Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

The key is the acoustic sound of the guitar to begin with. No amount of fiddling around with the electronics chain is gonna change that.

To quote something I heard at a guitar clinic with Jol Dantzig... No microphone will make a bad singer sound good, but a good match to the voice can make a great singer sound awesome.

If your guitar has a weak voice, it ain't ever gonna sing.

GS
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

i have made a few cheaper guitars into real winners.... I have a few cheapies that are really wonderful guitars after a few mods... My MIM Tele i will never part with... my New 06 MIM Strat is a winner!!! And my 12 year old imported Jackson that i added some Duncans and a FRO to was my number one for many years, in a way it still is, but i kind of retired it!!! (More like saveing it for band work)...


one cheapie i'll inclued was some second rate aftermarket replacement parts strat... i mean a real cheap factory 2nd neck and body... the body and neck i believe was made in the 80's by the Godin family of companies here in Canada... Birdseye all maple neck, and a white painted Basswood body... the neck,body and all the parts cost me less then $400 to build.. I did everything to that poor strat!!!! Routed it out for the bridge Humbucker could sit on an angle like a strats... that was the Kramer 80's influence!!!! The body was rear routed but i added a pickguard anyways... The finnish cracked everytime you tighten a screw down!!! I threw it around at a jam session in a Toronto studio a few years ago... A bunch of Who fans were in a studio jamming and at the end of WGFA i bounced it off the hard floor a few times!!! BUT MY LATEST TERROR ON THIS STRAT HAS BEEN ME ADDING A Floyd to it!!!

First off i never noticed the neck's nut width was 1 10/16ths.. an R4 nut sticks out the sides a little, and an R2 string spacing is too narrow...

2nd-i tried to install the Floyd without doing my homework, buying router templates and all that stuff so i made a mess of it! It was a learning experience... it looks Fugly! But i know once i finnish and corrct the mess i made it will still be a very cool sounding guitar! I had it working for a bit with the floyd and it was great, but i need to move the Floyd over a bit so the strings sit better on the neck now.... what a rooky i am!!!! Over my head!
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

Yamaha EG112 upgraded with GFS Mean 90 and ProTube pickups

yamaha05.jpg
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

Yes and no. An ESP LTD with decent body and neck woods (i.e. mahogany, not agathis) but with the krappy ESP LH-100 pickups would be a very good candidate: throw Hot Rodded combo in there, install Earvana nut, locking tuners, locking Tune-o-matic bridge, Schaller strap locks, and viola!

As for other guitars, I'm sort of doing that to my Fender Lite Ash Stratocaster: Earvana nut, locking tuners, Graphtech string saver saddles, Schaller strap locks.
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

my tokai tele is scheduled for a makeover this coming year to include and not limited to...

lil '59
vintage stack
new pots
caps
nut
bridge
jack
& maybe tuners

don't get me wrong...with the exception of a slightly scratchy volume pot and a semi-decent nut...this guitar is very playable and i've been playing it in church ever since i traded for it last month! i just believe it has even more potential!!!
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

For my first foray into modding guitars, I tricked out my California Strat with new electronics, pickguard & pup's (2 STK-4's and added a nickel cover to a JB, all bought used). I may swap out the White pearloid for Tortoise shell, because the white's too flashy fo my taste. This is a really fun strat, (vintage hardware with 9.5 radius). It wasn't easy but I learned a lot.

I wanted to add a callaham block too but I feel the combined weight of the new pup's (The STK-4's are stacked), is bringing this guitar close to over 8 pounds, and it's feeling a little heavy. It was sort of just right before, so I don't want to add any additional weight at this point. I'd still like to add a Bone Nut and Callaham Saddles, but I'm just too lazy at this point.

DSC04176.jpg
]
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

my epiphone special is now fretless, and the neck pickup has been converted to a single coil.

i think its great, not that i really "tricked it out" but i love it.
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

I agree that the wood and neck playability are two very important factors to consider. My first guitar was an 80's Kramer... I mean Focus 3000 made by Kramer. I bought it because it was a good deal - $300 used. After a few years I got tired of it and bought my Ibanez. So I decided to change the H-S-S configuration to a H-S-H combo and that if I screwed it up it wouldn't be a big deal since I liked my Ibanez better anyway. I didn't have a router at the time so I used a hammer and chisel to make the new route for the neck humbucker! That's when I realized that the thing was made of some decent wood. I expected plywood, but it turned out to be a very nice piece of wood. Unfortunately though I was putting cheap pickups in it so the sound still wasn't that great. I was still inexperienced and didn't know much about guitars.

Years later I decide to make my own guitar from parts and decide to practice on my Kramer - once again because it was cheap and expenable if I messed up. I got a Warmoth neck, some Duncan pickups, sanded the whole thing down and repainted it using Nitrocellulose laquer. Now I love this guitar. It sounds great with the two classic cover 59 pickups and hot stack in the middle and 5-way mega switch.

Even though this guitar is made from good wood (alder) and has been played throughout the years, has aged well, and sounds great, somehow in my mind this guitar is still expendable. The only negative thing - and maybe this is it, is that it is a heavy guitar - probably 9 pounds. the floyd has something to do with this. I've contemplated taking out the tremolo which is screwed all the way down. But that might change the sound which I really like now.

Anyway, that's my story of buying a cheap guitar and turning it into something that sounds great. And I would definetly buy another cheap/inexpesive guitar and fix it up again. I got lucky with this one (since I really didn't know what I was doing when I bought it), but now I am a much more informated buyer and I think I can probably pick a good inexpensive guitar and turn it into something great again.
 
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Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

joeydude said:
my epiphone special is now fretless, and the neck pickup has been converted to a single coil.

i think its great, not that i really "tricked it out" but i love it.
Click to expand...

Pics and/or description of what you did to the fingerboard? Did you put in fretlines or epoxy the board? Thinking of trying to salvage a poorly self scalloped neck from before I knew better by going fretless.
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

Here's an Ibanez GSZ something or other. It was stripped and refinished a couple times before I got the carcass.
GSZ2.jpg

Then I stripped it and totally re-shaped it to more of an Ibanez Radius shape.
GSZ-RadiusClassic006.jpg

Then I finished it in a polymerized oil finish and assembled it.
DSCF0230.jpg

I have since swapped the pickups for double black, and found that the neck wasn't good enough. It was actually a great piece of Rosewood, but the frets were low and it would have required a refret to play well. So I got a Japanese SC-220 and swapped the necks. So now it's all Japanese except the body. All the hardware is upgraded too. The only thing stock is the Tune-o-matic and that's getting replaced soon. The Quik-Change bridge is even NOS from the 80's. (still in the package when I got it!) It looks exactly the same as the one in the pic, but it's Japanese and old.
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

It's the only kind of guitar I own, but I've shown off my two tweaked Teles enough lately.

Let us turn our attention instead to my old '63 Melody Maker. Purchased back around 1979 for $125, very beat up and with its original single-coil bridge pickup, fixed wraparound bridge, and "toy" tuners.

I substituted a Leo Quan Badass bridge, stuck a Dual Sound (Stow it - I was young and foolish.) and a Gibson HB in it, and added some Schallers. From the pic, it looks like I bored in a Les Paul-positioned output jack, too.

Viola! My "Pat travers" model. It sounded great - thin, resonant mahogany body and a huge log of a mahogany neck. (It was a bit neck-heavy.) #3 on my "never shoulda sold it" list.

melody_maker.jpg
 
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Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

Not "cheap" but "inexpensive." Definitely a great guitar now. I rescued it from a pawn shop for $65.

DSC00849.jpg


I've lost track of how much I put into the guitar, but it's around $6-700. It's on the higher side of that with the 78 that's in the bridge. I'll be putting a CC back in the bridge once I have a guitar for the 78.

DSC02034.jpg


I was actually looking at it yesterday on my day off contemplating stripping it back down and oiling the body. I still haven't decided.
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

I found this thread. This is the enjoyment I've found in our hobby. Call me crazy or nutjob! But after checking the wood, my friend and I trick out a few cheap guitars.

This is the first one..A Fender Starcaster
Before (small picture)
and
After changing the pickguard and neck and bridge
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

Gibson Baldwin Epoch for cheap

Changed the tuners, strap locks and humbuckers
to Wilkinson (tuners and strap locks)
and GFS Crunchy Pat High Output bridge and neck Zebras

They look good and sound good. They stay in tune for weeks and neither do the straps unhook easily.
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

crossbow said:
Thanks Man! Call me Lazarus
Click to expand...

No offense intended bro, I usualy don´t care from when a thread is.. but after 1 year I feel the compelling need to post a zombie pic :laugh2:
 
Re: Have you ever tricked out a cheap guitar into something great?

Zerberus said:
No offense intended bro, I usualy don´t care from when a thread is.. but after 1 year I feel the compelling need to post a zombie pic :laugh2:
Click to expand...

I don't think there is a single situation that cannot be improved by a good zombie pic.
 
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