Δευτέρα 29 Ιουνίου 2015

...restorations of legends...vol3...

 

...this is all about restorations of old guitars...


...from the first six months of 2015


...some of them in a very bad condition...


                                                                                ...enjoy it...






...fender stratocaster squier series 1993... 




...this fender stratocaster squier series was made in mexico in 1993...there 's something special with these guitars...all the wooden parts are made in usa and their quality is excellent... from the other side the wiring parts are bad...except the ceramic pickups that they are really good...
...the squier series has sanded as you can see in the photos...
...the restoration is about changing the wiring parts - not pickups, blind tone pots and just a volume japan pot, replace the input jack, the 5way switch with a goldo one and the wires, make some shielding, restore the shining colour and fix some damages on the body, fix the fret levelling and go to the tuning of this beauty with some aesthetic changes and the final setup...
 ...condition good...




 
























































































...after three months i changed the original pickups with seymour dunkan jb (neck), little 59 (middle), hotrails (bridge), moved the volume pot on the middle hole of p/rd for better performance and installed two switches. The first changes the whole mode from single coils to humbuckers. The second changes the mode of the strat guitar to tele (neck and bridge) and also put the three pickups together...















 

 

 

 

 

...westsound proffesional early '80's...





...well, this guitar is not a legend with the exact meaning of the word...
...but as i've said before...there are no bad guitars just bad players...and i've seen people playin' in the street with broken guitars amazing music...
...so this is one more voice from the past...

...westsound guitars were made in Japan in early to middle '80's, most of them as Kramer copies, using most of the times unusual testin' parts that they don't exist today...
...they came to Greece 5-6 years after the company closed in cheap prices...
...three things made me focus to this guitar... ...the good quality of wood material - fat body, fast neck maple - rosewood...
...the perfect colour and...
...the unusual bridge tremolo system - kahler type - with a strange micro tuning and the lock behind the nut, that works stable without givin' any tensions to the body as you'll see... you can see all the front panel adjusting screws, how the saddles move and also the screw for placing' the bridge in horizontal position an how the micro tuning screws push or release each string..the rear panel has the tremolo arm adjusting' screw and the springs' holding screws..
...so the whole thing for me is to make this guitar play without to change any parts of it...the springs you 'll see are in this tension at least for 30 years, so
i 'm going to use light strings to avoid large tensions...but there are a lot of things to do before put on the new strings...
...there’s something very special about this guitar...you cannot replace a single part without some modification...for example larger single coils, smaller 5way switch etc...so had to fix some parts instead to start doing modes...the 5way was repaired but i don't know for how long...
...the wiring is ok, the ceramic pickups built in the covers in one unit give bigger output than the usual coils, they 're about 7,8k
Ω...

...fret levelling was a big mess because one fret had a big hit and had to be the meter of levelling but couldn't repair completely because the fret had to go very low so i had to find a solution somewhere in the middle...
...now i 'm finished with the restoration i have to say that this guitar is very difficult to setup, has very good sound - the bridge pickup is like a telecaster bridge screamer, very fast - for me is perfect neck, the springs need to change to keep the bridge more stable but you can have them only if you made them by your hands, maybe i'll try this sometime, the guitar stays in tune unless you use the tremolo arm... but who cares..this old lady belongs to history and just for this it worths too much...
 ...condition very bad...










































 






































































...aria proII mad axe 1986...




...this beauty is coming from the first generation of Aria after Matsamocu period,
assembled in Korea but is manufactured in Japan (only the first generation) about '86-87 ... 

...away from the classic stratocaster sounds because of the ungled neck and middle pickups that they are very clear and bright... 
...the production kept in Korea 'till early 90's...
...condition good...