rkennett

finally finished the guitar for around $200 with ebay and guitarfetish.com parts and little more than a palm sander, portable jig, drill, and ace hardware orange spray paint and lacquer.

i cleaned it out the best i could. i ended up cutting a poplar block to size as best as i could with the portable jigsaw. then i glued it in and put wood filler in the gaps that were still there from my sloppy cut. sanded it flat and here is the result.

that looks really good. great job. i can't believe you pretty much did what a 13 post newbie mentioned. or, were you just waiting to hear someone else say it?

Most gibson semi-hollow bodies are wired through the F hole. No need for a cavity cover. Yes it is a pain... but once it is wired you usually don't take it apart.

i had to rewire my dad's old ventura. it's just like this one.

total pain in the rear. those f holes aren't really f holes, they're painted. i ended up having to remove the bridge pickup. i did all of the soldering without the pots, jacks, etc. mounted. then i inserted the big mess through the pickup hole and worked the parts to the proper place to screw them in.

if i had to do it again, i'd break tradition and install a cavity cover.

+1 on the pickups and hardware except the black pickguard screws. they discolored on me. i'm not sure how to describe it, but they went from black to a grey-ish less black. going against everything i've read, i'm still going to try a neck from there soon. i'm too big of cheapskate and i can't see spending much more with my current building experience.

bleh, sunburst with poly coating was under the black. i don't have a picture of the other side, but it did get the paint of out of cavities.

Thanks kpcrash. I have some blades and other miscellaneous things I can work at it, too.

I posted this elsewhere and the suggestion was to use some paint stripper and scrape. It seems obvious now, but that's where I'll start.

If it is already mentioned somewhere, I apologize. I did try to search. I'm having trouble trying to figure out how to sand in routing cavities and the tight corners in them. For the most part I don't care and I'm putting shielding over it, but I want to fill one of the cavities and I assume it would be better to get the paint out of it, so I can glue wood onto wood.

Thoughts, ideas?

Thanks.

carve it and do a solid black to natural fade from the edges?

doesn't the wear depend on playing style and size of frets?

looks like a surface mount though, so i'll have to cut a block of wood to fit the cavity... decisions, decisions.

+1 on Jazzmaster style. Silvertone made all kinds of unique body styles. The sacrilege isn't making it a Jazzmaster close, rather filling those cavities with some unknown goo and thinking it's a good idea.

it was like plaster, i don't think it was as strong as epoxy. i had to crack it into little pieces with a hammer and nail.

if looking at the picture, it is 1 3/4" (left to right) x 2 7/16" (top to bottom) x 1" (deep).

that little half-rounded rounded section at the bottom right is 1" (left to right) and extends the top to bottom by another 1/4" or 5/16"

kprash, that trem in the silvertone picture you posted is kind of what i was thinking about going with before i even acquired this body. http://www.guitarfetish.com/Vintage-Style-Surface-Mount-Whammy-Bar-Hofner-Vibrola-style_p_839.html

been trying research silver tone a little now...

do they make thin bodies? i wasn't expecting 1.25" thick when i bought it on ebay. it just said vintage body in the description and the seller didn't know much and measured the pocket incorrectly when i asked for those specs, too. sorry, i'm pretty much a noob on this vintage stuff. i bought it because it looked like i could make it more of a jazzmaster shape by modifying the horns.

those post holes are looking tune-o-matic ready it appears, too. good call on that and probably on the silvertone as well, but there are no markings anywhere to indicate that is what it is. if it is a silvertone, would it be sacrilegious to modify it?

not good. 32 views and no replies. it looks like i'm going to have to fill it.

i'm curious if anyone knows what kind of tremolo or vibrato system goes into this routing cavity? there has been no routing done to the back, so that eliminates a floyd rose type. it kind of looks like a jazzmaster/jaguar routing, but it's a little different and little bit smaller i believe.