Archtop With Fallen Electronics

[MadSkillzMan]

hi guys, im istting here looking at 2 cheapo guitars. One was payment for moving a piano, and the other is a friends who said if i can fix it, great.

One is a Crestwood the other is a Diamond. 2 nice looking guitars.

Anyways. The Crestwood has the input pot just floating around somewhere inside of it, and i beleive its unsoldered. Also along with the pickup selector.

From the looks of it, it seems as if this body has been separated and worked on before.

Its pretty much the same sitaution with the diamond, however EVERYTHING is inside and rattling! It has great action and one hell of a thin neck, imo its worth fixing up for me..plus itll be a nice learning expereince.

SO. Based on the assumption i have to resolder everything in the diamond, and tons of work ahead of me on the crestwood, having already been cut open at the seems, what do you guys suggest?

Should i shoot hours trying to fish it out? Or should i bust out the heat gun and razor blade?

Thanks in advance!

[unclej]

man, that's a tough call and will ultimately depend on how comfortable you are with being able to get the top back on properly. fishing pots and jacks and such out of an arch top isn't really that difficult and getting them back in takes a bit but still isn't rocket surgery.

but like i said, if you're comfortable about being able to remove the top without damaging it and then getting it back on properly without messing up the finish (if that's important to you) you can always do a much more thorough check of the guitar's bracing and such with the top off.

good luck with it.

[Mickguard]

I've always wondered why archtops couldn't have a back access panel to the control cavity...would make life a lot simpler, wouldn't it? And how much would that affect the tone? Probably not one bit.

If you did it right, you could probably make so that it barely shows too.

[Kith]

it would probably allow a lot more feedback since the wood could move so much more.

[M_A_T_T]

I thought I read somewhere about using a clothes hanger to hook the wires???

[unclej]

i've got an old silvertone tripple pup hollow body that i cut an access panel in the back of. it didn't change the tone or playability at all. i knew i wasn't ever going to sell it so i wasn't worried about collectability. anyway, it's definitely an option if you're going to keep it/them for yourself and much easier than removing the top.

[Mattia]

Idch: It would on acoustic archtops, but electric, blocked archtops probably wouldn't be affected by a rear access panel, no. Me, I think the invonvenience involved in feeding electronics through either an F-hole or a bridge pickup route (I've built several semi-hollows, some of them looking 'normal' sized without rear access panels) is worth it only if you think the sleeker, access-panel-less looks are worth it.

[MadSkillzMan]

well the crestwood i took a wack at just by pulling out pickups. i used stiff craft wire and kite string.

No matter how imaginative i got, the input jack would only allow for literally a few threads to come out of its hole

the more i looked...here the damn guitar was made with the walls of the body so thick, its impossible to get anything of any useful length

so i slapped a big nut on it and im waiting to go to the guitar shop to get some more input jack nuts. I actually tried carefullly filing and sanding a funnel shape to the inside of the input jack hole, with minor success. It gained me a few more turns on a nut, but the important part is, no one can tell i did it, and so far thats all thats important right?

i think ill wing the totally sunken one with wire and such unless i get super pissed at it

thanks guys