The Mystery Behind Restoring This Guitar - Part 3

I recently installed a lightweight flywheel and reinforced the clutch on my beloved Eunos Roadster. The engine response is as nimble as a motorcycle, and it is hard to believe that it is a 30 year old car.
Combined with the new coilovers, the nose goes into the corners with vigor, and it's a lot of fun!
It's the same story with guitars, of course, that they need maintenance and parts replaced.

This is the third installment of my mystery guitar series, which I felt forced to write because I just wanted to talk about cars. In the last article, the guitar body broke in half, which was a shocking incident that left me mildly traumatized, so this time I think I would like to take it easy while working to rehabilitate it.

This mystery guitar has a Floyd Rose tremolo and three single coils, which is quite an unusual layout.
If you look closely, you can see that the Floyd Rose has been installed after the 6-point synchronized tremolo has been replaced with a new one.

This time, I’m replacing all of the electrical components, so I would like to take this opportunity to dig out the SSH counterbore and install EMG's SA/SA/81.

EMG / SA/SA/81 Black Guitar Pickups

First, there’s the pickguard. As with the Zagli, you can't even start installing humbuckers with a single coil.
When I first took in this guitar, I also had a pickguard for Floyd Rose's SSH layout, so I attached it to the guitar and checked to see how it looked.

Even if the pickguard looks like it can be just snapped on, be careful.

It may be that the pickguard is bent because it was placed properly, but it is obvious that the counterbores are sticking out. The position of the holes for fixing the pickguard is also different.
I want to keep the original red tortoiseshell pickguard, so I will make a new pickguard.

Here is the pickguard I prepared this time.

MONTREUX / PVC board 300 x 450 (mm) black 3P [9733]

I chose this material for the pickguard because it’s black and it needed to be a 3-ply. It actually turned out to be a really good choice!

First, I put the old pickguard over the material so I could trace it.

In this case, I used the original pickguard as a model for tracing.
It is very easy to do because all I did was just trace the old one.

Here is the draft after slightly changing the position of the humbucker. It's kind of messy...lol

Then I cut it out.
It is very easy if you have a tabletop thread saw, but it is not impossible to do it by hand. (Just be prepared for this.)

This is what it looks like while cutting it out.
In order to make the pickup mounts, drill the holes once with a drilling machine before cutting out.
If you move the blade so that it bends greatly, the blade will break, so it is safer to drill a few more holes to allow the blade to escape.

Here is what I managed to cut out.
It has been a while since I used a thread saw, so I didn’t quite get it right.
When cutting out the guitar, if you go over the solid line, it will not be able to be corrected, so leave some room to cut and file down the smallest parts.
It is safer to match with the original pickguard after machining the neck joint, pickup mount, bridge, etc. to a certain extent.

And, here is how it looks now that it has been shaped to some extent.
In order to mount a humbucker on the rear, the body needs to be burred, so I put a pickguard on the body and drew a rough sketch on the spot to be shaved like this.

Theoretically, the humbuckers can be mounted by digging out the wood in the area that is drafted in black, but I ran out of time to do this today.
The pickguard is not finished yet, but I would like to make the 3-ply layer look nice on the front by cutting it at an angle after leveling the outer edge a little more.

■ Summary
After the tragedy of the previous project, this time the repair work was more relaxed and enjoyable.
Next time, I hope to finish the pickguard and proceed working on the body by hand.

I talked a little about cars in the introduction of this article and I felt like talking passionately about domestic sports cars from the 80s and 90s. So, I'll try to think of a story that somehow ties in with music. If there are any readers who like cars, please look forward to my next article!
Until next time!