08/03/2018
So this was a heck of a project brought to me a while back by the guitarist for local band of awesomeness, Cyanide Son. He also goes by Jason, but he'll answer to whatever you want to call him. Anyway, he brought this little brute to me with the initial task of replacing a worn out, older than dirt, scratchy tone pot. Nothing major, right? Well once I realized I was dealing with a piece of 6-stringed history in this 50+ year old instrument, I had a sneaking suspicion that the failing potentiometer would be the least of my worries.... I knew I was bound to run into at least a few challenges - being that this was probably the OLDEST guitar I've ever worked on still to date. Ultimately these challenges were made to my patience and my ability to keep a steady hand with potentially damaging tools over what is essentially an antique; even after many hours of cramp inducing, headache causing work...
Upon gutting this warlock and looking the entire thing over, reality set in and what began as a "simple fix" started to morph into an entire electronic overhaul, followed by evolution into partial restoration. Being the particularly anal-retentive and over-zealous chap that I am, my project plan involved everything but two cents shy of a full instrument restoration. However, the electronics ended up being more of a challenge than I had expected and taking up much more time and energy than I had planned. Other than that, the different avenues involving various levels of overall restoration, historical accuracy vs. modern playability, modern vs. vintage vs. 'vintage-modern' hardware and electronic combinations, etc. all ended up with me disappointed since my first attempt at fixing the electronics was not up to my standards and I never got a chance to mulligan that aspect of the project with the newly obtained proper parts. It got sent back to the person who originally asked to have it looked at so it could be sold, and the buyer didn't care what condition it was in since he would be throwing all of his own stuff into it while disregarding period accuracy and historical value.
None of that bothers me however. What DID bother me though was that I A: Never got to fix my screw up and B: Didn't get a chance to follow through on the refurb and restore job I had laid out. All things considered and long story short, she was my first project that I felt I had failed with personally and resulted in varying hand and extremity wounds, a few sleepless nights, and a couple lessons learned. All still fun nonetheless, while subsequently adding a boost in confidence in my skills and ability.
