Print PDF
Favorite
Email
Step 7Addendum: The Guitar
(This step was added later, about a week or so after initial publishing.)
It's just to show the finished, reassembled guitar. Very little work was done to the front of the guitar, just the back and sides. But it's very pretty, so I wanted to show it off. Plays nice, too.
The guitar is a late 60's Sekova thinline hollow-body electric. This is a MIJ (made in Japan) instrument. The company imported Japanese guitars into NYC, USA in the late 1960's and early 1970's. It's common heritage with Teisco and Kawai is pretty obvious, but they were allegedly made by Aria.
I'll quote some info from the 'net. I cannot speak to it's accuracy:
Sekova was a brand name for the Musical Merchandise Company of New York. These guitars were produced by ARAI whose parent company was ARIA. These well made copy guitars were more than likely built in the Matsumuko plant in Japan.
It's just to show the finished, reassembled guitar. Very little work was done to the front of the guitar, just the back and sides. But it's very pretty, so I wanted to show it off. Plays nice, too.
The guitar is a late 60's Sekova thinline hollow-body electric. This is a MIJ (made in Japan) instrument. The company imported Japanese guitars into NYC, USA in the late 1960's and early 1970's. It's common heritage with Teisco and Kawai is pretty obvious, but they were allegedly made by Aria.
I'll quote some info from the 'net. I cannot speak to it's accuracy:
Sekova was a brand name for the Musical Merchandise Company of New York. These guitars were produced by ARAI whose parent company was ARIA. These well made copy guitars were more than likely built in the Matsumuko plant in Japan.
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
about the whole process, only a few people would have been interested. By limiting this to one thing, it seems to be useful to more people...
Some points (I hope this is what you're looking for):
--It's almost never a good idea to refinish something 'vintage.' From a collectors POV, ugly is often beautiful. However, in this case, the guitar had so many structural problems, it was unplayable. If it were a 50 yr old Martin or Gibson, I would have a real luthier fix it.
(and finish-wise, this guitar was really quite good--look at the last step. The front wasn't refinished.)
--Running down the defects:
1) The top was sunken, warped inward.
2) Consequently the action was 1/4 in+ at the end of the fret board
3) The prev owners had tried to 'correct' this, by tightening the truss rod as much as possible (any more, and it would have broken.) But all this does is bend the neck backward--so the guitar was playable in the first 6 frets, and horrible above that.
4) The binding was separated in one of the cutaways.
5) The back was delaminating in two areas.
6) The binding was cracked in one spot.
7) The wiring was defective (disconnections, so neither pickup worked.)
8) Small crack on the front, between the neck and the neck pickup.
--So each problem needed to be addressed and repaired. And likely each one would be enough for an instructable on it's own! You can see why I didn't want to tackle so much, I hope.
--After that, small areas needed paint touchup. Then the back and sides had to be 're-cleared' several times with lacquer. Every effort was made to keep the existing paint. I never did sand down through that...
Anyway, back to the baseball game....
You make it seem so easy, you got me thinking that even I could do it!