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Can anyone identify this thing?

1K views 6 replies 5 participants last post by  .:Jovaipine:. 
#1 ·
Hi there

I've recently been given an old guitar; it's pretty beat up, and needs a bit of work, but it should be fixable. A friend of the family gave it to me after she heard about a similar job I did on an Aria strat I had that I never liked (stripped the finished, gutted the electronics, etc), in case I wanted another old guitar to experiment with. Thing is, I've no idea what it is. There are no markings or serial numbers anywhere, even inside the neck pocket. There may be branding on the pickups or electronics, but I haven't got that far yet.

I suspect it's very old (20+ years), it's seen a hard life, and it's probably worth next to nothing (which is fine, I'm going to strip it down anyway). But I'm curious about a few things:

i) The headstock looks exactly like a Fender one, just without the logo and visible truss rod. I thought Fender headstocks were trademarked?

ii) The next appears to be rosewood (see last pic). Whatever it is, it's definitely not maple, it's too dark and too soft. This would mean it's pretty old, right, since rosewood necks are rare these days?

iii) The body looks like a weirdly distorted Strat knockoff, but it's not a shape I remember seeing before. Taking this together with the Fender headstock, I'm guessing it's a cheap 80s copy of a superstrat?





You can get the other images at the following addresses, if you're interested:

http://www.steventhomson.co.uk/images/unknownguitar/01.jpg
http://www.steventhomson.co.uk/images/unknownguitar/02.jpg
http://www.steventhomson.co.uk/images/unknownguitar/03.jpg
http://www.steventhomson.co.uk/images/unknownguitar/04.jpg
http://www.steventhomson.co.uk/images/unknownguitar/05.jpg
http://www.steventhomson.co.uk/images/unknownguitar/06.jpg

If anyone has any ideas, I'd be grateful. Or, if anyone has any neat ideas for a re-finish, let me know, I'm still undecided. I don't know what the body wood is yet, so I don't know if a natural finish is worth trying or not. I'll wait and see how she looks when the paint comes off.

Thanks
Steven
 
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#2 ·
That bit of visible wood looks more like a variety of mahogany. It's definitely not rosewood which is very hard, dense and tight grained.
And yes, Fender headstocks are licensed/trademarked but unless a company is perceived as a financial threat it's rarely worth the money it would cost to sue them. Also it looks like it's probably of Japanese or Taiwanese origin and they really don't give a **** about trademarks and copyrights ;)
 
#3 ·
Thanks. I think in that case, I'm all set to rip it to pieces. The Aria that I re-finished was simpler because it didn't have a painted neck, whereas this one does, so that'll be the major difficulty of this project. It also had a scratchplate, which covered up a few mistakes, and meant I could do the soldering away from the body. And I'm going back to uni in a week and a half, so I'll barely have time to start this, it might be next summer before it gets the attention it deserves. But then what happens to my plans to build a Tele/Esquire next summer? Maybe I'll just do both. ;)

I'm thinking I might make it some kind of green, I haven't got any green guitars. Ideally, I'd do a burst finish of some kind, but I've no experience with that, so I'll need to practice first. Even better would be a veneer top, but I'm not sure how to do that when the body is bevelled at the edges.
 
#6 ·
Took it to bits today, and I've still not found any serial numbers or anything of the sort, but I've discovered that it's made of plywood (which, incidentally, some of the Bently Series 10 guitars were made of, but I imagine a lot of older guitars probably were). It does seem to share the same knobs as various Bently guitars that I've found pictures of, but I haven't tracked down a model similar to this. Also, I've no idea why this is missing its decal/serial number etc, unless its been repainted.

A natural finish is more or less out of the question now, so I think I'm going to go for some kind of green, with black at the egdes (a 'greenburst', I suppose you'd call it). I won't have the time to do this for a while, maybe not until next summer, but at least I've got a rough plan now. :)
 
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