Anyway, a while back this 480 from -73 showed up online. It was in pretty bad shape, frets were a nightmare, the bridge was very rusty and was missing a couple of screws, pickguard had cracked and the pickups were changed for old Gibson tarbacks. The price was really good though so I bought it. The seller plays in a band I'm a fan of too so that might have influenced my decision a bit too...
Then I had to decide if I wanted to try and restore the guitar or if I wanted to try and mod the guitar into something that would be more ideal for me. I opted for the latter.
First thing I did was to order a new bridge from Mastery. While I was waiting for the bridge I took the guitar to a luthier to get it refretted with medium jumbo stainless-steel frets. The bridge was taking very long to get here though (not Mastery's fault though, I exclusively blame swedish postal services! Mastery was very helpful and accomodating through this whole ordeal) so while waiting I asked the luthier to make a new pickguard and rewire the electronics too. I was planning to do this myself but the result was much better than anything I could have done.
The neck pickup didn't fit very well, physically, but I chose to keep the bridge pickup since it actually sounded really good. The luthier rewired it so that I have a volume control, tone and bass-cut in case I still want more jangly sounds. I might add something a bit more rickenbacker-like in the neck position in the future but right now I'm kinda digging the bridge-pu only look. Kinda reminds me of an old Epiphone Coronet or something with just one pickup and a lot of pickguard.
The bridge eventually came and was a huge improvement. I ordered a Duesenberg tremola as well and even though I was a bit lazy when I installed it so that it's a little bit slanted it works really great. I'd probably have this over a Bigsby any time and it's cheaper too.
There's still some stuff that needs to be done though. The nut slot for the high e-string is a bit close to the edge and like I said I'll probably add a neck pickup some time in the future but it turned out to be a really interesting and great guitar. It's very different from anything else I've got with the smaller neck-width and very flat fretboard radius but it's actually really comfortable.
Here's some pics. No before pics unfortunately, sorry about that!
Anyway, I also wanted to ask how you people feel about modding vintage guitar? Does it make a difference if it's something a bit more obscure and cheap compared to say something more iconic and expensive? Or are you completely free of scruples?
Honestly I don't think I would have done all these things if the guitar hadn't already been in such a bad shape.
