sell it during some rough, post-recession days years ago. It was my main gigging and workhorse axe for years.

Here are some pics. Classic natural finish hard tail with a black pickguard and expectedly heavy. It originally had white knobs and PU covers. These were my upgrades:

-- TUSQ graphite nut and Graph-tech saddles, setup for .11s.
-- Swapped out original 3-way switch for 5-way and changed to black switch tip from white.
-- Upgraded the stock tuners to Schallers.
-- Replaced PUs with stacked Dimarzio HS-2s in the middle and neck and an HS-3 in the bridge. The HS-2s were noiseless and had the perfect amount of brightness. Contrary to popular thought, the high-output HS-3 was silky smooth rather than jaggedy metal-sounding. All are alnico 5 pickups. I also had a push-pull on the tone pot to split all PUs to single coil. It was a highly versatile setup.

I miss it dearly. I still keep my eye out for it locally, and I'll grab it if it ever surfaces again.

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Guildedagain

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Holy gorgeous Ash body, 1 piece?

This was my '79 hardtail from 15 years ago, I found it at a music store, in the back as a project, completely stripped but body painted flat black, Schallers, huge frets, so big they more or less backbowed the neck, no need for a truss rod. $175 out the door with OHSC.

It was a 3 bolt neck, converted to 4 hole by Fender, with that rare plate, the 1st of the 4 bolt plates to make a comeback, a 25yr anniversary of the Stratocaster.

I got a real Fender decal by sending pics of the guitar to well known parts guy in Seattle. This is before you could get decals all day long.

I painted it a deep metallic purple, took me like ten tries, but the guy I traded it to who was a pro guitar restorer said "I'm glad you don't do this for a living" it was better than his paint jobs.

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