Repair - Jasmine Acoustic guitar "holey"

 

Repair - Fender Blues Jr II tube guitar amp - Lazarus amp

Picked this up for $50 on OfferUp. This was my first legit electronics repair. I had considered other "for parts" or "as is" amps, but didn't have the confidence to take the risk. But with the technically guidance of my good friend, Joe, I was able to turn this trash into treasure and have it chiming out sweet guitar sounds for years to come...join me on the journey, won't you?

Here you can see where the trace was broken and the amp started to catch fire and smoke leaving the residue on the back plate of the chassis

All cleaned up and ready for the "easy" fix

Below is the final repair. The trace had burned out that connected the power tube circuit to the board. For the fix I used an every-day twist tie, as it had a solid core and good outer sheathing already. The fix is often easy, it's trouble-shooting and knowing where to look and how to fix it that is 99% of the work.

Replaced the power tubes with new JJ's and it was ready to rock! Sold it for $260 after 2 weeks in repair.

Setup - Fender Hellcat Acoustic Electric Guitar

• Level, crowned, and polished frets
• Lowered saddle for better action
• Slotted bridge pin holes for better break angle
• Sanded bridge to eleminate string buzzing
• Restrung with EB earthworms medium 13 gauge

Setup - Fender Stratocaster Candy Apple Red made in Mexico 1999

Setup - Epiphone SG G-310 Cream White electric guitar

Repair - Memphis Telecaster Custom electric guitar made in Japan 1970s - Pickup & neck

This is a copy of a Fender custom style telecaster, it even has an ashtray cover for the bridge pickup.

 The neck needed some work, mainly truss rod adjustment and fret work, a few frets were taller than others and were leveled.

The neck wide range humbucker pickup wasn't functional and after some investigation it was determined the coil wounds were broken, so I ordered a new one from ebay and then installed it and everything works perfect now. Great maple neck and very nice medium jumbo frets.

Setup - Noble Mosrite copy Ventures Hollow Body 1969 made in Japan

Setup - Alvarez Regent parlor acoustic guitar

 

Repair - "The Doug" Les Paul Copy Japanese 1970s - Wiring

This was dropped off with the idea it needed a complete overhaul as the customer said it was her father's and had been sitting for over 3o years!

I had to replace the pickup switch, the one in it worked but was only a 2 way switch and was mis-sized as it was a switch from Radio shack. 

Then replace the volume potentiometers which were scratchy and cutting out, and then rewire the tone potentiometers as they were wired reverse which is supposedly not uncommon in Japanese guitars. 

Also added new knobs as the old knobs were a weird acrylic brass combo. Adjusted the truss rod, leveled and polished the frets to fix the fret choking and gave it a major clean. 

There was tons of rust, dirt, grime and play wear. I used 21 tooth picks in the headstock because there had been so many different tuners installed on it. 

I found parts I sourced from ebay, including sg style 60's knobs, 3way switch and pots. Lots of soldering later and everything works as it originally should. 

Before

After