A fit of overenthusiasm

I bought two Washburn Mercury IIs off eBay that have faults. The trem studs have crushed the wood and shifted forward on the treble side.

Ostensibly I've bought these to rob for spares but the satin finish one is quite nice, if I can save it I will.

Having quickly stripped one I can see what's happened, the body has cracked and a small piece separated from it between the stud and pickup cavity. My half formed plan before seeing this was to fit larger diameter bushes but this won't really work. AxesRUs do a 'trem lockdown' that screws into the body which I may try, they're only a fiver.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

This looks like a candidate for a similar sort of fix to the one you did on the bridge pickup cavity on the red EC29 - i.e. rout out the whole chunk of wood between the bridge pickup and the trem cavity, glue in a new chunk of wood, re-rout the pickup and trem cavities as necessary, then re-drill the holes for the pivot studs.

You could (reasonably!) argue that this was a disproportionate amount of effort to go to to rescue a relatively cheap guitar but it might be an interesting project to try and would build up experience for if/when something *really* nice turns up cheap with a similar problem.

Alternatively chuck the Floyd and put a Kahler on :-)

Nick Reynolds said...

I fancy trying something with a Kahler but putting one over the area routed for a Floyd means you need a baseplate to cover gaps.