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Those Crazy Italians!


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OK, so this buddy gives me a 60's EKO model 100 archtop acoustic a few years ago. I assume this is one of those mass produced cheapo guitars that were churned out when EKO had their glory days. Bolt on neck with zero fret, neck was chunky and had a slight backbow. No amount of pressure on the truss rod, clamping etc. could straighten it. The guitar was in pieces and missing the bridge. I put it back together and found a cast aluminum compensated bridge for it and played it as a slide guitar for a few years. Being a thinline style with f-holes it had that tinpanny bluesy sound and was perfect because of the naturally high action :D . I call it the "poor man's Dobro".

Anyway, the finish on the guitar is/was a sh!ty chocolate/yellow brown sunburst and it had a real heavy coat of checked, chipped, cracked and yellowed varnish overtop. I hand sanded the neck down and found the stuff to be hard as nails, but finally got it there. I decided to use a spray on furniture stripper called Circa 1850 for the body. It took about 6 spraying and scraping sessions before I got down to bare wood. Lo and behold ! I find a 1 piece plywood spruce top with the most interesting grain pattern I've seen in a long time! I think this guitar should have skipped the paint and gone straight to the varnish. It may be only a 3 ply top but all wood has grain. I guess when you punch them out like that there is little time to appreciate anything.

I'll try to borrow a friend's digital camera, its high time I got my own. I was thinking of staining the body blue and then laquer clearcoat but I'm open to any suggestions, experimental procedures, whatever you can dream up so long as you can still see the grain showing thru.

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