Ok, I have this worn-out Epiphone Les Paul that I haven't played in ages. It just felt awkward to play and I've considered scrapping it and using it for routing practice or as a general experimentation platform.
After getting some inspiration for the cleaning tutorials here on Project Guitar, I finally took the time to cleanup the neck. Just removed all the crust around the frets, cleaned it up and wiped some lemon oil onto it.
Suddenly, it's like a whole new guitar! It's really playable! Just one of those, perhaps-I-should-listen-to-advice-more-often moments... I wonder what happens if I cleanup my other guitars...
It's still has catastrophic tuners, a worn-out bridge and the worst sunburst I've seen in a commercial guitar, but now it seems like a good candidate for a revival project, rather than firewood. New hardware and perhaps a new finish could turn it into something really useful.