Body photographed after spraying, showing body top routing and a centre sustain block, which is veryunusual for a "Club-Style" guitar.
Non-original tuners fitted. These were replaced by James with the correct Hofner spring-loaded units.
The guitar arrived from Spain in a huge box with very little padding and as a result the neck and been broken off. When inspecting the guitar a lot of rather shabby old repair work was evident.
Firstly the neck had been glued at the wrong angle using epoxy. This meant that when the neck was broken off, the side of the neck box remained stuck to the neck. Also almost the whole body was covered in epoxy fingerprints! As well as this the circuit was dead, the bridge pickup didn't work, the tuners had been replaced as had the bridge, The neck had repaired holes drilled through the fingerboard, the pickup surrounds were broken, it had very bad fretwear, the inlays were falling out and as well as the epoxy fingerprints, the finish had a lot of wear.
Having striped down the guitar the first job was to clean up the end of the neck and then start repairing the neck box. When this was done I fixed the loose inlays and ordered up colour matched Nitro to over-spray the damaged finish. It's always a tricky balance restoring these old guitars as I feel the end result should look like an old guitar that has never had anything done to it. It would have been easier to strip and respray the whole guitar but this would loose al the cool checking lines and patina of the original finish. The next job was to very carefully remove the fingerprints and cut back the finish with minimal damage before over spraying the colour coats on both the neck and body. When I thought the balance was about right I then spayed 6 coats of lightly tinted clear nitro over it and left it to harden.
Next was the pickups. Having check the bridge pickup with a meter it appeared to be the switch that was the problem so I repaired the contacts on the switch to bring the bridge pickup back to life. The active circuit was a bit more tricky!! Having metered it through it was clear all the transistor were blow as well as many other components. This was caused by the battery clip bing replaced and the new one being wired the wrong way round. So all the transistor were replaced as well as the other failed components, the switches and pots were all cleaned and checked.
I then went back to the body and neck and gently flatted them off and polished the by had. With a sunburst finish you have to be very careful not to rub through as they're impossible to touch in. I made sure I didn't go too far with the polishing to do my best to emulate an old finish with a bit of sinkage and a slightly dull edge to it as well as the original checking line showing through.
When I felt the look was right it was time to glue the neck back in and start putting the guitar back together. Bob has found a set of original tuners and a nice roller bridge to fit. I then sorted the frets and cleaned up the fingerboard as best I could before fitting the tuners. Next I repaired the pickup surrounds and fitted the pickups and selector switch. Next the trem tailpiece went back on. Now the fun started! I wired back in the active control panel and strung it up to test it and..... It was still dead as a Dodo :-( I messed about for a couple of days metering it through and couldn't work out why it didn't work. John them had a go and he too couldn't see the problem. We both then thought it might be a problem with the actual board and sure enough it was. It turn out the board had been flexed so hard it has broken the foils so I removed a few components and scrapped back the insulation to allow me to solder the broken tracks back together. Now finally it all worked!
Next the guitar was setup and the pickguard etc fitted. It's cool little guitar and plays well. Another little treasure Bob has saved ;-)