Agile 7 lefty mod-a harsh lesson learnt

[Nautilus]

As a lefty it's next to impossible to find anything decent to suit my cack-handed needs. I'm sure any left handed reader can probably attest to this. Well, as a poor student lefty I was over the moon when a friend's band member was selling an imported Agile 7 string in a left handed variant! Right?....

Not contempt with the fantastically good deal I got on an otherwise hideously difficult to obtain guitar (at least here in the UK) I want to "customize" it to cater to my needs. I really don't know what I was thinking- I suppose a combination of a bare wood fetish and a few loose screws in the brain chamber are to blame.

For a total of £50 (bear in mind I had NO tools at all to begin with bar a screwdriver), I bought all the hardware, tools and energy tablets I needed to mod this thing.

So, first off I'll post what my guitar *did* look like before I took a hammer, a chisel and went berserk



An Agile 7: 27" neck scale with a quilted maple top (actually, it was more like a veneer than a top- but I suppose it was still technically a real wood top). I *don't* like Floyd Rose systems, but at the price I bought the guitar from I'm not complaining. Mahogany arch top body, 3 piece maple neck and a rosewood fretboard. These are highly generalised descriptions- I haven't asked Kurt what specific SPECIES of Mahogany/Maple/Rosewood these are and to de honest I don't really care...

Anyway, I'm really not decided on whether what I did to the poor thing was a success or a horrible catastrophe. You guys decide!






So first off- What's been changed?

-Stock Machine heads
-Stock Licensed Floyd Rose
-Bareknuckle 550k specialised CTS pots
-Switchcraft 3 way toggle
-Ernie Ball strap locks (love these things!)
-Bareknuckle cold sweat 7 neck - burnt chrome cover
-Bareknuckle aftermath 7 (ceramic) bridge - burnt chrome cover#
-Top removed, entire guitar taken down to the absolute bare wood
-Pickup cavities have been cut out to allow for the new pickups to fit (the stock Cepheus actives were smaller and didn't have any legs...which the BKPs did)
-Upper fret access greatly improved. The back of the neck and rear section of the horn was heavily tapered by hand filing/finishing.
-Rear "belly rest" heavily accented, primarily to try and help reduce some of the weight as this is a hefty beast.

Keep in mind the pictures above are of a near completed state. The top was smoothed off and some of the rough discolourations in the wood removed since taking these, the floyd rose has been refitted and the guitar is setup (and plays quite nicely!). I've listed the entire mod price as £50, now obviously the pickups are something in the region of £300 or there abouts by themselves. I'm not counting them in the mod price as they were already organised with BKP before hand.

I'll try to post some pictures of the back and the front now it's restrung and working-but I think what's there is enough to go on for now.

Thoughts please? I think it's baby steps in to the modding world! But steps none the less

[Thrashmanzac]

wet sand that and apply some tung oil and you will have a killer guitar man!
i really like it

[CharliePark]

Yep I'm loving it. The chrome covers look sick with it naturalised.

[Mysticlamp]

looks great, lets get some more pics

[sk3ks1s]

The discolorations you're talking about are most likely the sealer. Make sure you get all of this off before doing any refinishing. A lot of people see wood and stop there...

[celticelk]

Looks great! The burnt chrome makes it look as though you have an oil spill in your pickup routs. =)

[ShadowFactoryX]

Originally Posted by celticelk

Looks great! The burnt chrome makes it look as though you have an oil spill in your pickup routs. =)

i like the way you think

looks like a sick mod man!

[AvantGuardian]

Looks nice, but I definitely agree with those who said to continue to sand until you get through the sealer (the discolored spots) and apply some tung oil. It'll look a lot more even in color and the oil will add a little protection to the wood.

[MetalDaze]

Based on your subject, I was expecting a disaster! I think you did a great job with it. Please post the finished pics when you have them.

[technomancer]

Finish sanding it down and oil it

When I say finish sanding I mean what everybody else has said, finish taking the sealer off, and the paint around the knobs. Then fine sand it and oil it if that's the look you're going for. should look great.

[Nautilus]

Originally Posted by technomancer

Finish sanding it down and oil it

When I say finish sanding I mean what everybody else has said, finish taking the sealer off, and the paint around the knobs. Then fine sand it and oil it if that's the look you're going for. should look great.

I should clarify, the pics above were at an *almost* complete stage. I've since sanded out all of the sealer and inconsistencies and gone down to wet&dry on the surface for a silky smooth finish. The staining around the pots is really deep in to the grain, as it looks like the wood just drank up the paint at the time of application when it was originally done. Not much I can do- but it looks alright all things considered.

I'll post pictures of everything setup and finished shortly. I'm just rooting around for some tung oil. Unfortunately my usual UK supplier (tonetech luthier supplies) who've been awesome thus far don't seem to stock it.

[7 Strings of Hate]

The before pics are cool looking, but if its anything like the agile i had, it looked like a crappy photofinish or something. Really blurry and questionable. Personally i would have left it, but yea.

Anyway, if it were me, i'd go and find some miniwax dark brown stain, stain that shit, then tung or tru oil it, then carnuba/bees wax that shit. Buff.

[awesomeaustin]

I think it looks fine. I have never liked the burnt chrome cover, but with the body down to bare wood, they look pretty good.

Nice work. Now oil it up

[Explorer]

Originally Posted by Nautilus

...with a quilted maple top (actually, it was more like a veneer than a top- but I suppose it was still technically a real wood top).

Now this is a chance to ask someone who actually has first-hand knowledge:

Was it actually a wood piece in there?

I've read assertions that those finishes weren't really wood, but instead just a decal. I don't think that Rondo would go so far as to overstate using wood when they really aren't, but it would be nice to know definitively.

Thanks!

[Nautilus]

Was it actually a wood piece in there?

OK, I'm going to set the record straight-having worked on it first hand it's 100%, definitely a REAL wood top around 3-4mm. It's been applied as a very thin veneer, which has been (most likely) vacuum sealed or polyurethane'd.

...but it's a real quilted maple top. I was really impressed by Agile guitars, for the price you pay you do get pretty good quality. I'd recommend anyone on a budget or someone looking to just try their hand at ERGs to get an Agile.

IMHO you'll be hard pressed to find anything better for the price.

[Hollowway]

Originally Posted by Nautilus

OK, I'm going to set the record straight-having worked on it first hand it's 100%, definitely a REAL wood top around 3-4mm.

Wow, are they really that thick? Or are you meaning 0.3-0.4mm? I thought they were actually rather thin and that's why people always ended up sanding right through them.

[mika ale]

Originally Posted by Nautilus

-Bareknuckle cold sweat 7 neck - burnt chrome cover
-Bareknuckle aftermath 7 (ceramic) bridge - burnt chrome cover#

nice pickups cover, seem familiar

[peagull]

I've never liked Burnt Chrome, but with the natural finish, They seem to work. Hurry up and get it oiled, Cant wait to see those pics.

[magic_golem]

I was expecting something horrid after reading 'hammer and chisel' but actually it looks really nice, mabe do something with the headstock? it just looks odd to be black with a bare wood body but mabe thats just me.
really nice looking man.

[Nautilus]

Aw well thanks all for the good response- I feel a lot less crappy about the whole thing.

I'm in the process of moving house but I promise to get some better pictures up today/tomorrow!

The whole ensemble works better with the black headstock when you see the hardware (all black). When I say it was a harsh lesson learnt- it was because every step of the way I bumped in to a new problem...one after one.

Actually the top really is a few mm thick...maybe 3-4 is generous but it's definitely more than 2mm (nope, not 0.2mm).

I'll run down the problems I had briefly:

1) Can't afford power tools. EVERYTHING was hand sanded. This is not as quick a job as you may think...the lacquer is thick and the top is hard. You can't stop just at the top either- there's a lot of staining from the glue which you need to sand around 1/4-1/2mm to get the full beauty of the grain out. This took hours and hours to do, bent over a workbench rubbing my damn fingers raw. I can't stress how much of a b***h this was.

2) I originally wanted to leave the top on the guitar. To do this I borrowed a heat gun (ok, I suppose it's the one power tool I did use) and tried flaking off the lacquer. Little did I know the top was too thin and it actually burnt off and bubbled up easily . I spent a long time with huge holes in the top- which I took a gouging chisel to in an attempt to give across a "zombified/weathered" effect. I may put up a picture.

3) Eventually I gave up and just sanded off the top. Anyway, in the process of carving the "zombie" top much of the surface was no longer consistent. Although it's a curve top the guitar has subtle "channels" I had to hand sand out.

4) The screws for the ernie ball strap locks were around 1.5x longer than the original stock strap pegs. The wood began to splinter out and I had to get some hand clamps and heavy duty epoxy resin to strengthen everything around the horn where it cracked out.

5) The stock pups housed adjustable springloaded screws that fit in to the wood and were super snug in the body. The BKPs I was provided were bigger, both lengthways and parallel to the neck. They also have a pair of short feel for the bolts to fit through that stuck out. I had to measure a suitable cavity and rough out the shapes with a chisel. I don't have a router and/or any other means of getting the cavities spaced. In the end it was chiselled, hand sanded, the edges were sharpened off with more chiselling...smoothed out again and again until it was semi-acceptable. All the cavities were then repainted black to help make the burnt chrome pop out of the body that much more (and hide the terrible non-machined job I did for the cavities!).

6) There were a couple of nasty dings and worn out screws that I had to resort to getting a chisel to, to smooth out. The screws had a very sharp thread and, in order to stop the thread being stripped and even risking a tear out I had to get a pair of pliers and manually unscrew the heads.


....I could go on. But I won't. Instead I'll stop with the wall of text and shortly post pictures of it all set up.

[Konfyouzd]

Woulda been cool if there were a way to salvage the veneer, but I'm a sucker for natural finishes no matter what.

[Nautilus]

Been ages, moving house is a b***h. Still no tung oil, but we got full frontal, back and sides!....









Sounds EPIC with those BKPs

[JamesM]

Finish sanding and stain a dark walnut color, sand it back and then oil it. It will give it that "old pirate ship" look.

[ContoursUK]

As a cousin of the guy who made this I can confirm that this looks stupidly badass, I saw it from its original look to what it is now and its a vast improvement, look at it this way he's just practically got a semi-custom LEFT HANDED 7 string for under £300!

[Michael T]

Looking cool. I do agree with TheArmada that finish would be sick.