A guitar which plays well and reminds me very much of 80s “hair metal”, which was also a friend’s first axe. It suffered an unfortunately second break near the headstock to neck join. On a particularly uneventful Friday, I decided to try and repair it using wood glue and clamps. Here are the before and after pics, plus a resultant video…
The actual join itself isn’t hugely tidy (I couldn’t get all the grain to match up with the way the clamps were putting force on the thing). However, it is strong enough to support the weight of the guitar without any telltale cracking sounds, after giving the glue a day to set.
Not sure if the Floyd Rose will be particularly usable now, given that I had to remove the clamps from the locking nut. I suspected that the way the locking nut was bolted onto the neck, using very long screws, may have been one cause of the weakening of the wood around that area. Having said that, seems to remain in tune when played, so here is some random noodling and testing to make sure that the whole thing works:-
Many moons ago, I bought my very first ever electric guitar… a Tanglewood TSE 320 Outlaw, also known as “a Korean strat copy”. It came with nasty brash sounding ceramic bar single coil pickups and awful hardware. However, many years (and guitars) later, I grew to realise that it actually came with a decent body and neck. At a guess, I think the body is alder and the neck is maple with a rosewood fingerboard.
Given that one of the existing ones has been going without a bushing for a while and the vintage style machine heads were pretty flappy and substandard.
I also have an Epiphone Dot, in natural finish, made in the 90s in the Korean Peerless factory. Nonetheless, although it plays well, the pickups lacked the clarify that I wanted for a more soulful sound. I have been a recent fan of the Vintage guitars (I also have a V100 GT), and like the way that the Wilkinson pickups supposedly work as a budget upgrade, given that they are PAF clones.
My plan was simple:-
Get a set of better pickups to replace the stock humbuckers on the Epiphone Dot
Install the Epiphone’s original pickups into the Tanglewood’s body
Replace the tuners (machine heads) on the Tanglewood
Here are the candidates before the surgery commenced…
Working on the Epiphone Dot
The Dot is pretty much in mint condition, without any scratches or breaks.
I started by doing the following:-
Removing the strings
Removing the tune-o-matic and stopbar tailpiece
Pulled off the control knobs
Unscrewed and removed the pickguard
This left me with:-
One of the biggest challenges of doing any sort of electrical work on semi-acoustic archtops (i.e. 335 clones) is that all the access to the electronics and components are through the f-holes. I have fairly thin and spidery fingers, but I still didn’t want to chance scratching or cracking any part of the lacquer.
A quick Google shows that people have mainly had success with getting fishing line or thread to tie to the pot shafts before loosing the nuts and washers holding them in place. Furthermore, Musicradar.com also suggested that by using a small jack plug with a line on it, it helps with retrieving the jack socket. I initially tried to do that with what I had to hand… which was twine…
Unfortunately, twine didn’t tie all that well and when it did, it didn’t fit through the holes as smoothly as something that was thinner. I ended up giving up on the idea and just went ahead on working on the replacing parts and also cleaning the controls.
Soldering on a scratchplate usually is quite straightforward and forgiving, but as I am working on parts on a loom that is still partially inside the guitar, I used a couple of old CDs as shielding from accidentally burning the top of the guitar.
Visually (and weightwise), there wasn’t a huge difference between the Wilkinson WVCs and the Epiphone Alnico Classic ’57s:-
Both of them were low(er) output, PAF clones, wax-potted with a single row of adjustable polepieces accessible from the casing.
Given that I was now in the unenviable position of replacing the controls, I could either dislocate my fingers or opt for a genius, jury-rigging plan. Favouring the latter, I found I could use solid core bell wire, thread it through the hole the control was ultimately supposed to appear from, and then tie it to the control to guide it.
The final result was as good as I could’ve hoped for, save for a bit of buzzing where the Wilkinsons themselves weren’t fully grounded.
Working on upgrading the Tanglewood
From eBay, I decided to procure a prewired pickguard, from an importer over in Hong Kong. I needed a fairly plain one, that had a H-H configuration (I had previously played with wiring H-S-H, but the possible wiring permutations make troubleshooting a headache for me).
Taking out the old scratchplate wasn’t a huge issue at all, as I had previously had to replace the five-way selector switch. The removal of the vintage style vibrato, along with the sustain block and jack socket was also straightforward. Although this wasn’t necessary, it was done so that compressed air could be used to clean the cavity and metal parts whilst the work was going on.
The Stratocaster style body had space for a H-S-H configuration in terms of width and length, but it lacked the depth needed to accommodate the humbucker screws
In order to combat this without having to cut screws, I used the rotary tool to grind/mill two recesses into the routed areas for the pickups, so that the screws can fit comfortably there.
I had managed to source my replacement machine heads via eBay. These were copies of Grovers, sealed, and imprinted with “Rui Bao”. My guess is the factory name?
The biggest headache I had on this part was that the original holes in the headstock for the vintage style tuners was about 1mm too small for these ones. I had several options:
Resell off the machine heads and call it quits
Buy different machine heads that fit
Try and source bushings that fit to replace the missing one in the existing set
Drill out to enlarge the headstock holes
Use a reamer to enlarge the headstock holes
Use a combination of files and a rotary tool (with mini grinder) to open the hole up.
Taking the inverse of Occam’s Razor, I opened the holes up so that the tuners fit perfectly.
And with everything back together, this is what the renovated Tanglewood now looks like:-
Final thoughts
All in all, I am very happy with the way both the guitars play and sound. Tuning appears to be more stable on the Tanglewood, and the alnicos, even if they are a bit muddy, were an improvement on the toy ceramic single coils. The Wilkinsons on the Dot take a bit of getting used to, but they produce sweet and soul tones, even if my first impressions were that they didn’t feel as “flexible” as the original Epiphone Alnico Classic ’57s.
Irongear Steam Hammer, installed onto the bridge pickup slot of a Korean made Jackson PS-1 superstrat (with licenced Floyd Rose vibrato). Amp models provided as reference.
Strings were light gauge, and it was recording through a Behringer Ultragain Tube 100 preamp, into a Behringer UCA-202, into Cockos Reaper evaluation.
Pickup is a high output, hex polepiece, ceramic humbucker.
The one song that I have covered consistently well over the last decade… I’ve finally decided to try and record it and put it on YouTube…
Irritatingly, it’s struggling to sound in tune (perhaps I should set that intonation after all, and get a real tuner?) and the sound is far “woodier” and more acoustic that it should be, but that could just be the position of the condenser.
