Railfanespee

UPDATE- A few days after I got it, I determined that rewiring and setting it up was more of a challenge than I thought, so I took it to my tech. He did the rewiring, set it up very well, and only charged me $26, and that was just for parts. When I got it back, it played and sounded great. All that was left was to get knobs, a trem arm, and a cover for the control cavity. I picked the knobs and arm up at my local GC the next weekend, and for the missing control cavity I traced the outline and cut out a piece of plastic to fit. It looks decent from a distance and will keep the wiring safe until I can get a real replacement. A few days later, some buzzing showed up, probably due to the neck settling since it went years without any strings. So it's going back to the tech for a minor tweak soon. But overall I'm very happy. I'm not completely sold on the pickups, and might swap them out someday. This guitar probably won't become my #1, but it does fill my need for at least one guitar with a locking trem quite well, and for the $200 I have into it total, I think I did pretty well.

Yesterday, I was browsing Craigslist when I saw an ad for a Jackson Reverse Dinky needing wiring work and new strings for $150. I looked it up and found out that it was a Professional series, which was at the top of the Jackson import line. It appealed to me since it reminded me of the Charvel Model 1 that was stolen from me last fall. So my dad and I drove to get it, and when we got there I saw it was in pretty rough shape, but I decided to go ahead and get it to try and bring it back. They threw in the original hard shell case for an extra $25, and the deal was done. When I got it home, I noted the following issues *Several large finish chips *Missing tone pot *wiring torn up (all wires in cavity are disconnected but they all are still there) *missing output jack and plate *missing switch tip and knobs *missing trem arm Here's the guitar, with the sticker applied by the previous owner Definitely been played It was late in the evening by the time I got home, but since there was no school the next day I stayed up and worked. First I cleaned the fine tuners, since 4 of them were stuck and would not move. Next I removed the stickers and residue. Then I gave the floyd just enough of a setup where I could put 3 strings on and have them clear the fretboard. Doing this showed the truss rod needs tweaking, but other than that the neck is in good shape. Finally I twisted the pickup leads to a spare jack I had and determined that both pickups worked fine. Here's the guitar as it is now Next up is getting it wired up. For now, I'll just do a simple HH/3way/1 volume no tone setup to simplify things. Then I'll get it setup at a music store, since I don't know how to really work on a floyd, and I don't trust myself with a truss rod yet. I'lll order the parts I need, put it together, and play it like that for a while. Eventually I'll add a tone control, maybe even push pull pots for coil splits. And someday I want to do a refin since the finish is in very rough shape. I know I didn't get that great of a deal, considering the issues. But I spent a little time playing around with it yesterday, and even with 3 strings and a bad setup I can tell it's going to be a great player. It feels a lot like my old Charvel, and that's good enough for me

A+ trade with Mister Zero