I have recently found myself buying inexpensive guitars, working them over and ending up with really great sounding/playing instuments. Anyone else doing this?

I have 2 prime examples currently:
Gibson All American: the cheap melody-maker sort of thing from the mid 90's. I reshaped the neck to a soft v, ground down the bridge set screws, which stuck out a good 1/4", replaced the crappy tuners with wilkinson cross drilled (these also suck, and will be replaced at some time in the near future). I removed the aftermarket SD knock-off in the bridge entirely, and routed the neck slot for an overwound p-90. I also carved in an arm-relief, about like a strat, just cause the body was an odd shape that was less comfortable. This guitar sounds great, used it almost entirely for the last Bismarck record.

Jay Turser SG-I really don't like sg's, but i got this thing super cheap, even by turser standards. I took off the bigsby, installed a stop-tail. Replaced the tuners with Sperzel locking tuners (I've found my brand), and swapped out the crappy humbuckers for a p-94 at the bridge and a PAF knock-off in the neck. I then mounted all the pots on a plexiglass board and flipped them around, so the controls are on the back, with holes drilled in the plastic cover and the tips of the pots flush, so if i want to adjust anything, i can do so with the tip of my pick, but they stay out of my way. Still needs a little fine-tuning, but pretty good so far. And I was able to cover the costs of the pickups with all the parts I removed-just traded them in.

-chris

Maybe you could work on my shitty old Jagmaster sometime (if you live in Chicago).

And if you could, please scrawl "TRAVIS BEAN" somewhere on the body in crude/massive black letters. Thanks!

This thread needs more pictures.

-A

I didn't have my camera with me at work, but fully intend to add some later this evening.

yeah, those sound really sweet, chris. anxious to see em.

i did something like that - but not really cheap. about $300 for a Samick 335 copy.
it looks great, is very comfortable and plays great. just needs a pickup swap, new pots (they are scratchy) and i´m set.
and yeah, before somebody said "dude you could buy an epiphone dot for that cash!!", they retail here for $580. so, no.
oh, and here´s a picture.

I buy expensive, high-quality guitars that require no diddling-around with. The more expensive the better, I have found.

Cheap guitars make cheap, bad-sounding music.

Some guy down the street sold me a mexi strat from the early 90s. It looks like the dude went Pete Townshend on the thing for a minute then thought better of it. It's got white house paint where it was Townshended.

I put a rio grande in the bridge and replaced the pickguard with a stevie ray vaughn pickguard. The one with his initials carved into it.

A friend of mine lives in Northern California. He drinks Weidemann and smokes Kool. He developed this habit because he got sick of giving away his beer and cigarettes at parties.

"Dude, can I get a beer?"
"Sure, dude, here you go."
"Weidemann? [pause] That's cool, man. I'll just get a smoke, dude."
"You like menthol?"
"Newport?"
"Kool."
"That's cool, dude, uh, good seeing you."

So last week I had this conversation:

"what's up, vockins, long time."
"Long time, indeed. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?"
"Playing Rudy's next week, man."
"I dig Rudy's, got that Greek pizza across the street."
"Yeah, place rules. Say, think I could get that Jazzmaster for a backup axe?"
"You need a Jazzmaster?"
"Yeah, gotta get real heavy on the trem."
"Well, no, but I got another Fender with a trem you can use."
"Oh, sweet, what is it?"
"Mexican strat with a rio grande in the bridge."
"Oh, no Jazzmaster I guess, but that could work."
"Yeah, sounds great. Looks cool, too. It's arctic white with a black Stevie Ray Vaughn pickguard. Got a first VH record, Jake E. Lee vibe going on."
"Uh..."
"Come by tonight and pick it up."
"Yeah, uh, let me get back to you on that."

I decided that if im buying a guitar now, it's going to be either a 50$ guitar or some EGC. It's all or nothing. I don't like these 500-700$ guitars which are so so. I'd rather play on a wood slab with strings. that's what I have right now, a Lyons guitar. Worst guitar ever. Chris, do you mind selling me a cheap guitar you've upgraded?

i've just got a cheap guitar that's going to be a project

it cost me £50. it's a quest atak 1, believed to be matsumoku-built. the serial number suggests it was made the year before i was born.



the neck feels very very similar to a '76 strat i used to have, but with a slightly flatter radius. the neck humbucker is really nice too.

i'm going to take off the heinous red colour and cut a new shaped-pickguard out of aluminium.