The Doctor Project

My Journey With The Doctor

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From Wreck to Rock

From Wreck to Rock – July 7, 2016

 Okay, two months later and what has happened in the meantime? Several things.

First, I purchased a Squier Affinity Telecaster. In Butterscotch Blond, with a crappy gig bag included for $100.

Second, I purchased a Squier Affinity Telecaster. In Butterscotch Blond, with a crappy gig bag included for $125.

No, you are not seeing double. I did just buy two different tele’s. Not done yet.

Third, I purchased a 70’s era Lotus LP Junior. In pieces, no pickups included, and missing a tuner.

Can you guess which one I’m geeked about? Yup, the crappy 70’s flat bodied Les Paul knockoff.

Back to Tele #1. Basically, brand new. It has all the classic foibles of the Squier Affinity Telecasters. Not set up well, frets uneven, protruding and sharp along the edges. First things first, a hard shell case.

Not being one who likes to spend money on these used guitars (especially money that I don’t have*), I take a few things like old guitar pedals I don’t like to a local used music store with zero dollars in my pocket. I could tell you the name of the MUSIC place, but I don’t want to GO ROUND all that. I trade those things in, grab a used Fender hard shell case, and walk out the door with $30 and the case. That 30 buckaroos will come into the story later.

*side note: For those that are unaware, by “money I don’t have”, I mean, “money my wife won’t let me spend.” So, I have to fund all my guitar purchases by means other than the money I earn from my day job. There is a lot of bartering, and selling of other things to fund my addiction. It’s a disease. Called GAS. Stands for Guitar Acquisition Syndrome. Or, if you ask my kids, it’s what comes out of my butt.

Next on the list for Tele #1 is that I take it to the local guitar shop in town, owned by a young man who’s sister does some community theater with my daughter. I ask him to do a set up and work on the frets. He quotes me a total price of $105.

Whoa.

I wasn’t expecting that. I mean, it’s not out of line for what he’s going to do with the guitar and throwing in a new set of strings to boot, but when you’re trying to do this sort of thing on your own, and on the cheap, that really puts a monkey wrench in the works. That’s actually more than what I spent to buy the guitar in the first place.

I leave it with him, rationalizing it as “supporting local business” and “friend of the family” and “grumble, grumble.”

Lesson learned? Yup, I’m going to do that stuff myself from now on.

Moving on to Tele #2. This is a different beast. I actually spend more on this one than the first, even though it’s in much worse condition. A bunch of dings and marks in the finish, the neck has been replaced with an amateurish refinished neck so that there is no logo or serial number on the neck at all.

The pickups have been replaced and the guy selling it says that they are Lindy Fralin Blues Specials (which go for about $180 new for the set). He even gives me the box they came in. I’m not believing it for a second. The tuners have been replaced with the Classic Vibe tuners, so that’s a plus. It’s dirty, it’s not set up. The neck is in need of adjusting. And there is a buzz that could be from not grounding the pickups. And I still buy it. Even with the crappy Fender gig bag. I mean really crappy. As in, it only has one strap, the plastic hooks are broken and the one remaining strap is tied to the connectors – in a knot. Useless AF.

What am I going to do with this? I’m glad you asked. This is one for the From Wreck To Rock project list. I’m going to get this one in to rock out shape for very little money and add a couple of neat twists to make it a really fun axe to wail on. I haven’t decided yet what to do about the neck, I may actually just buy a replacement Squier neck and go from there, but…again, I haven’t decided. What I will do for sure is that this puppy is getting a new custom hand-made pickguard. I can’t wait to try a special something for this. Pictures to follow.

Finally, the Lotus.

It’s old. It’s dirty. It’s in pieces. There are no pickups. The bridge is broken. It’s missing a tuner. No pickguard. But…. It has panache. It’s from the 70’s and it’s one of the cheaper Lotus LP models, flat top and made of plywood. No inlayed logo, it’s just painted on, and a white/cream binding on the tobacco-burst body top only. It’s also the only Les Paul that is in my guitar collection at the moment. I bought a brand new Lotus LP with the abalone inlays and pretty designs way back in the mid-70’s. It was shiny. It was also set up with the action so high as to be like a steel string lap guitar with finger bleeding heavy duty strings. I couldn’t stand playing it. So I sold it to my cousin after about two months of trying to play the thing. I didn’t know then that you could even do anything like setting it up correctly. At that time in my young life guitars came ready to play. Period. I never really thought about it since. It was such a horrible experience that I never went back to Les Paul guitars at all. But when you are talking about a guitar collection, there are certain things you have to have. You have to have a strat. It’s the law, and cannot be broken. You have to have a tele. It is a force of nature and has to be in everyone’s collection. A Les Paul. It’s one of the Holy Three of electric guitars. There shall be a 335. Or a similar hollow or semi-hollow body electric. No discussion allowed. You need a steel string acoustic dreadnaught, preferably a Martin, but there are a ton of great acoustics out there. You need a twelve string. Acoustic for sure, electric, eh, maybe. And a Rickenbacker, for no real good reason other than to have one, so you can say, “I have a Rickenbacker, and you don’t, and that makes me better than you.” Make it a twelve string and take care of two guitar must-have’s at once.

I had all of those as of a week ago (no Rickenbacker, yes, I suck), with the exception of a Les Paul. So, the vision quest was to get one, or build one. And I really didn’t want to tackle building one yet. So the only other thing to do was to buy one. LO, AND BEHOLD! A perusal of The Craigslist came up with the Lotus pieces for sale. And, here’s the kicker, for the low, low price of $35.

Remember the $30 from earlier? Yes, you have put the pieces together, so to speak.

So now I have a Les Paul project to do for From Wreck To Rock. I’m putting the list of items I need to replace, refinish, and repair. This has got me excited! Pictures at 11….

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From Wreck to Rock - Part: Huh?

Ok, a follow up to a recent post of mine. I’m not sure whether to be honored or insulted.

I just spoke about a Craigslist offering of a Epiphone T-310 Telecaster. I ended up not buying it, or even offering anything on it. Basically, the guy wanted $190 for a beat up telecaster. Tried telling me it had character with all the dings, gouges, scratches, wrong nut and scratchy pickups. I hate the whole “relic” thing. Have I mentioned that before? Well, I do.

Anyway, he asked me what needed to be done on the guitar. And I told him what I thought. Today, the Craigslist listing for the guitar had this:

PRICE DROP from $200 to - $140..  why?? Nice guys at (name deleted) music, checked it out..  needs a new nut and a set up. About $45 to 50 depending on the strings you'll choose.

That is almost verbatim what I said to him, minus the electronics issues. Only I’m not the nice guys at (name deleted) music.

I’m not sure if I should be pissed or not.

So, to get my mind off of it, I’m posting of picture of my current play things.

What you see here is a custom Squier Strat with GFS lipstick pickups, a Danelectro Nifty Fifty amp and a Donner Blues Drive pedal. Now some details....

The Danelectro Nifty Fifty is stock and is a nice sized amp to play in very small areas. It has a wide range of tones with it’s Dirty-Sweet knob, as well as Bass, Mid and Treble controls. I’m currently setting Dirty-Sweet at about 40% (or 10 o’clock if you look at it that way) and everything else straight up.

The Donner Blues Drive is modeled after the Ibanez Tube Screamer, and I play with the controls all over the place depending on the song and my mood. It has three main controls in Tone, Level and Gain, with an additional switch for Warm or Hot. To tell the truth, I don’t get much use out of the switch, but I like the changes in all the rest. At this moment I have my Tone at about 90%, Level at about 70% and Gain about 65%. Love it! Oh, and it’s less than $30 online. Highly recommended! It’s a bargain.

The Squier is the one that I completely refinished. A step up from the Affinity model, it’s from 2009, Chinese-made from one of those package starter kits, and I gutted it. Stripped the paint (originally black) and kept it natural with about a dozen coats of clear acrylic lacquer. New pick guard in tortoise shell, new 250k pots, new 5-way switch and the GFS lipstick pickups. Two of the three pups were purchased off Craigslist for $30 total, and the third was purchased new from GFS for $30. The neck is a 4k, the middle a 6k and the bridge is 8k. I didn’t touch the neck or headstock, preferring to leave it as is. I like the rosewood and tortoise against the natural wood. I may yet change out the white knobs for chrome to match the lipsticks and the tremolo. I also lined the pickup cavities with copper tape.

What can I say, other than I’m really liking this guitar. I honestly didn’t like strats before this. I’ve always been a hollow-body guy since I first started really playing guitar, but this is starting to change my mind about solid bodies. I did once own a Les Paul back in my teens, but it was cheaply made and I didn’t know how to make it any better back then, so I didn’t like it at all. This Squier guitar is fun to play.

And that, my friends, is the point.

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From Wreck To Rock - Part The Next

As part of my ongoing quest to fix ALL THE GUITARS, I’ve also flopped back and forth on buying/building a telecaster for myself. I’m going to. I’m not going to. Just buy a good one and be happy that it plays right. I’ll get more enjoyment out of something I make rather than just buying it. It’ll cost more to buy a good one. It’ll cost more to make a good one. It’ll take too much time. It’s what is fun to do. They don’t make the color I want it to be. I don’t know how to make it the color I want it to be. I don’t know what color I want it to be. AHHHHH!!!!!

Look, part of the fun of all this is learning at the same time.

I’m not a guitar repair person. I don’t do this for a living. I know nothing about it. Except for what I’m learning about the process. This isn’t a new statement from me, I’ve been saying all along.

So, should I just buy a good Tele for myself? The smart answer is NO.

First of all, I’m not a good guitar player. Never have been. Never will be. That doesn’t mean I can’t hack away at a stringed instrument and get a few familiar notes out that sound sort of like Stairway to Heaven or Smoke On the Water (these tunes are non-negotiable THEY MUST BE PLAYED BY ALL HACK GUITAR PLAYERS).

Part of what I’m trying to do here with From Wreck To Rock is to get maximum playability out of minimum purchase. And to do that, I might have to build some things from scratch.

So, I’ve been building up my tool kit to do just that. And I’ve found some wonderful deals in the process.

(Time-displacement)

It occurs to me that I should do some updating on some of the guitars that I’ve mentioned in previous installments.

The first real guitar I “repaired” was a 1988 Epiphone S-300 strat. Purchased for $45 at Goodwill, I put about $30 of parts in to it, and (I don’t remember how much time) effort, and sold it for $100. Not great, but, hey, it was never going to be a great guitar to begin with. I made it better – and that’s the point of this.

The second guitar I worked on was a messed up Epiphone Dot Studio. This was detailed in my very first From Wreck to Rock. I sold that Dot Studio for $265 with soft case included (the soft case cost me $20, so total cost to me on the Dot Studio was $179). Again, I’m not getting independently wealthy off of this, but it’s given me enough to go buy other guitars to feed my habit.

I picked up a couple of strats in pieces, a Squier and a Stagg. The Squier I’ve totally refinished and I’m really happy with it. I just changed out the pickups to GFS Lipsticks for Stratocasters in all three positions, and I’m digging the sound. It sort of gives me a telecaster sound with more surf jangle on the side. I’ll do a better follow up on that guitar soon. Maybe even with sound and video!

The Stagg I’m in the process of stripping down and getting it prepped for my daughter to give a go with the finish. Still a way off on that.

I also picked up another Squier strat and a Little Martin acoustic that I turned around and sold just to make some money for more tools/guitars. Which brings me back to the tool kit.

(Return to normal time)

To build a guitar, you need some tools. Or you can try to do things with what you have. I’m a firm believer in trying to get things on the cheap and getting the right tools for the job. So, I went looking for a band saw. Found one on The Craigslist. A used Craftsman 10” band saw for $40. And, get this, it also came with a Craftsman 13” scroll saw – included. A great deal even if I had to buy new blades (which I did). But, wait...that’s not all that was included in the deal. When I went to pick it up, the guy also gave me a box that had five additional band saw blades (new in package, but for a different sized band saw), two Craftsman electric flat sanders and a Ryobi laminate router. Score! I’m going to try and sell the additional blades and the two flat sanders (don’t need or want them). But the Ryobi laminate router will come in handy with detail routing with guitars. I’m really happy about this purchase. I’ve since used both the scroll and band saws. They work fine, and the band saw is already helping me cut out the telecaster form I’m making out of MDF.

This last weekend I ended up buying a drill press off The Craigslist. Now, a new 8” drill press can be had for about $120 if you want to go with a lesser brand. If you want a bigger one, with more variable speeds, they can get up $300, $500, $1000 or more. So when I saw a used one for sale for $25, I had to jump on it. When I arrived to pick it up, I found out it was a 12” 5-speed drill press that is a cast-iron MOTHER to move. Huge, but it works great! More than happy. And…he threw in a home-made bench to put it on. And it had the drill press vice as well. And…this is the awesome and strange part of it…he also gave me an epee. Yes, you are correct. An epee. A fencing sword. Purchased and made in Madrid, Spain. Because he found out that I also do a lot of theater, and he wanted to donate it to a theater group (which it will be, and greatly appreciated at that). FTW.

So, the only thing I need want now is an oscillating spindle sander for all the curvy bits on a guitar. Okay, not the only thing. I have a fixed head router that I want to upgrade to a plunge router, but that can wait for a while.

So, I guess I’m building a telecaster.

To be continued.

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From Wreck To Rock - sidebar

I really don’t like the “relic” fad in guitars. For those that don’t know, to “relic” a guitar is to make it look as though it has been very well used, with nicks and paint removed and areas that look like it has been rubbed away.

First off, it’s straight up lying in my book. This is an attempt to make the guitar look like something it is not, a well-used, broken-in guitar.

Second, and more important in my opinion, this has given free reign to people who beat the ever-loving crap out of a guitar, and try to charge more for it because it has “character” now.

I went to look at a Craigslist guitar last night. A 1990 Epiphone T-310 telecaster with “character”. This guy was convinced that he had a $300 guitar that just needed some new strings. Dings, chips, gouges, cracks, someone put in a Seymour Duncan bridge pickup. The electronics were scratchy. The nut had been replaced with a nut that was too small for the neck, and pinched in the strings. Don’t know what else had been messed with on the inside, because I didn’t take it apart. He was throwing in a beat up hard shell case – again, with “character”.

To be fair, he did ask me what I thought it would take to make this a good guitar. The problem is that in my opinion, you would have to put in over $300, and after that you would only have a $300 guitar at best, and that’s not counting the hours of work to bring it back to that level. With the quality of the Squire Classic Vibe telecasters that are routinely available at about $350 new, this guitar doesn’t really have a chance.

Was this guy right in asking for $190 for this guitar? Hell, you can ask whatever you want for it. Someone may buy it at that price. Would they be overpaying? Hell, yes.

The case he was adding in wasn’t worth $20, so I’m removing it from the equation. For that particular guitar, the only way to make it the right value would be to buy it for less than $100. To fix the finish issues would take well over $100 in time and parts at any repair shop. The electronics would need to be repaired and the cost of a decent pickup would be around $100 or so. You might be able to get some money out of the Seymour Duncan by listing it up on eBay, but I wouldn’t count on it. The bad nut job (sorry, I know it sounds dirty) would take about $20 in time and parts to fix.

So, to sum up:

Guitar - $100

Finish repair - $100

Electronics repair - $100 (or more depending on the devastation inside and what pickups you choose)

Nut replacement - $20

Set up and intonation - $40 (for time spent and new strings)

 So, we’re at $360 minimum right now.

If I were to purchase an Epiphone T-310 from the 1990’s (all made in Korea, I believe) that was in good shape, it would probably cost me about $300 on eBay, plus shipping. Basically, a wash.

Or, I could buy a brand new Squier Classic Vibe 50’s Telecaster for about $350 plus shipping. I’ll take the Squier, thank you very much.

[sixthree205]

From Wreck to Rock – Twice The Fun: Part 3

Whew!

Taking a step back, it’s easy to see that I can get carried away with some things. Using the phrase “on the cheap” really isn’t applicable to guitar repair. I keep thinking that I’m going to only spend a few dollars, and that I’ll have a really nice guitar after I’ve done all the hard work, using mostly elbow grease and not throwing more money at these projects. Well, sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men….

Let’s be real. I started this with a couple of really cheap guitars, and I’ve put some work in to one, and now I have…a really cheap guitar.

I forgot in my previous posts to put in the running cost of making this wreck into something that can rock. So here goes….

Let’s start at the beginning. The cost for two bundles of guitar parts and a hard shell case was $80. So far, I’ve taken the Squier Strat and stripped the paint off the body. Now, I could put in the cost for all the sandpaper that I got for this project, but I’m not. Mostly because I have lots left over, and I’m going to be using it on other projects (including replacing the front driver side bumper on the PT Cruiser that my son dented and painting it to match – project for the spring – we’ll talk later), and there is also a lot of use left on the sheets that I have used. They will all come in handy with the next guitar project. Ok, so not adding in the cost isn’t fair, but putting the whole cost against one guitar isn’t fair either. So let’s pick a figure to add to the cost of this guitar so that we have at least some of the cost covered. I haven’t put a dollar cost on the Squier yet. Since most of the value of the guitar parts bundle is in the hard shell case, I’m going to attach a cost of $50 to the case, $20 to the Squier and $10 to the Stagg strat. That’s as good a valuation as any, and it gives me a starting point for the project. And if you forgot, I’ll show you the pictures from the original Craigslist ad again to show you what the starting point was for this guitar.

A bit rough, huh?

I’ll also put a “sandpaper and rubbing compound” cost of $20. Why $20? Sounds good, and I’m not sure how long or how many projects the sandpaper and rubbing compound I got for this will cover. So it’s $20. So there.

That gives me a running total of $40 for this project.

Okay, so I spent a lot more than $20 on the sandpaper and rubbing compound. In fact, I also spent a lot of money on this project for things that aren’t actually going to make it in to this project. For example: I purchased a white loaded pickguard off eBay for $15.54 total. Aaannndddd…I’m not going to use it now. If I had decided to go with the Candy Apple Red Metallic finish, then I would have used it. But I decided to go natural finish with a loaded tortoise shell pick guard, also purchased off eBay for $10.49. Oh, and I purchased the spray cans of the Candy Apple Red Metallic, Silver undercoat and three cans of Rustoleum Clear Spray Lacquer. What part of that did I use? Only two of the clear lacquer, so cost against the guitar is $12.

Let’s add.

Squier guitar parts $20, sandpaper stuff, $20, tortoise loaded pickguard $10.50, clear lacquer $12. Total so far of $62.50.

Did I mention the pickguard screws that I purchased off eBay? No? Good, because they never came and I had to get a refund from the Chinese company that was supposed to send them. Did I mention strings? No? Good, because I don’t add strings in to the cost of any of these projects. To repeat my philosophy, I’m going to get strings no matter what, so that’s a built in cost of playing the guitar, not repairing it.

Break time.

In the last installment of From Wreck to Rock, I mentioned that I purchased another Squier strat bundle. Guitar, amp, strap, tuner, blah, blah, blah, all for the low, low price of $25. What I failed to mention was that along with this bundle, the previous owner had also purchased a 3-pack of D’Addario 10’s electric guitar strings and had not opened them up at all. The original strings were still on the guitar (and need to be changed, but that’s a different issue). So, this 3-pack, which retails for $15 is all minty-new and waiting for me to install on whatever guitar I want to put them on. So here’s the conundrum. How to account for this windfall? I don’t add the cost of strings on to the cost of repair, but this is $15 that I don’t have to spend on strings in the future. Hrrrrmmmmm…. I’ve got it. I’m going to take the $15 off the cost of the Squier Strat bundle, so that my actual cost for that guitar set is only $10. To quote Gus Portokalos in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, “And there you go.”

Back to the project. Did I add the cost of soldering all the electronics together? No? Good, I haven’t added that yet to any project, and I’m still not going to for this one. I could amortize the cost of the soldering iron (or 3 soldering irons, to be exact) and solder for each project, but that’s a lot of work, and I use that stuff on other projects, like fixing the plumbing in my house (I never have a lack of projects in my life).

So I’m up to $62.50 for this project. Is that it? Only $62.50?

Truth be told, I probably spent another $60 on the things I’m not going to use. Hell, it’s probably more like $100 if I really wanted to be honest with myself.

Oh! I forgot! I’m not done yet!

There are two things left to do on this guitar. First, I’m covering the cavities with copper tape for shielding. A 10’ roll of copper tape cost me $5.55. Now we’re up to $68.50. Right now, I have cheap pickups in. That’s going to change. What it’s going to change to, I’m not sure yet. I’m going to wire it up and play it with the cheap pickups and see what sound I get. Then, I might use the surprise DiMarzio Red Velvet pickups that came with the Craigslist guitar parts bundle that this project started with. If those aren’t what I’m looking for, then we’ll tackle changing them to something else in another edition of From Wreck to Rock. And then there is the last item for this guitar: I’m changing the headstock sticker from Squier Stratocaster by Fender to Danocaster by Me. I’ve purchased clear waterslide decal printer sheets for $12.33 so that I can try my hand at making my own headstock stickers. Again, I’m buying more than I will need for this project, so I’m only going to put a cost of $1.23 from this to the running total. Yes, I know it’s a strange amount. There are 10 sheets in the package, I’m using one, so $12.33 divided by 10 is $1.23.

Now I’m at $69.73.

Sure, I’m not done yet, but let’s take a peek at what it’s going to look like.

Who’d a thunk that under all that black paint that the natural wood of a cheap Squier would look so good? Granted, it’s several pieces glued together, there are flaws, and the grain isn’t matched up, but still, there’s something about a natural finish that just looks really good. I’m really happy with the natural finish against the rosewood fingerboard and tortoise shell pickguard. I’m still thinking about changing the PU’s to black and the knobs as well, but the white looks pretty good, in my opinion. In the next episode, I’m going to sand off the Squier logo on the headstock, and place my own creation there. That should be fun….

[sixthree205]

From Wreck to Rock – Twice The Fun Part 2

Time Shift…… Well, it’s been two months since I bought the two project guitars, and all the plans I’ve made have gone up in smoke. I’ve purchased two more guitars since the project ones. First, an identical Squier Strat to the other project one, complete with all the “bundle” items; amp, case, strap, tuner, allen wrenches and a Fender CD on how to play – all for the low, low price of $25. Yes, you saw that right, only $25. And, here’s the kicker, the guitar is perfect. No nicks at all.

Second, I purchased a Little Martin complete with Martin soft case. Normally, these retail for about $300 with case, and I picked this one up for $50. As is wont to happen with these ¾ sized guitars made of composite material, the sticker on the inside with the make and serial number has long disappeared. The glue on the sticker doesn’t work well with the composite material and it just falls off. I’m 110% certain it’s a real Martin LMX guitar, I just can’t provide the serial number or figure out the date of manufacture. Doesn’t matter. This little thing sounds great! It’s a keeper. And technically, it’s my first Martin guitar ever, so there is some “value” in that for me. I used to own a couple of Sigma 12-strings from the 70’s, but they were Japanese made versions of Martin’s, and not actual Martins. Not that this Little Martin is a “real” Martin either. It’s made in Mexico with composite materials – nothing like a real guitar from Nazareth, PA. But hey, if the uniform says Yankees, you’re playing the Yankees. It doesn’t matter if they are rookies or veterans, or just in Spring Training. Wow, how’s that for an analogy? That’s the Little Martin on the left as compared to a normal Dreadnaught-sized Epiphone 12-string.

Anyway, back to our regular programming. Instead of trying to fix up the beater Squier and sell it, I’m going all in on a total refinish. Stripping it down to the wood and changing the color. And that is requiring an all-new pickguard to compliment the finish. What is the choice of color, you say? Well, I’m stuck in between two choices. Remember, it was black. Now, I’m either going with Candy Apple Red metallic or Natural. I’ve been working on this guitar for two weeks now to get it to a nice Natural finish. I’ve also purchased a new tortoise shell pickguard to go with that look. And here’s where I’m at so far:

I’ve been coating it with clear lacquer and sanding to smooth the finish. I’m now to the point where I need to wet sand it with really fine 1000 grit, then again with 1500, then again with 2000, then buff it all out with rubbing compound to bring out the shine. Once that is done, I’m lining the holes with copper tape for shielding and then working on the neck. Of course, should I not like this natural look, I’m going right over it with the Candy Apple Red Metallic, change the pickguard to white, and switch the pickups to lipsticks. Surf Strat!

[sixthree205]

From Wreck to Rock – Twice The Fun Part 1

This is the Craigslist ad that caught my attention: Two Strats for $100!! Squier & Stagg stratocasters A bunch of parts and a hard case for a project guitar, everything works fine, you would just have to solder some things together, I am more than fine with bargaining the price, so shoot me an offer INCLUDES: Full Squier Strat body & neck Full Stagg Strat body & neck Loaded pick guards for both Hard case All original electronics Looking for my next project, I was hoping to get a beater Telecaster to work on. So, I scanned The eBay, and I perused The Craigslist hoping to find something worth working on that would end up being a nice Telecaster for my growing collection of guitars. Because I don’t have a Telecaster, and everyone should have at least one Tele in their collection. So to avoid that naked feeling of being Tele-challenged, I wanted to get a beater and fix it up using my near omnipotent knowledge of guitar repair. Taking a step back, for those who are following me for the first time, I’ve done “repairs” on two guitars. Yes, two. In my life. Two. I’ve taken no luthier classes. I’m not a professional guitar repair-person. I don’t know much about electronics. My soldering experience has more to do with copper pipes in my laundry than anything that produces music. The only caveats to this lack of knowledge and experience is that I do work on computers for a living, which gives me a little bit of electronics experience, though I don’t do any work on motherboards or circuitry. The other is that I’ve been playing guitar for about 35 years. Poorly. And I don’t read music. Ok, I strum a bit. Alright, I want to be a guitar rock-god, but I don’t practice at all. My younger brother did go to school to be a sound technician and he also apprenticed as an instrument maker (harpsichords, violins, guitars), but that hasn’t given me any knowledge or experience in guitar repair whatsoever. But it has given me the desire to do it anyway. The first guitar I “worked” on, was a 1988 Epiphone S-300 stratocaster copy. Purchased for $45 at a resale shop, I cleaned it, changed the tuners, changed the relief on the neck, added a new nut to replace the missing one, new knob covers, and bought a replacement whammy bar. New strings and viola! It’s now a part of my collection of guitars. It still has problems, like some of the finish has been chipped off at the nut, the pots are gummed up, and a lot of the screws show rust and corrosion. As is, it’s probably about a $50 guitar that could be a bit better with some more cleaning of the pots, and working on the finish nicks. I might be able to get the worth up to $150 or so, and it does have some interesting history as it’s one of the first Modern Explorer-style hockey stick headstocks produced by Epiphone for this line of guitars. But without putting in a whole new set of electronics, I doubt this guitar will ever be worth playing in public. It’s mostly for my own enjoyment. And being an Epiphone/Gibson fan, it fits in with my Epi-collection. The second guitar I worked on was a messed up Epiphone Dot Studio. This was detailed in my very first From Wreck to Rock. As a side note, I have since sold the Dot Studio for $265 with soft case included (the soft case cost me $20, so total cost to me on the Dot Studio was $179). Aaaannnnndddd…I turned right around, took the $265 and purchased a 1999 Epiphone Dot Deluxe (ES-335) with hard shell case. Not to fix, but to play. I’ll clean it up, sure, but this is a fun purchase, not a working purchase. At the end of the first From Wreck to Rock, I mentioned that I was probably going to build a Telecaster for myself. And I started to price out what I would want/need on the tele that I would build from scratch. Once I got to $600 + I started to rethink the idea of building one from scratch. Yes, I would have the satisfaction of it being built by my own hand, using the parts I wanted, but for $600 I could get a pretty damn good guitar built by professionals and have it right away, not waiting for the 3 months it would take for me to build a guitar from scratch. Who am I kidding? It would take over a year, easy. Hell, there’s a good chance I could die of old age before completing a guitar from scratch. And just think about all the time I could devote to not-practicing if I just bought a pre-built guitar! Hence the project guitar. Deciding to split the difference, I took up looking for a beater Telecaster that I could fix/upgrade so it wouldn’t take so long, and it wouldn’t cost so much. Back to now. The Craigslist ad. As you can see from the listing above, there are no Telecasters in it. But there are two Stratocasters, and a hard shell case. Well, all the parts for two strats and a hard shell case. As it’s really hard to tell all the details about something from a few pictures taken with a cell phone in an online listing, I agreed to meet the owner and see if it’s worth the money for this Collection O’ Junk.

Point number one: Identifying what is worthwhile and what is just crap.

I know nothing about Stagg guitars. Literally nothing. Didn’t even know they existed. That means I have no history to go on with this guitar, other than it’s supposed to look like a strat. Squiers I know a little about. I’ve read the Tony Bacon book on Squiers, so I know what they are, what they are supposed to be, and what should be inside for the electronics. The Craigslist ad says that all the original electronics are there. I call bullshit right away. The bridge pickup on the Stagg has been replaced by a really cheap humbucker, and, it was put in to a hole carved out of the pickguard by someone using a dull steak knife. A total hack job. The person also took a claw hammer to get wood out of the body to fit the humbucker in. Oh, what a piece of crap. Wires not connected, stickers, hand drawn initials, scratched in names on the finish, someone decided that they could make the guitar look cool by distressing it. Or by taking a belt sander to it. Not sure exactly. Looks like crap. Volume and tone knobs are different styles. I’m not sure if “all original electronics” means what he thinks it means. But the neck is good. Straight, solid. Some fret wear that would need to be looked in to. Some finish marks, but that would come out in refinishing it, which was in the plan all along. This one would be a good one to practice working on, or as a guitar for my daughter to put the finish on. She’s 24 and has an artistic flair – it’s not like she’s five and has a crayon. This would be a fine canvas for her talents. As far as worth goes, maybe $20 total for the parts. The neck is worth saving, but it will need to be refinished, new tuners, and some fret work. Looks like rosewood with interesting inlays, so I don’t feel bad with a $20 valuation. The body is crap, its only worth would be in tinkering with the finish. If I were going to play this guitar, I would throw the body away and buy something new, but as it will be something for my daughter to work on, it’s fine. Electronics are crap, to be thrown away. Strap knobs, crap, to be thrown away. Pickguard is destroyed, need a new one. So, yup, $20 would be top end for this Stagg guitar.

The hard shell case is older, and slightly worn on the outside, but overall in good enough condition for me to get $40-$50 out of it if I sold it. I probably won’t. It’s a good case for the finished project guitar. So attaching a $40 value is perfect. I’ll take a hard shell case in this condition for $40 any day.

That leaves the Squier strat. Neck is good, tuners need to be changed. But it’s solid, straight, almost no fret wear. Some minor scratches in the finish that could be buffed out. It has a small indent about 1/32 of an inch in the middle of the 11th fret, but I don’t think it bothers anything. Might keep the nut, might not. It doesn’t look too bad, so I’ll reserve judgement until later. The body is in nice condition with only minor scratches in the finish. It actually looks really good. The pick guard and electronics though….

First of all, it’s not all original electronics – again. The bridge pickup has been replaced and isn’t even soldered to the pots or ground. But, interestingly enough, it’s a DiMarzio D174 Red Velvet Single Coil pickup. The wire leads are cut short, but we’re still talking about a pickup that sells new for about $60-$80. Featuring Alnico 5 magnets and a special plate and wiring scheme, this pickup is kind of a cross between the sound of a Strat and a Tele. So, at worst, if I decide to change out the pickups, I could probably get about $25 for this pickup alone, and make back some of the money that I’m bound to put in. So, all in all, I would probably pay $30-$40 for this strat by itself. The asking price for this bundle of guitarness is $100. Being a fair guy, and not wanting to spend any time at all haggling on the price with a kid that is probably about 18 years old, I offer $80 for the lot, and he’s happy with it. The crap is now mine to do with what I will. Now it’s time for some research. What is this Stagg guitar? Checking online (Google is your friend), I see pictures of what looks to be the guitar I purchased. It looks like a Stagg S300-GBK, made by Stagg Music out of Belgium, and apparently it’s technical details are: S300-GBK - STANDARD "S" ELECTRIC GUITAR - pickups: 3 x single coil - controls: 1x volume + 2x tone - pickup selector switch: 5-way - body: solid alder wood - neck: hard maple, bolt-on / 648mm/ 25 1/2 in. - fingerboard: rosewood / 22 frets - bridge: classic "s" style tremolo - machine heads: diecast, nickel - colour: gothic black. This model is from a few years back, maybe around 2005, when Stagg was using medallions on the headstock. Probably retailed for around $100 to $150. It came in gloss black, which the previous owner sanded off the top and bottom of the body, sometimes through, and in to, the bare wood. He left the sides black, though. I’m still pondering the bridge/tremolo system on this guitar. I may keep it, as it looks ok. But I may also want to change the color to something other than black and get a new tremolo to match or compliment the new color. It will be up to my daughter on what she wants to do with the guitar color and finish. On to the Squier. It’s made in China, probably part of a starter kit, with a retail of about $100. As it’s in slightly better than passable condition, and with the addition of the DiMarzio pickup, I would think that $100 would be more than fair, once it’s all put back together and set up. The thing is, it can be a lot better. There are some upgrades that can be done with this guitar that will take the playability way up, and it should sound pretty killer. Squier’s may be cheap Chinese guitars, because they are built with cheap parts, but they are made on a solid design. Upgrade those parts, and you have something that even the pros could use on stage. And that’s the whole point of From Wreck to Rock. I’m going to see what I can do to raise the playability, sound and value and then sell it, so that I can get a Telecaster. Like last time on From Wreck to Rock, I’ll be keeping a running total of the money that I’m putting in to each guitar so that you can follow along at home. Maybe this will inspire you to do some upgrades of your own on a recycled, dull axe. I can’t wait to get started.

Part Dos

Dos, meaning two, in Spanish, or Disk Operating System, in my lovable world of Information Technology. As I sit at my desk waiting for things to break at my day job, I’m listening to the subtle sounds of a guy working on the roof, trying to fix the leaks that have deposited water all over several desks (and electrical devices) here at work. Fun times. Point number two: water and electronics are good friends. They love each other. They play well together. In fact, they get along too well. Which is why you don’t want water on your electronics. Electricity will conduct all over the place. Didn’t do anything with the guitars last night. I need to go over the Squier again, check the serial number, take it apart completely, clean it, put it back together, string it up and see how it plays. Of course, that means soldering the pickups back to the controls and making sure it is grounded; something that wasn’t done when I purchased it. Looking up the serial number on the Squier shows that it’s from 2009 and made in China at the Axl plant, which is slightly interesting as those are usually meant for the Asian market, not the US. What does it mean from a quality standpoint? I don’t know, really. Again, it’s going to be a matter of setting it up and see how it plays. But on closer inspection, I can see a few dings that will need help, and there are missing screws for the faceplate and back plate, missing whammy bar, the tuners look like they may be stripped or just plain worn out. I may end up replacing the entire faceplate and electronics with a loaded faceplate from Ebay. Not sure how much I want to spend on this guitar. But the neck looks good all the way around. Frets are not worn at all. So it’s time to start working on setting up this guitar! First, I think I need to buy some tools for this project. As I mentioned before, I’m not a professional guitar repairman. I don’t have all the tools of the trade. So if there is something I need to do with a guitar to make it better, I either have to purchase the tool or find something that I do have already to make do with. Some of the basics I have already. Soldering iron (actually have three, to be exact), screwdrivers, some clamps, wire snips. And of course, all the tools for working on an old Victorian house which are of absolutely no use for working on guitars. Having a reciprocating saw is great for demo’ing a wall, but not so good for working on a delicate musical instrument. Chain saws? I have three. Fret leveler? Nope. Files for working on frets? Nada. Naptha for cleaning? Don’t smoke, so have no other need for it. It’s not something I just keep around the house. Paint rollers? Dozens. No help. Fret puller. Whaaa? Does it look like Vice Grips? Those I have. Probably not the right thing. Allen wrench? Yes! Those I have in spades. Side note: Stratocasters may have the perfect guitar body. There is an awful lot to like about the contours of a Strat. Which is one of the reasons that it’s been copied so much. There’s also a lot to like about the three single coil pickups and 5-way switch, which gives the player a ton of options what sound they would like coming out of it. That being said, I really don’t like them all that much. I much prefer a hollow or semi-hollow body guitar to a solid body. I guess I like the feel, the look and the resonance of that open pocket of air between thin layers of wood. I also like the tone of the un-amplified hollow body and the fact that it still has some volume that solid bodies just don’t have. But, hey. To each his own, right? Just because I don’t like strats doesn’t mean you can’t love them to death. They’ll just never be my go-to guitar. And just to prove how picky I am, I prefer a solid body Telecaster to the semi-hollow body Tele. Why? I don’t know, I just do. Shut up. Ah…what to do first? Should I start on the Stagg? Start on the Squier? Do both at the same time? Start a YouTube vlog? I guess I’ll need to get some strings and Naptha. Clean up the Squier, solder it together, string it up, and see how it plays. Then I can decide what really needs to be done on it. Three Some decisions: Going to start on the Stagg by stripping it down to the wood on the body, sanding, priming and then letting my daughter take over. I’ll also be stripping down the neck and then refinishing to compliment the body. Right now it’s black with a rosewood fretboard. The frets are worn, and first I’ll try and save what I can, then maybe do some fret replacement. But that will be after I strip the black finish off. I’m also going to work on the Squier in bits and pieces. I’ve bit the bullet and purchased a loaded pickguard off eBay to replace the rather beat up one that’s there. I’ll be taking the Dimarzio Red Velvet pickup and probably selling it to cover some of the costs of repairing this guitar. Once repaired, and cleaned and set up, I’ll be selling it. I really don’t want or need this guitar, and I need some money to help cover the costs of fixing up these guitars. So I’m guessing that I’ll be doing a lot of hand work, and not a lot of replacement (other than the loaded pickguard) on this guitar to keep the costs low. I’ve got my work cut out for me with a couple of the dings I’ve found on this strat that I didn’t notice before. Oh, well. Time to work on my repair technique. As far as the video blog – that’s probably going to have to wait until after the new year, as I don’t have an official work space that won’t annoy the rest of my family and is clean enough for me to work on a guitar. I’ll have to work on de-cluttering my back office so that I can actually set up a nice workshop area. Not as easy as it sounds.

[sixthree205]

And here it is, my brand new, used, reworked, $157 Epiphone Dot Studio semi-hollow body electric guitar in matte Cherry. Beautiful.

[sixthree205]

From Wreck to Rock, Part Two.

I’m back. After a couple of weeks on the road for my day job, I’m back to the insanity that is my normal life. Mine is a performing family, so there is always a show somewhere, somehow. Either my wife is directing, or choreographing, or my daughter is singing, or dancing, or my son is singing/dancing/acting, or I’ve been talked in to doing a show, we seem to always have a show to do. I met my wife through theater, and it’s continued on with my children. I’m so, so sorry, children of mine. I didn’t mean for that to happen to you. And I tried my best to reason with you about the performing arts. But, it’s in the blood, as they say. Anyway, after having returned to my normal life (and several shows that I had to attend), I’ve managed to put in a couple of hours on the guitar. Let’s backtrack a bit. This is about buying a cheap guitar and hopefully putting it in to good working order so that it’s worthwhile to play. And maybe, if I do a good enough job, put it back up for sale and make a few dollars on it. I purchased a used Epiphone Dot Studio with the matte Cherry finish off Craigslist for $100. The list price for a new one is $499.00, and they can be had for around $320. Used in good condition, they normally go for about $250 to $280. So, this was a good deal – before the repairs. The outside condition was excellent. It was the inside that was trouble. It turns out that the electronics had been messed with, and it needed to be reworked. While I thought that I might be able to get away with using some of the existing parts inside, after a first attempt to work it out, I find that the only thing that is worth saving from what was in the guitar is the stock Epiphone bridge humbucker. I purchased a new Seymour Duncan ’57 neck humbucker, and a replacement stock wiring kit and some new knobs, and some other bits, and sat down to rewire this puppy. As a side note, I purchased some Orange Drop capacitors to replace the one that came with the guitar. But by buying the stock wiring kit, I find that I don’t need to use the Orange Drops, and I’m going to keep them for my next project (which at this point is going to be a DIY Telecaster from scratch – yay, me!). That means that I’m going to take the price of the Orange Drops off of this rebuild. That saves me $11 of the price of this overhaul. At this point, the running total for this guitar is $202.00. Before I go any further, I should mention that I managed to sell the old DiMarzio pickup for $45. So doing a little math, I’m now at $157 invested in to this guitar. Much better. Much, much better. And…soldering. I add the two humbuckers to the wiring kit. Stop, check the schematic again, switch the hot lead and the ground wire going to the three-way switch on one of the humbuckers (because I had them wrong), and put down the soldering gun. The time spent on this run was about an hour and a half (due to the switched wires). Again, much better than the first run through. Now all that is left is to get the pots and switch put back in to the guitar body and screw everything back in. After several failed attempts (while watching a video of one of my son’s productions from college on the tv), I manage to get everything back in and connected. Time to take it over to the amplifier, plug it in and see how it works. And…sweet mother of mercy…it works. It actually sounds really good. I amp it up and it’s sounding just like a semi-hollow body should. I bring it to very low levels of volume and change the tone, and start some fingerpicking – sounds beautiful. At this point my wife asks me if it’s a law that every guitar player has to play Stairway To Heaven when testing a guitar. And yes, it is a law. One that I’m not about to break, either.

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Road Trip

[sixthree205]

I love how the dog is "kill them all" and the cat is all "we're all gonna die".

[sixthree205]

From Wreck To Rock

The saving of an Epiphone Dot Studio guitar.

I picked up an Epiphone Dot Studio the other night for $100 cash. And I probably overpaid for it, at that. Dusty, rusty, and set up wrong, I bought it without being able to check to see if the electronics worked at all. Since owning a 1974 Gibson ES335 back in the 1970’s when I was playing in a college band, and then having to sell it when I was a very poor new father, I’ve wanted another hollow or semi-hollow body guitar. It just fits my style, and it fits with the way I like to play, and the songs that I want to play. I’ve always been a Stephen Stills and Mike Nesmith fan, and a huge fan of The Beatles, especially the sound they got from their hollow body guitars. So getting another hollow body was high on my list. Just not the cost of a Gibson ES335. Especially a 1970’s Gibson. So the Dot Studio it is. Plus, being a native Michigander, I’ve always had a soft spot for Gibsons and Epiphones. They were made in Kalamazoo, MI. This particular guitar’s serial number put it as one made in January of 2011 in Epiphone’s Qingdao, China plant.

Before I get any further, I would like to say that a stock Epiphone Dot Studio is a semi-hollow body guitar with two pickups, one volume, one tone control and a three way toggle to switch between the two. It has a rosewood fretboard, maple neck and mahogany top, back and sides. The scale length is 24 ¾”. The pickups are Vintage Alnico V Plus humbuckers. It is the bare-bones semi-hollow body guitar from Epiphone, and as such, they run about $270-$280 new on eBay plus shipping or about $320 in your local guitar store.

Giving it a good look over, I noticed that there was hope for this cheap guitar. The bones were solid. Neck was in good shape, and nothing about the body was damaged in any way, other than dust and dirt. Yes, the strings were rusty, but hey, you have to change the strings every once in a while anyway, so that never adds in to my equation. Noticeable were a couple of things that could be seen with no expertise whatsoever. First of all, things had been changed on the guitar. The volume and tone knobs had been changed from the stock Black Speed knobs to some knobby chrome things. Kind of reminded me of the teenager that puts a spoiler on the back of a Ford Focus to make it look hot. Doesn’t work that way. Putting chrome knobs on this guitar didn’t make it rad, or hot, or anything other than kind of silly. Next, I noticed that the humbuckers didn’t match. One looked to be the stock Epiphone humbucker that you can see in any picture of an Epiphone Dot, but there’s really no way of knowing for sure until you pull it apart. The other humbucker was definitely different. Didn’t have the chrome posts and wasn’t incased in the outer shell, just tape wound. Looked like it could be home made. Again, can’t be sure until you take everything apart.

Tuners looked stock, nut – stock, bridge – stock. All in pretty good shape. Jack port was loose, but that’s an easy fix.

Now for the part that takes a good eye. The neck.

The good part about looking for warp on a guitar neck is that you have a straight edge right on top – the strings. Hold down the strings at various frets and see if you have upward or downward bend in the neck (curable with the truss rod), and also if you have any warp left to right (not curable by anything). Also check to see if the strings are running closer to one edge or the other to see if the neck has been put on correctly. This neck looked pretty good. Slight upward bow that a slight turn of the truss rod could correct. It was put on straight, and the frets looked to be really good with no appreciable wear. Yes, I could see dirt on the frets that had built up, but that can be cleaned with a little elbow grease.

The body was free of defects. No dings, no chips, no belt buckle marks. The finish is Worn Cherry in a satin finish. Actually looks pretty sharp. I may take it to a glossy finish, but that’s a way down the road.

All this panned out really good on this cheapo, so I purchased it without caring about the electronics. The guy who sold it to me said he paid $250 for it last year. So why sell it for only $100 this year? Could be he needed the money. Could be that he knew something I didn’t yet.

Took it home and plugged it in. And guess what? One of the humbuckers didn’t play at all, and the other was getting horrible feedback. So much so, I would have guessed that I was maxed out on a distortion pedal. And this was the clean tone – so to speak. Anyway, it was a train wreck. Time to pull it apart and see what was going on inside.

Once the strings were off, it was time to start digging around the inside. Semi-hollow body guitars are not the easiest to work on. You don’t have a removable access panel like on some solid body guitars. Everything must be through either the pickup holes or the f holes on the guitar. So, unscrew, and carefully start pulling things out through the f hole. And that’s where I started to see things. Ugly things. First, and this is huge, not every wire was attached or terminated. It looked like someone had done a re-wiring job, and really didn’t know what they were doing. Bad soldering, wires barely hanging on, some had broken off, burned casings around the wire ends, wires cut too short. The works. The two humbuckers were not positioned correctly. They should be opposite directions, but they weren’t. And, to top it off, the wiring was wrong. I don’t know what they were trying to do, but they definitely put a short in the works with their wiring. This thing wasn’t going to work from the get-go. What is a get-go anyway?

Like I suspected, one of the humbuckers was a stock Epiphone humbucker. It looked in good condition. The only downside was that it was a bridge humbucker in the neck position. Not a major thing – and hey, he could have done that on purpose to get a certain tone. But based on the lack of care, technique or style, I’m guessing he just didn’t know what he was doing. The other turned out to be a DiMarzio DP151 PAF Pro humbucker. Also a bridge pickup, this one is a little more versatile for what position it’s in, and also a pretty good pickup on its own. They retail new for about $80, so this actually gave me some hope about turning this junker into a gem. The bad part was that they didn’t have four matching screws for the mounting rings. Mother puss-bucket that pisses me off. Take the time, spend an extra 25 cents, and get matching screws that fit the job. How lazy can you get? Arrrgggghhh!!! So, what to do now? Well, start from scratch. Cut all the parts apart. Take them out of the guitar and see what is salvageable. The pickups look pretty good, with the exception of the burned wires. So, I’m going to try to sell the DiMarzio for $40 to try and take down my expenses on the repair job on this guitar. This leaves me a humbucker short. So to the store I go to pick up a Seymour Duncan ‘59 Neck humbucker. That was an extra $75 in to the cost of the guitar. The stock Epi humbucker will move back to the bridge position. If the Epi humbucker doesn’t pan out with the ’59, I can always go back and pick up another bridge ’59 to match them. But let’s see if this goes as planned first. Why keep the stock Epi pickup and sell the DiMarzio? Why not use the better pickup in the guitar? Well, even though the DiMarzio would be considered a better pickup, it’s really not right for a semi-hollow body guitar. It is a bit too “hot” for this style of guitar. It’s much better suited for a solid body electric, especially one that you are going for a bit more “metal” sound. Use the right tools for the job, I always say. You can take a screw out of a wall with a hammer, or a saw, or a butter knife for that matter, but the best tool is a screwdriver. The best tool for a semi-hollow body isn’t the DiMarzio. It may be more expensive, but that doesn’t make it the right one to use.

Running total at this point is $175.

What else can be saved? Well the pots were better than expected. JS 500K pots that (besides the glob job on the soldering) looked to be ok. There was a .022uF ceramic cap soldered to one. I haven’t checked to see if it’s still good, or if they fried it, but it’s going anyway. An upgrade is in order. Since we’re using humbuckers in this guitar, the .0022uF is a good choice, but I’m going with the classic Orange Drop cap. I go and purchase a few of them (for this and other projects) so this purchase was a total of $11 for the caps.

Running total at this point is $186.

The three-way toggle is really gummed up. It’s going to take some work to remove all the solder from this and see if it is salvageable. But if I can save it, I want to. It’s a stock Epi switch, nothing fancy, but then again, the switch doesn’t need to be fancy, it just needs to work without interfering with the sound. If I can keep this closer to stock, without spending more money, that’s the point of this whole exercise.

The chrome knobs have to go. They look great on a Telecaster, when you have other chrome pieces to go with, but not on this guitar that has absolutely no chrome on it. All the metal pieces are black. The bridge, the tuners, the nut, the trim, all black. So the chrome is going. New Gibson speed knobs are $14 for four, but I only need two. So I’ll have two extra for some other project.

Running Total at this point is $200.

Whew! I’m getting close to the price of a new Dot Studio. What have I gotten myself in to?

Time to see if the jack still works. At this point, every dollar counts. I can’t afford to put more in to this guitar and I’m not counting my time spent at all. It will need to have the solder cleaned off and new wiring. The nut looks a little worn on the fourth string, but it’s serviceable. As long as it doesn’t mute the string, I’ll be leaving that on. I can change it out later with a Tusq nut (which I’ve put on other guitars before, and I like working with the material). But that is a $10 upgrade that I don’t need to do right now. The bridge is fine. It’s a stock tune-o-matic bridge and a stopbar tailpiece with no scrapes and looking pretty good. Now for the good part. I’ve got a lot of wire and solder from previous work. Also, I already have all the tools I need for this job. So there are no extra costs for those components.

The wiring is easy, as Seymour Duncan has a site with wiring schematics. Very handy. I highly recommend Seymour Duncan. Their pickups are great, and their site is really good. You can listen to sound clips of their huge line of pickups to choose what you want for your guitar. Really a great site. www.seymourduncan.com That’s a straight up plug. I’m getting no kickbacks for pumping their site at all. Maybe I should. Something to think about…. On to the cleaning. Time to start taking the solder off the parts that I’m trying to save. I also need to make a wiring board to put all the pieces in for the wiring/soldering.

Ugh.

After 5 hours of making a jig, de-soldering, re-soldering, and trying to fit everything back in the Dot, I have failed somewhere. Having skipped the step of testing everything before putting it back inside, and relying completely on my superior intellect and electrical skills, I now have a guitar that doesn’t work. Why? I don’t know. I’ll have to pull it all back out and start from the beginning again. Poopmeister.

New purchase – a pre-made NOS (stands for New Old Stock, or New Original Stock depending on who you believe) wiring harness for an Epiphone. This is direct from the Epi factory in China and is costing me an additional $13.00. With Alpha 500k pots, an Epi three-way toggle and a .0022uF cap, it’s like starting fresh from the factory.

Running total is now $213. Getting out of hand here.

Now on the plus side, once done, this will be a half step up from a stock Epi Dot Studio. So, in theory, it will be better than the stock Epi Dot Studio. Note: for about 27 ½ seconds I thought about adding two more pots to make it a Dot standard guitar with two volume and two tone controls. That would have meant drilling two more holes in the guitar. I don’t think I actually want to go to there, to turn a 30 Rock phrase. Maybe later after I have this thing working finally I can start to think about how far I want to take it.

[sixthree205]

I went to the men’s bathroom at work, and noticed that the 2-ply toilet paper’s perforations weren’t lining up correctly. Hey, it happens. So I carefully looped the top ply back over the roll so that they would line up again. All is right with the world. A couple of hours later, I had to go back to the rest room again, and the roll was again off on its perforations. I’m thinking to myself, is there someone here who is trying to save the company money by only using 1 ply at a time? Who would do that? And more importantly, where do they sit in the office?

[sixthree205]

Isn't this Cutler's?

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

[thebsdboys]

OK first you’re being a total dick right now,

[sixthree205]

I know the artist. Friend of mine. He's awesome and hilarious.

[sixthree205]

It seems that in every small town in America, there is a pizza place. It’s not a chain, or a licensee, or any big, well-known brand of pizza. Just a local joint with a quaint name, like Riverside Pizza, or Slopey’s, or Buck’s Pizza and Taxidermy. You know the place. All the local have been going there for years.

The thing is, all the locals SWEAR ON A BIBLE that “their” pizza is the BEST PIZZA IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Invariably, the local pizza could be reproduced by taking a saltine cracker, put some ketchup, a smattering of some indefinable cheese and some gawd-awful sausage and call it a tie with no winner.

Look, if you have lived all your life in a box filled with poop, it stands to reason that if given a lobster to eat you might complain that it doesn’t smell or taste of poop. Because that’s all you know. To you, poop tastes normal.

Your pizza is horrible.

I’ve been all over the world. I’ve had a lot of pizza, from “authentic” Italian pizza to foreign attempts at “American” pizza. I’ve been to the best pizza places from New York to Chicago to LA and all points in between, and I can honestly say that I could eat good pizza for every meal, in dozens, if not hundreds of combinations and styles.

I’m not saying that you don’t have a right to like your local pizza. By all means, eat your poop pizza and have a party with some crappy beer to wash it down.

Just stop saying it’s the best pizza in the world. For. The. Love. Of. God. Stop.

[sixthree205]

My Journey With The Doctor - Interlude

I’m guessing you thought I quit.

Well, you’re wrong – sort of.

Did I stop writing My Journey With The Doctor? Yes. But there’s a good reason for that.

I was watching Doctor Who.

I know, that’s what I was supposed to be doing, and I was. It’s just that I wasn’t watching the right Doctor Who. Christmas happened with the giving of gifts, and, well, let’s just say that someone got the new Doctor on Blu-Ray. Yup. The whole 8th series with Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman. And I’ve been watching that with every spare moment.

Yes, yes, yes. Out of order with the grand master plan. I couldn’t help myself.

By the way (and I digress a bit here), I really get bothered by episodes where The Doctor has some time limit imposed during the course of the show. In the episode The Caretaker we have a humanoid spider robot/assassin/alien that is going to pop in and kill everything in Coal Hill School, because of reasons. The Doctor sets up an elaborate method of luring the robot/assassin/alien into a special circle of time gadget thingies so he can send the robot/assassin/alien into the far distant future where the robot/assassin/alien won’t be able to hurt anyone. Ex-soldier/math teacher/Impossible Girl’s boyfriend messes The Doctor’s plan up and he instead sends robot/assassin/alien three days into the future. This gives The Doctor only three days (THREE DAYS!!!!!) to come up with a new plan to save humanity.

Only, he’s a Time Lord, right? He can just pop in to the Tardis, take as long as he likes to come up with a perfect plan, come back at the exact moment he needs to and execute said plan. It’s hard to have a time limit when you’re a Time Lord.

In theater it’s called the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Being able to look beyond the fact that this is all made up fantasy, and be willing to accept what they are showing you as real. Only, when they are setting up the rules for this universe, we need to accept those rules, and if they bend or break those rules, the Willing Suspension of Disbelief goes away. I have a hard time believing that The Doctor doesn’t have enough time for something – anything.

Back to our regularly scheduled program.