Tell me about your dirt cheap guitar projects.

[Jocelyn]

Re: Tell me about your dirt cheap guitar projects.

First post. Been lurking for a while.

The second is a Harmony H814 I got for the whopping price of $2. I asked how he came up with that price, he said it was his son's, who was around 5-6 and wanted to sell it for $2. LOL. This one I'm giving to my son who's 11. This one had a broken headstock, but everything else was there. I figured it'd give me a chance take a shot at a headstock repair. I am no luthier, but I am a trim carpenter by trade, so I have a bit of experience around tools and wood.






Also had a pointy design I was thinking of.....


The ugly Dodo Bird headstock....


Still needs some final sanding and finishing, also marked where I'm thinking of taking some more off.....

A V with single coils. My V was like that before I modded it out. This is the 3rd time I have seen a V with 2 single coils. One was mine and the other was a similar model to mine at a Guitar store.

 

[Swampy]

Re: Tell me about your dirt cheap guitar projects.

A V with single coils. My V was like that before I modded it out. This is the 3rd time I have seen a V with 2 single coils. One was mine and the other was a similar model to mine at a Guitar store.

Was yours a Harmony?
I still haven't got around to finishing this one.

 

[daan]

Re: Tell me about your dirt cheap guitar projects.

THe cheapest: Harmony H-1213

I literally found this in the dumpster behind my apartment. It needed strings, filing the frets down some (the neck was warped but it didn't have a truss rod to adjust it. Heat and clamping it to the bench straightened it...enough. So, total outlay: whatever the pack 0 strings cost me... I ended up re-stringing it lefty for my brother-in-law, who left it in his college dorm after he graduated.
Next cheapest: Ovation "VIper"

$5 at Goodwill (with hardshell case). I saw it, didn't have any $ on me, and by the time I came back with the $, some jerk took half the tuners off it. So, I think the replacement set-0-tuners were, $50 or so. I played it on the neck pup only for a while since the wiring was shot. I found a "Jackson"-branded HB that I hacked into the bridge spot, wired it right to the output and rocked out that way for a while. I ended up trading it to a different store for a sanded-down Floyd-ed strat copy. Have you looked at the prices these things get on Ebay lately? I should have just chucked it into a closet as soon as I found it, selling it NOW would pay for most of the crap I've got currently...

This thing is my most dirt-cheap thing I have now. It's all Squier parts I already had, or picked up cheap ('cause it's the stuff everybody dumps when they "upgrade") Ply body, MIM "Squier Series" guard, Standard neck, OK I paid for a new heavy brass block and a set of pots/5-way/output jack, but everything else was "leftovers". But MAN this thing plays (and sounds, with the Graybottom Strat pups) so nice! exactly everything you want in a Strat, for 1/8th the price. ANd I'm not afraid to let my kids mess with it, or loan it to a friend, unlike a "nice" strat.

 

[Johnny the Kid]

Re: Tell me about your dirt cheap guitar projects.

Besides my brother, my family is mostly non musicians so they don't know the value of a decent new instrument (to them $500 is too much for an instrument) so I stick with used gear that has a quirky vintage vibe and that I can hotrod to my specs. I also feel that the value of a used instrument often outweighs the value of a new one. Whether the guitar is no longer produced or whatever. Someone once said that the used stuff usually sounds better because if it didn't it wouldn't have been used in the first place.

 

[daan]

Re: Tell me about your dirt cheap guitar projects.

Don't know how I forgot this one:

A lady I worked with, came to me one day and said, "I heard you play guitar. Do you want one?" Duh, sure! Turns out, her kid had this thing, he wanted to be Billie Joe from Green Day. This is one of those $99 plywood Epi things, except he wanted his "more like BJ's", so his parents paid to have a Lollar P90 put in it! He then beat the crap out of it, tossed it under his bed and moved away. HIs mom just wanted to get rid of it. I was supposed to pay her ..."something" for it, I ended up just buying her lunch a couple times. SHe ended up quitting there before any actual $ changed hands... Deal!
Anyway the body was cracked, like it got dropped on the back strap pin, the output jack was broken (the plastic square, not the jack itself) and the neck LOOKED like it was cracked, but turned out to have a knot right in the usual area they break.



Nice QC, Epi... but what do you expect for less than $100...
The pickup, however was worth 4X the rest of the guitar. I ended up using the pots on a different project, too.

THis thing played and sounded so nice that I ended up buying a decent LP-Jr, and then an SG-jr so it was totally worth it for the wood-working repair practice (and selling a pickup for more than I could imagine a used pup going for...)

 

[Jocelyn]

Re: Tell me about your dirt cheap guitar projects.

Was yours a Harmony?
I still haven't got around to finishing this one.

Nope. It was made by a now defunct Indian guitar manufacturer called Reynolds. I had got mine used. The neck bolt on plate on mine still says Reynolds ( I just realized that besides the frets the neck plate is the only thing still stock). The model name was Santana lol.

 

[rumblebox]

Re: Tell me about your dirt cheap guitar projects.







$175 on ebay, $100 for the Blaze/PAF set. Perfect neck.

 

[The Guitar]

Re: Tell me about your dirt cheap guitar projects.

Here's my current deal that I'm working on;
82 Gibson Studio
So far I have bought 4 black/red hat knobs(ala the Voodoos) for $16, Black 3-way for $6, 2 Bourns 500ks for $16, and a Rhythm/Treble washer courtesy of King Izzo via the Karma thread.

Then my Lotus strat copy. The first project I jumped on.