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Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

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  • #1

    Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

    I got this old red Teisco guitar from my dad's farm (long story - old dude who hoarded musical instruments):



    Unlike the lovely but mostly unsavlageable Kent hollowbody electric that's to it's left (another long story . . . the neck was warped and the top was badly spit. I gave it to a friend ages ago because he wanted the gold foil pickups that were in it) the Teisco guitar has a relatively straight neck. It even has a truss rod. And . . . lemme check . . .

    Yep! The truss rod even works!

    It has the smallest frets I've ever seen on a guitar. They're like less than a half millimeter wide and tall. Picture very hard strands of hair. I was able to get it set up well enough to do some chords on it, but it's just a painful guitar to play if you're trying to do anything approaching a bend.

    I've had it for like . . . six years? And only picked it up twice. Weird neck on this thing. It's a 24 inch scale (not 24 3/4) which isn't really my bag. The other part of the problem is that the toggle switches are all pretty bad. If you wiggle them back and forth a bunch you can kinda hear the pickups kicking on and off, but there's a lot of weird buzzing and random cutting off of sound. But at least they make noise.

    Also, the guitar looks like it was mauled by grizzly bears at some point in its past. Most of it's scratches have scratches. There are dents and dings everywhere.









    So, how hard can it be to refret a guitar? :P
    Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

    Originally posted by Douglas Adams
    This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
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  • #2
    Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

    seems like a good candidate for a dedicated slide guitar. but you can totally do a fret job on that thing

    Comment

    • #3
      Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

      Seems like you've got a thing for others watching you while you destroy instruments...

      Comment

      • #4
        Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

        Neck off (weird neck pocket . . . also, the neck itself is finished/varnished in the neck pocket. Bizarre.



        First cock up was kinda expected. There was a pretty obvious crack through the plastic nut, so I figured it would break when tapping it off with a wood block and hammer. It did. I took the two halves and epoxied them back together just in case, but I've got a spare nut from the acoustic that I destroyed that looks like it'll fit in case the epoxied nut doesn't work.


        WTF is up with this vibrato system? How the hell does it even work? Looks like there's a giant spring in a hole, and an odd knife edge up on top. I'll figure this out later.



        Heat fret with soldering iron, grab fret with flush cut pliers, ease fret up. Rinse, repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Easy so far. I only really made one mistake while pulling the frets . . . on the first one I pulled. Tried to get it out too quickly, and didn't give the fret enough time to heat from the iron. Learned - seems like you have to wait until the fret is really, really hot. Not just warm to the touch. Took an 1/8th of an inch square sized chip out of the fretboard under the first fret. Learned - Do not start at the first fret. That's the area that most people spend their time playing, and damage in this area is likely to be most noticeable. Mess around the dusty end of the fretboard first so that mistakes you make are less noticeable.

        I took a drop of superglue, and glued the chunk from the tearout back into place. Looks good as new now:


        Time for some light sanding with 400 grit paper to smooth things out a bit. There are water (beer?) marks on this fret board from the 10th to 17th frets that I couldn't get out with lemon oil cleaner that will hopefully go away from the sanding. I might try to roll the edges of the board a little bit too. Then I'm going to run box cutters through the slots to try and dig out any debris.
        Last edited by GuitarStv; 08-25-2019, 06:52 PM.
        Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

        Originally posted by Douglas Adams
        This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

        Comment

        • #5
          Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

          Originally posted by jeremy View Post
          seems like a good candidate for a dedicated slide guitar. but you can totally do a fret job on that thing
          That's why it's perfect for learning to do a fret job. Worst case scenario I just pull all the frets and only use it for slide. Less chance of bottoming out the slide that way. :P
          Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

          Originally posted by Douglas Adams
          This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

          Comment

          • #6
            Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

            Originally posted by nexion218 View Post
            Seems like you've got a thing for others watching you while you destroy instruments...
            You can't make an omlette without breaking a few guitars. Or something like that. :P
            Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

            Originally posted by Douglas Adams
            This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

            Comment

            • #7
              Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

              About ten years back i purchased a guitar just like that for $50 and ended up selling it for $300. I'm sitting here now wondering what the hell it was and why they paid $300 for it

              Fun project sort of but its gonna needs ultra mega jumbo fretwire.

              Comment

              • #8
                Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                Originally posted by kramersteen View Post
                About ten years back i purchased a guitar just like that for $50 and ended up selling it for $300. I'm sitting here now wondering what the hell it was and why they paid $300 for it

                Fun project sort of but its gonna needs ultra mega jumbo fretwire.
                I like big frets. Going with Jescar 57110 Stainless Steel Fret Wire:

                Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

                Originally posted by Douglas Adams
                This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

                Comment

                • #9
                  Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                  Originally posted by GuitarStv View Post
                  I like big frets. Going with Jescar 57110 Stainless Steel Fret Wire:

                  You should use that evo gold fretwire i think the colour would look more period correct yet totally modded and epic.

                  Comment

                  • #10
                    Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                    Go man go!
                    I actually played one of those (with different pickups) on stage for a couple months when I was green. Worst. Frets. Ever. Great twangy sound, though.

                    Comment

                    • #11
                      Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                      Originally posted by GuitarStv View Post
                      You can't make an omlette without breaking a few guitars. Or something like that. :P
                      No question about that... I was just trying to be cheeky.

                      Comment

                      • #12
                        Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                        Go for man. Worst case scenario you can put maple slivers in the fret grooves and make it a fretless for slide.

                        Comment

                        • #13
                          Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                          Getting the frets in was more difficult than getting them out, but not hugely more difficult.

                          First I stuck the guitar neck on a bag of oatmeal as a rest. Then I cut a fret to the correct length. Then realized that I had to bend the fret to match the fretboard curvature.

                          My fretwire came in long straight pieces, so first I needed to bend it somehow. Faffed around trying some different things, but eventually I just drilled a 1/2" hole in a small piece of 2x4. Put the wire in the 2x4 at a bit of an angle and pulled it through to get a smooth radius. If it's not radiused enough, just repeat this step. If it's radiused too much, then repeat the step but flipping the wire around. Seemed to work well.

                          Then, once I had a fret that was long enough I cut it slightly bigger than the fret slot that it was going into with some pilers. Checked that the radius was still right and found another problem. Cutting the fret was mangling the tang at the bottom of the fret. Like if the fret is the top of the T and the flange sticks out at 90 degrees normally, when I would cut a small piece of fretwire about an inch and a half of the tang would bend over parallel to the fret. I tried bending it back in place with a couple pliers, but this seemed to be messing up the radius (as well as the overall straightness of the fret. So, I ended up bending the whole piece of fretwire to the correct size, banging it into the fretboard, and then clipping off the excess after it was in the neck. No problems with fret tang mangling this way.

                          As far as banging the fret into the board . . . first I tried using a deadblow hammer. This was useless. Between the deadblow hammer, and the give of the bag of oatmeal, not enough force was getting to the fret to seem to actually seat it properly. So I grabbed a piece of 2x4 and put it on the fret, then whacked it with a small hammer that I had lying around. Much better. A light and then hard tap on the far side, a light and hard tap on the close side, and then one tap in the middle would seat the frets pretty well.

                          I learned from my mistakes while pulling the frets, so started refretting at the 21st. After banging in five or so, I checked that the frets were all properly seated. Seemed pretty good. I continued all the way up the neck. All the frets seemed to be going in pretty well. When I got to the first fret and banged it in though, it wouldn't seat properly at all. There was about two cm of tang showing, and the far end popped right out when I hit it. I had a WTF moment until I remembered supergluing the chip at the first fret. Some of the superglue went into the fret slot, and was causing a hard barrier to the tang. So I grabbed my box cutters and scraped away at it until the fret slot was the right depth, then tried again. It went in properly after that.

                          So, then I very carefully scrutinized the neck. Of the 21 frets they were all seated, but about five of them were sticking up slightly at one point or another. I tried giving them another whack but they didn't seem to want to stay down. The Stew Mac website recommends using superglue when fretting to get better contact between the frets and the board which seemed to make sense to me. So I took two small clamps and a small block of 2x4. I put a thickly folded rag on the 2x4, then lightly clamped the 2x4 under the neck where a loose fret was. One clamp applied pressure to the left side of the fret and one clamp applied pressure to the right side. This brought the fret down even with the board. I was able to get the tip of the nozzle of the superglue applicator under the rubber pad on the clamp to squirt a drop of glue where the gap had been, which seemed to suck up under the fret. Waited about 10-15 minutes (it says 10 seconds, but I figure extra set up time never hurts glue). Then moved the whole clamping system down to the next loose fret.

                          After that the frets looked good. I just clipped off any ends that stuck up past the fretboard. Stainless steel is a ***** to clip. I'm hoping my end cutters will last through three or four refrets. Anyone know if I need to sharpen them (or how to sharpen end cutters properly)? Also, I swear that the neck weighs more with these new frets. They're at least six times the size of the previous frets that were on there. Even without polishing, they are super shiny.

                          Next up will be (I assume) ass tons of filing.
                          Last edited by GuitarStv; 08-26-2019, 07:25 AM.
                          Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

                          Originally posted by Douglas Adams
                          This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

                          Comment

                          • #14
                            Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                            I like big frets. Going with Jescar 57110 Stainless Steel Fret Wire:
                            Okay, I see a problem. The tang on the Jescar fretwire is .036 wide.... Most fret slots on those old Japanese axes with the mandolin fretwire is around .023 or smaller. You'll have to carefully widen the fret slots, or fretting the neck will compress the fretboard and bend the neck backwards into an upbow you cannot adjust with the truss rod.

                            Also - those whammies on those Japanese guitars do NOT work at all. Suggest you make it a hardtail.
                            aka Chris Pile, formerly of Six String Fever

                            Comment

                            • #15
                              Re: Watch me ruin a guitar I kinda hate!

                              New, super giant frets:




                              Very scrapey fret ends. Hopefully the stainless steel files down better than it clips. Not sure I'll ever get all the little bits of stainless steel fret off the floor from wherever they flew.
                              Join me in the fight against muscular atrophy!

                              Originally posted by Douglas Adams
                              This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

                              Comment

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