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UNPLANNED DOWNTIME: 12th Oct 23:45
Charity shop find
I was in one of my local charity shops last Saturday and spotted a guitar hanging on the wall behind the counter, a bit oddly face to the wall... mahogany-bodied OM size, no binding, Martin-shape headstock, good Schaller-type tuners... wow, is that a Martin 000-15?
Got the assistant to pass it down and turned it round... no. Slightly disappointingly, it's a Vintage. But there's a price label on the front and it's only £20! A quick check over and I couldn't see any structural damage, the action looked OK, and with a brief strum it sounded OK, so I bought it.
That was the good stuff. The bad stuff is that it belonged to someone who has 'creatively worked on it'... it's not only been DIY-relic'ed with sanding marks and deep scratches all over the body, they've written the note names in black marker up the fingerboard (including some bits scribbled out), written something now illegible all over the body which has mostly but not quite rubbed off, ripped the label off the inside, and possibly worst of all used most of a tube of superglue to stick the bridge saddle into the slot, leaking out all over the bridge - and put a bit more of it on the top of the nut too for some reason, including sticking a bit of red felt to it, who knows why! It looked like this...
Solvents wouldn't touch the black marker on the board - it had soaked into the wood, and even on the body it seems to have stained the finish, although most of it did come off eventually - so I scraped the fingerboard and bridge, also chiselling off the superglue. The action is fine so I took a deep breath and decided just to leave the bridge saddle stuck in - it doesn't *need* to come out. Soaked off the remains of the label and cleaned up the glue residue, polished and oiled the board, then gave the whole thing a thorough going-over with dark wax furniture restorer, which filled a lot of the surface scratches and further hid the remains of the writing. Replaced the bridge pins - they were a bit chewed up and one was mismatching - but amazingly, not the strings! Although the top E broke when I was undoing the granny knots on the posts, the others were fine and must have been changed very recently.
It now looks like this...
I had been thinking I would just clean it up and sell it on for a profit - someone will want a 'relic' acoustic, and surely it must be worth not far off £100, since they're about £180 new (it's a V300 Mahogany, I've now found out) - but it's actually really nice and for what it cost me, I think I might just keep it. I don't actually *need* it... but my only other 6-string acoustic is my Gibson Dove, which does sometimes seem a bit posh to play in some places.
These were apparently awarded the 'Best Acoustic Guitar Under £1000' prize by The Guitar Magazine, and although I'm not quite sure that's true, it does sound absolutely brilliant for the price they are new... let alone for £20 and a couple of hours work
.
Got the assistant to pass it down and turned it round... no. Slightly disappointingly, it's a Vintage. But there's a price label on the front and it's only £20! A quick check over and I couldn't see any structural damage, the action looked OK, and with a brief strum it sounded OK, so I bought it.
That was the good stuff. The bad stuff is that it belonged to someone who has 'creatively worked on it'... it's not only been DIY-relic'ed with sanding marks and deep scratches all over the body, they've written the note names in black marker up the fingerboard (including some bits scribbled out), written something now illegible all over the body which has mostly but not quite rubbed off, ripped the label off the inside, and possibly worst of all used most of a tube of superglue to stick the bridge saddle into the slot, leaking out all over the bridge - and put a bit more of it on the top of the nut too for some reason, including sticking a bit of red felt to it, who knows why! It looked like this...
Solvents wouldn't touch the black marker on the board - it had soaked into the wood, and even on the body it seems to have stained the finish, although most of it did come off eventually - so I scraped the fingerboard and bridge, also chiselling off the superglue. The action is fine so I took a deep breath and decided just to leave the bridge saddle stuck in - it doesn't *need* to come out. Soaked off the remains of the label and cleaned up the glue residue, polished and oiled the board, then gave the whole thing a thorough going-over with dark wax furniture restorer, which filled a lot of the surface scratches and further hid the remains of the writing. Replaced the bridge pins - they were a bit chewed up and one was mismatching - but amazingly, not the strings! Although the top E broke when I was undoing the granny knots on the posts, the others were fine and must have been changed very recently.
It now looks like this...
I had been thinking I would just clean it up and sell it on for a profit - someone will want a 'relic' acoustic, and surely it must be worth not far off £100, since they're about £180 new (it's a V300 Mahogany, I've now found out) - but it's actually really nice and for what it cost me, I think I might just keep it. I don't actually *need* it... but my only other 6-string acoustic is my Gibson Dove, which does sometimes seem a bit posh to play in some places.
These were apparently awarded the 'Best Acoustic Guitar Under £1000' prize by The Guitar Magazine, and although I'm not quite sure that's true, it does sound absolutely brilliant for the price they are new... let alone for £20 and a couple of hours work
. "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson
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Comments
Moral: never look a gift horse in the mouth.
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They did sound quite good, back in the day the TGM Best Buy awards were chosen from gear that had actually been reviewed by the mag in the previous 12 months, so that meant a rather small selection pool...
That makes sense. It is good... but I'm pretty sure I've played guitars that sell for £999 that are better
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson
I'm going to leave it alone and resist the temptation to 'put it right' unless it ever actually needs to come out. (Which is very unlike me
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson
I had both. The spruce topper has gone but the V300MH remains.
It really is rather nice for the price & I'd have bought the one that you have in a heartbeat.
Nice score.
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I love my wee Norman acoustic. It had a lollipop stick for a bridge.
That's not really my thing - I did have an old Höfner folk guitar I did that with because it had a very thin, reedy tone anyway, but I never really used it much.
If I keep this one it's more likely to get a magnetic pickup so I can use it for overdriven acoustic-electric sounds, which is one of my favourite non-standard things
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson