This is what crossed the pond:
I had a banana yellow one a few years back (which was how I found OSG) but sold it on to a friend. That one needed a whole new fretboard to recover a twisted neck - this one has the same twist, but the board is in ok condition so it should be recoverable.
First job was to dig out the strap button from the heel - the body is made from very shitty soft wood with a thin veneer, and it had sunk right in.
Mrs Robinson tan-lines!
Sunken dots:
Frets out with a 100W soldering iron - some were loose and lifting already:
Busted pocket - this poor guitar has been dropped pretty badly a few times:
Glued back in with some titebond. You can see how soft the wood is in the pocket, and the veneer at the top. Nasty. I ended up soaking some superglue into the pocket to firm it up as much as possible.
They don't make pools like this any more!
Now with a couple of coats of military-grade nickel shielding paint from Farnell's - by a million miles the best way to shield guitars. I shudder when I think of the copper tape jobs I used to do. This stuff sprays on beautifully, dries rock hard, and has near-zero resistance.
Started to sand the fretboard, with a 9.5" radius block:
Nearly there - you can('t) see the dots that are still below the level of the board:
I put a drop of thick superglue on each of the low dots (then sanded down after they had dried overnight) to bring them up level:
Pulling the tuner ferrules in tight - a couple were raised slightly and one was loose. I also ran a bead of thin superglue around the underside edge of the ferrules to help keep them in place.
In the cold light of day drilling side-dots feels a bit brutal on a 50 year old guitar, but what the hell - my aim has to be to make it as playable as possible, not to replicate its original mediocre quality...anyway, they turned out well after trimming and polishing.
This is the original wiring - I've documented this elsewhere from my old one, but,briefly, the rhythm/lead switch is just a resistor to deaden the sound, and there's a separate treble circuit that gives the bridge pickup with just a volume, no tone. Overall, it was nothing special on my last one, so I have plans for this. Again, a bit brutal pulling out pristine original wiring, but again, there's no point keeping it just for the sake of it. I haven't dared post what I've done to the wiring on my Yamaha SG-2 yet
I'm planning to adapt the Silvertone 1445 3-pickup circuit, which stacks them in series rather than parallel. The 'treble' switch will insert a bass-cut capacitor same as on a Jag, the 'rhythm/lead' switch will switch between the Silvertone-style controls and the bridge-only circuit.
First job was to snip the tiny ground wires on the pickup cases so the coils can be wired independently of ground:
Stripped:
The new wiring - I ran a couple of extra wires from pickup case to pickup case so they can be grounded alongside the main guard ground. The guard is thick enamelled aluminium (I think), and doesn't always make a good electrical connection to the added components, so it's needed a few extra wires I'd normally try to avoid. Some doofus at the factory decided the best place to solder ground wires was the ends of the component screws, so most of the switches and pots can never really be removed...
I'll give a full schematic and run-down once it's all done. Hoping to re-fret the neck tomorrow, then it should be more-or-less done.
