question on a pawn shop artcore

C

CaptainCrunch

New member
OK, I have a hankering for a semi-hollow without pluncking down a bunch of cash - so I found an Artcore A73 ina pawn shop. Set up is good, intonation good, original electronics no issues... actually liked it much better than the 3 or 4 Artcores I've played in GC.

But here is the rub, there is a popcorn kernal size chuck in the neck - the location does not affect playability, I spent about an hour with the guitar. Visually though, it is ugly.

There is a non-matching case which doesn't really fit right but would work in a pinch.

So two questions:

1) if you were in the market for such a guitar, what would you value this?
2) how would you repair this - I'm thinking I could just fill it and sand/buff it and it would be no big deal, could even try to match the cherry finish to some degree to make it not as noticable. what is the right way to make this repair?

thanks for any input.
 
Re: question on a pawn shop artcore

I can't answer the first question, but for the second one....

Some more details and/or a pic would be helpful. Where exactly is the damage on the neck, and has a piece of wood been chipped out or is it a compression dent? (i.e. something has hit the guitar/ the guitar has hit something and the impact has squashed the wood fibres inwards)

If it's the latter, i've had great success by steaming the fibres out with a small damp piece of cloth and a soldering iron. Lay a small piece of the damp cloth into the depression and apply the soldering iron tip to the cloth, right in the centre of the dent. (Lay the tip over to get maximum or best contact). You may want to work the iron around a bit. As the hissing subsides, remove the cloth and the soldering iron and let the iron re-heat while you take a look at what happened....then....repeat the process until you feel you've brought the fibres up to where you want them. Try to keep the dampening to the damaged area only.

On the other hand, if it's a chip where an actual piece of the wood is missing, you'd have to fill it. There's many things you could use to colour the repair, and superglue generally works to make an invisible repair to the lacquer.

Because of this damage on the neck, i'd look very closely at the neck/body join, headstock etc. If you feel that you're still interested, use the 'wrong case' and neck damage to try to lever the price down.
 
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Re: question on a pawn shop artcore

Good point about looking closely for further damage, I'll do that. Though I was trying to be as observant to any issues as I could, I mainly focused on playability - tuning and the guitar's ability to stay in tune, intonation though I can set that, making sure there was no fret buzz and fretting out when bending, checked this on virtually every fret.

It is an actual chip into the wood. So would you put the color in first over the bare wood, then fill the whole with super glue, or the other way around?

Thanks, Scott
 
Re: question on a pawn shop artcore

If you are referring to the AS73 and it has a chunk missing then $200 is tops. You can get near mint for $250. So if it's possible to fix the damage and end up with a really nice guitar and you put less than $50 into it and it has a case I think you'd be good to go. IF you can't snag a deal on the one you tried then be patient and look around. There are a lot of them out there in great shape and because they are a production guitar they all feel almost identical.
 
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