The work begins…

First order of the day, clean that grime and dirt. Honestly, it wasn’t as bad as I originally thought. Mostly cobwebs and loose dirt. Easily wiped off, for the other more stubborn dirt, I used a simple technique used by French polishers, which is using what is colloquially called a “tampon”…. yeah, that’s what I thought.

To make this “frenching pad” (Yeah that doesn’t sound much better either), take a clean rag, turn the corners into the middle,and hold like a ball. You want to use this almost dry, with. Tiny bit of warm water on it.

Water worked fine for me, but if it doesn’t for you, use some white spirit vary sparingly.

As you can see from the pictures above, the cleaning process brought some scratches to the fore. To sort this out I am going to need to order some guitar polish, a task for another day.

The neck come up well from cleaning, and the fretboard looks amazing now.

The frets need a deeper clean but I will get to that.

Next task…. Rustbusting. Y’know who to call.

Until next time,

Try to keep your sanity

Projects come to you when you least expect it, this one certainly did.

I was in the shed the other afternoon, looking for something completely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, when I opened a box to find a guitar I had from an early teen that never really got played, and another item, which will be the next project.

The guitar is in bad condition, in a cold, damp shed kind of bad condition.

The guitar is a Yamaha ERG121, it’s classed as a beginners electric, in the Super Strat style. It’s main focal point is the pickup layout, it’s served by two Humbuckers (top and bottom) with a single coil in the middle. The options for the pickups comes via a 5 position selector switch on the right of the guitar. The versatility of these pickups mean it’s just at home playing blues, and just as well playing thrash Metal.

The body is basswood, not too heavy, but enough weight to make the guitar feel like it has a sense of quality. The guitar is served by a 22 fret bolt-on neck, with a topping of a rosewood fretboard, which gives the guitar a real premium feel.

This is going to be an interesting project, plenty of different challenges to take on, rust, a loose truss, a tremolo bridge which needs some serious tlc, and new strings (the old ones were hardly there from so much rust).

The first job will be taking it apart and giving everything a good clean…

I’ll leave you with a picture of the guitar in pieces and the long road ahead.

Until next time,

Try and keep your sanity.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton