NGD, Unboxing My First Offset

[magillver]

FAO Schwartz! Heading down the well-trodden path of taking a $12 kid's toy guitar and trying to turn it into a $23 kid's toy guitar...should be fun...

 

[jeremy]

oh boy, have fun with that!

 

[Mincer]

It needs an Invader...

 

[magillver]

You've never steered me wrong on your pickup recommendations so far, I may have to give the invader a shot. Sort of the Porsche engine in a VW bug...

 

[magillver]

The main challenge, in a strictly lutherie sense, is to get a reasonable setup and see if I can even turn it into a playable instrument. Sort of the guitar version of the cooking show 'Chopped', what can I build starting with these ingredients?

 

[Mincer]

How is it out of the box?

 

[magillver]

Well, the electronics all work, but the bridge is way off, intonation-wise, ice moved out back 5/8", and I'm about to slap some new strings on it and see how close I am. I think that the 20" scale is throwing the math off for some reason...

 

[magillver]

*I've* moved it back...

 

[jeremy]

string through body?

 

[magillver]

Thankfully, no, top loading. Had to lower the nut quite a bit, and leveled 3 or 4 frets, a great exercise in worst-case-scenario setups...

 

[GuitarDoc]

Well, that certainly looks like a project...but a fun project. I'm not sure I'd call it an "offset", at least from the pic you posted, but it doesn't look like there is anything that can't be fixed enough to make it a very fun guitar to play.

The math is pretty easy on a 20" scale guitar...10" from nut to 12th fret, 10" from 12th fret to saddles. On a 20" scale guitar I don't think an Invader would be a great choice. There is probably already a lot of mids in it. It's probably the reason it came with a single coil in the first place. I would be inclined to stick with a single coil pup that has lots of highs and clean lows but scooped.

Good luck. But the main thing is...have fun.

 

[magillver]

No, I totally understand the 10" and 10" measurement, but on this particular beast I'm getting 10" to the 12th fret and roughly 10½" from the 12th fret to the (reasonably) intonated saddles. I'll play with it on my strobe tuner a bit more, once I get string heights set...like I said, interesting exercise...

 

[Chris Pile]

It's not unusual on the really low budget stuff for the fret slots to NOT be in the right place. Have fun.

 

[GuitarDoc]

I would tend to agree with Chris on this. Especially given your measurement from 12th fret to saddles.
When intonating, check the chime note (not the fretted note) at the 12th fret to see if that is in tune.

 

[magillver]

Surprisingly, it is intonated, tuned, and actually is fairly accurate pitch-wise all along the fretboard. The original pickup was semi-decent sounding, but I swapped it out for a somewhat beefier pup that I had on hand (I think it's from a Mexican strat), and it's nowhere near as horrible as I had anticipated...may even upgrade the tuners...

 

[Mincer]

I love it when a project comes together. And how fun! I bet a tuner upgrade would be worth it, though.

 

[magillver]

I've found that with the short scale, there's very little granularity in the tuning, it seems if I breath on the tuners they'll change. If I keep going with this I'll probably look for 19 or 20 to 1 ratios so that I'll have a little finer control.

 

[jeremy]

seems like a good plan. im sure the stock ones have some slop for sure and with such a short scale, getting properly tuned would be a challenge

 

[Mincer]

I've found that with the short scale, there's very little granularity in the tuning, it seems if I breath on the tuners they'll change. If I keep going with this I'll probably look for 19 or 20 to 1 ratios so that I'll have a little finer control.

Some Steinberger 40:1 ratio tuners are needed!

 

[magillver]

Wow, I hadn't seen those before! And not ridiculously expensive....hmmm, $100 worth of tuners on a $12 guitar...seems reasonable...