[turmoil]

I've had this guitar since i first started playing bass/guitar about 8 years ago and it looked more or less like this for the longest time



Quite disgusting i know. It has some kind of Yamaha tremolo but it doesn't have fine tuners anymore so basically you can't use the tremolo at all.

Well, the thing is the guitar holds some sentimental value and on top of that, the neck just feels so incredible. Therefore, i wanted to have a little fun and spruce her up so this is what i ended up doing.

First, i stripped the paint on the back of the neck off and finished it off with some formby's tung-oil. For my very first attempt at doing this to a guitar ever, it turned out pretty well i'd say.

Before:


After:


The next step was to replace the pickups, because they were complete and utter garbage. So, with the help of one forumite here (Thanks DriftHappy!) and two from Rig-Talk, i was able to get a Seymour Duncan JB Trembucker for the bridge, a Duncan Designed Hot Rails for the middle, and a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails for the Neck.

On top of that, i don't know what idiot over at Yamaha THOUGHT it would be a good idea to put an output jack on TOP of the guitar body. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense...let's just put that whammy bar on there so every time they use it, it will hit the cable and massive LULZ shall be had by all. WRONG.
So i routed out the body and installed a strat style jack as well.

And to finish it off, i got some Gotoh tuners to replace those piece-of-junk Yamaha ones and also got a TRS floyd rose style trem to replace the Yamaha one. I had to mount the new trem posts but it worked out pretty well. The trem isn't the greatest but then again, it's just a project guitar.



And finally, i got some fretboard Dye from Stew MacDonald and stained the fretboard as well as polished the frets (boy they needed it!). So here's the final result, although i couldn't really get decent enough pictures to show it off:



And here's a nice Before/After shot:



Again, not the best pictures in the world, and that body is incredibly dirty (LOL @ me) but it turned out fantastically well!

The pickup combo sounds really, really awesome! I was a little skeptical about the Duncan Designed Hot Rails but wow, that's one of my favorite pickups i think. It has this sweet twang to it.

Thanks for reading!!

[Apophis]

[FortePenance]

Nice job man! Get a gold pickup ring and your set. Black and gold can be so classy.

[turmoil]

thanks man! i didn't even think about that. guess i'll have to go pick one up sometime as well as gold screws too

[Shawn]

Nice work.

[the musicman]

Nice work !

...your missing a knob.

[CrushingAnvil]

Originally Posted by turmoil

thanks man! i didn't even think about that. guess i'll have to go pick one up sometime as well as gold screws too

Butsu young sensei. leave the black screws in...It contrasts the black and gives it more detail =] or just do whatever, Im really impressed, I thought "uh oh hes going to attempt the impossible" but you pulled it off! congrats!