Last week I discovered a little piece of junk that just might be a nice gem. This guitar has been sitting in my pastor’s garage for the past 15 years, pretty much untouched, given to them by an elderly neighbor who was in his 80s. I spent some time trying to find what type and how old this guitar is, and when I expressed how much I admired it, my pastor gave it to me. Now, granted, this no-name relic isn’t probably worth more than $50 at a pawn shop, I believe it may have the potential to be a very playable instrument, and mostly an inspirational sidekick to my songwriting. (always good to have some nice, old equipment lying around) It definitely will need some work though.

Here is a list of some of the problems I will have to address for it to be truly playable:
1) Two large and very significant cracks in the headstock needing repair
2) String 1 tuner peg broken (must replace all tuner pegs)
3) Volume/Tone pots need cleaned and re-mounted to pick-guard
4) Re-mount pick-guard
5) Action is EXTREMELY high (must sand down bridge to appropriate height)
6) Binding on neck is coming loose (super glue to neck)

My goal is to restore this guitar as close to original as possible without losing the very worn character that it have earned over the years. This will be difficult thought, because as i’ve looked at this guitar there are a few things that don’t fit. The neck is a much thinner electric neck than those typical to guitars of this body style and age (40s-50s-ish). It is a bolt on neck and its finish doesn’t seem to go with the strange green finish on the body. Also, it doesn’t help that there are no markings or numbers on anywhere on the body, neck or pickup. My conclusion: this guitar was either pieced together from two separate, really old guitars, or made by a guitar company that didn’t really know what they were doing. Still, I have faith that I can end up with a pretty sweet guitar. Finally, I am toying with the idea of stripping the green finish and giving it a natural or perhaps even a sunburst finish. This would be later on in the project, and I haven’t decided if I want to make the jump, but we will see. Either way, I’m really excited to get this project off the ground. It will be a fun experiment.