The instrument was delivered a few weeks ago and I have since thoroughly inspected the guitar. I have concluded that a full rebuild of this guitar is the only responsible and sensible option.
The guitars mechanicals are very crude in comparison to all of the PSG's I have previously owned.
I changed a few strings and tuned the guitar up and played it a bit. It sounded good enough that I decided to plug it in to an amp to see if the electronics worked. The electronics are in good working order and they too sound good.
This guitar has 6 pedals and zero knee levers and I see no obvious indication that it ever had any knee levers.
For these reasons I am guessing that this guitar is probably much older than either of my current PSG's and I am therefore a bit curious about when it was built.
Regardless of its age I already like the guitar enough as-is to know that I want to rebuild it. I am confident with the help of this forum I will end up with a nice little guitar.
I have experience repairing mandolas, hammered dulcimer, guitars, and such.
I am also in the process of completing a home shop so that I can start
building instruments of this type from scratch. This PSG however is the
first PSG I will be fully rebuilding and I KNOW that I need to ask for help
and guidance on aspects of the PSG repair which I have no experience-with
and/or knowledge-of.
Currently every piece of Mica on the guitar has come unglued to some degree.
At present I have the following questions. Some of these questions are variations on each other which I hope will generate more concise answers.
[*]Q: How should one prepare the surfaces of the Mica and the guitar body to be reglued?
[*]Q: What adhesives are preferred for bonding the Mica to the body?
[*]Q: I am told that contact cement is commonly used to bond the Mica to a guitars body. Is this correct? Which brands are considdered to be inferior or superior?
[*]Q: When doing a full rebuild of a guitar with substantial delamination does one normally replace the Mica or re-use the original material? I have no idea what Mica costs.
[*]Q: What is the recommended method of completing the removal of partially delaminated Mica? ? I am assuming that these surfaces should be separated so that they can be properly prepared for re-bonding. Please correct me if I am incorrect.
[*]Q: If the Mica between the body and the neck still has a strong bond to the body can they be steamed apart or should another solution be used to separate them?
[*]Q: Would it be reasonable to use a heat-gun and a putty knife to soften the existing adhesives which had bonded the Mica from the body?
To put these questions in to a useful context I will attempt to provide enough information for us to determine what materials were probably used to assemble the guitar originally. I suppose that we should try ball-park approximately when it was built so that we can guess more accurately exactly what materials the guitars was assembled with/from.
<H4>Guitar description: </H4>
- Emmons S10
- No knee levers
- 6 pedals for E9 type tuning
- The number 5095 appears on the underside of each pedal and appears to be an integral part of the pedal casting.
- Push/Pull changer (so it was built prior to 1990)
- Serial Number 2796 BTW: All the serial number data for Emmons that I have found is explicitly for D10's and I am told that it does not apply to other models.
- The pedal bar clamps on to the legs with a plate that slides horizontally to behind the legs and is secured with a wing-nut. This is very similar to my early-eighties vintage Sierra, but distinct from my MSA which has holes through 2 of the 4 legs through which a threaded rod is inserted.
- The underside of the body (but not the mechanicals) is covered in with some sort of black flocking (which looks like velveteen)
- It appears that the mechanicals were uninstalled or not yet installed when the flocking was applied to the bottom of the guitar.
- The Mica is rather drab Satin (non-gloss) black
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Regards
-- Eugene <sup>at</sup> FJ45.com
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Click Here </a>Sierra U14 MSA D10 and almost nothing in the Bank. 8^)
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