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Great to see the progress on this one! Looking forward to more.

Back of the neck doesn't look too bad now. Front of headstock looks great with paint and decal!

To replace the black amp knobs I was going to try drilling out and relicing some strat knobs, but then I remembered I had some trashed vintage JM knobs that came in a small lot of vintage Fender parts I bought ages ago. There is red paint showing through the cream, so I think someone painted them red and then tried to go back to cream.



I spent about an hour sanding, scrubbing, and being careful with some acetone and q-tips and got them to this level. I think I'm just going to keep them like this to add some more character to the guitar. Maybe I'll try and clean them up more in the future, but this was way more slow-going than I expected to even get them to this point without damage.

Some plastic-safe graffiti remover and a cheap electric toothbrush might do the rest. I’ve used that combo to strip a plastic model, but I can’t recall the brand.

Matthias wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 30, 2024 12:54 pm

Some plastic-safe graffiti remover and a cheap electric toothbrush might do the rest. I’ve used that combo to strip a plastic model, but I can’t recall the brand.

Thanks, I'll look into those products.

OK I looked up more plastic safe options, and I ended up soaking the knobs in alcohol overnight. A lot of the paint lifted up and then I was able to get most of the rest off with a toothbrush and toothpicks. Thanks for the nudge!

I've just kept the import bridge it came with all these years because it gave me zero issues, but since I'm getting this more vintage correct I figured I'd replace the bridge. I do have a vintage bridge in my parts stash that is supposedly from a 1962 JM so that will work well. It was just missing one height adjustment set screw.



I've also had a slight setback as I realized the bridge pickup is now dead. Not sure what happened but it must have been damaged during this process. Sent it off for repairs yesterday. When I originally got the guitar the neck pickup was dead and I sent it to Curtis Novak who had to rewind it. So now both pickups will have been rewound. Unexpected but oh well. Still sounds great.

Next to start sanding and polishing the body.

Body is done. Not actually perfect, but perfect for this project.




Waiting on the bridge pickup but otherwise just about ready to assemble.

Can't wait for this to come together. It's looking awesome so far. Great work resuscitating the knobs.

So nice! I’m following!