Nick's wonderful old 1976 Strat was definitely a vintage USA Fender but it turned out to have some interesting wear and tear plus one or two 'foreign' parts incorporated into it. The brief was to remove the Roland syth unit plus a load of vintage gaffa tape on the back and then to re-fret the guitar, replace the lifeless pots and dodgy jack before setting it up with a new nut and fresh strings.
Removing the tape (front and back) was interesting because in both locations, the glue seems to have interacted in a bizarre way with the finish, creating small 'etched' notches along the edges where the gaffa tape was and where the sticky pads for the synth components were. Very weird. I include some close-ups in the video showing those strange 'artifacts'.
The re-fret was also challenging due, in part to the board being shallow - one of those vintage 'veneer' fingerboards. I erred on the side of re-cutting the slots slightly shallow to avoid cutting through the rosewood to the maple and in doing so, I think I left one or two frets fractionally high which I had to re-work to get it right. To my surprise, the original fretwire had fatter fret tangs than this identically-sized replacement wire which left me needing to 'nibble' the tang on the replacement wire for it to grip acceptably.
By the time I'd completed the re-fret (as shown in this video) everything was playing well, except for one slightly high fret remaining. As a result of that and further test playing I gave the guitar a 2nd, light levelling to perfect it. This is reasonably common-place and is usually the result of my over-cautiousness in levelling the first time round. Better safe than sorry.
The video also shows me replacing the primary electrical components and wiring everything back up. You might see some 'alien' components (bridge saddles, one of the pickups etc) - all of which I think surprised Nick, the owner. These apparently come from a Tokai of the same era which adds an interesting twist to the history of this old guitar.
14 окт 2024
