Washburn #12 - 'MG440' padauk stain

This is not made from padauk, it is a 'padauk stain' finish. So it's an undistinguished two-piece ash body with a veneer top and satin coloured finish to make it look vaguely like the padauk N4s. I'm assuming it's a maple neck and it looks like it's one piece. The fretboard is the usual rosewood unlike my other MG440.

This is the other of my 'bridge repair' Mercury IIs and perhaps the classier of the two because of that faux padauk finish. Also, the black scratchplate is slightly nicer than the slightly cheap looking white pearl one.

Otherwise they're identical. This one also had a bit of a crackle in the pots so I've just squirted some switchcleaner at them. In doing so I noticed that they have Ibanez-style 5-way switching with the humbuckers being coil tapped when used with the single coil. I'd not previously noticed this has I haven't played them much. It's a shame they didn't go the whole hog and make it noise-cancelling in both positions rather than just with the neck, but that would have needed a fancier switch.

So, another nicely made Korean superstrat that I don't really have a use for. I suspect I'll be selling this. The original plan was to steal the tremolos from both then sell the parts, but I can't bring myself to do so. Besides in the meantime I've picked up a couple of decent branded tremolos including a really nice Graphtec one.

Washburn #11 - 'MG440' trans purple

This is one of the pair of MG440s I bought with bridge bushes that had shifted, but now it's repaired I thought I'd list it up in it's own right.

It's a bog standard HSH superstrat, in the style of an Ibanez RG but with a more subtle rounded headstock design and in this case a lovely maple neck. The body is quite a cheap four piece affair with a veneer top to make the transparent finish attractive.

The pickups and electrics are obviously budget but the Washburn 600S licensed Floyd Rose is reasonably well made, it's got black Grovers and that neck really is lovely. It's seemingly a proper one-piece maple job with the fretboard being the neck rather than a separate glued on piece. The offset black fret markers are pretty classy too.

Lots of cheaper guitars seem to come with a very conservative nut height, not something that's easy to adjust with a locking nut but Washburn have set this just right and it plays beautifully.

Now I've had my fun fixing this, it's kind of superfluous so I can't imagine it'll be around long. Although that neck is lovely...

RS8V setup - finished for now

After last night's crop of failure I set at the RS8V again this morning. I abandoned filing away at the 42mm nut I'd found and went for the original.

First I took some measurements with pair of digital calipers, I can read a vernier scale but when digital calipers are so cheap why have anything else?

At high E, it was 5.26mm and low E 5.28mm. As a pure gamble I decided to lose about 0.2mm from the nut and see how it came out.

I filed the nut by holding it base down on the file and running it back and forth rather than holding the nut in a vice and moving the file. I figured I had more chance of keeping the base level this way. It took a while but eventually I got it to 5.03mm at high E and 5.07mm at low E.

Using a couple of replacement screws as I didn't want one breaking again I plonked it back on the nut shelf, restrung and set the intonation. Again.

The difference is amazing. It has gone from being tiring to play to lovely with just 0.2mm off the nut. Obviously intonation at low frets is much better too making it sound sweeter when playing chords that end of the neck. I kind of knew all this should be a consequence when I started but it's gratifying to feel the fruits of your labour first hand. So the RS8V has gone from being quite nasty to play to a lovely rock guitar. I can see me coming back to the RS8V to fit some different pickups but for now I'll move on to another project.

When I buy guitars like this I sometimes wonder whether the former owners ever noticed, thought there was something innately wrong with the guitar, didn't play them, or had forearms like Popeye and simply lived with it. Even if you're a great player with the strength to play round it you must notice that it doesn't intonate well. I do and I'm rubbish. A real luthier could have sorted all this much more quickly than me and it wouldn't have cost a fortune. Maybe the guy I bought it off didn't really need that Godin he replaced this with.

Half this job was adjusting the truss rod to take out the large amount of relief in the neck. I did this in stages, leaving it to settle and checking it as I went. Advice on how to check the relief if you're an amateur seems to be to fret a string at either end of the neck and look at the gap below it. This works fine, but is fiddly. Professionals probably have 'notched straightedges' but these are £45 from Stewmac and much as I like buying tools couldn't bring myself to splash out on a set.

So I made my own. I took an aluminium 19" rack blanking plate I had kicking around which was nice and straight, held it up to a neck, marked the fret positions with marker pen then filed it out with a round file. There is no way this is as good as something professionally made, but frankly it's good enough for me. One side is 24.75" scale length, the other 25.5", if I need something different I've got another blanking plate down in the cellar.

More monkey metal disaster

So, having failed to make any progress with the travel guitar I had a go at the RS8V.

I got the nut off the guitar and compared it with another 80s Washburn locking nut kicking I had around which appeared to be the same. It was but 42mm wide rather than 43mm.

While not being quite the right width it was available and free so I carefully attacked it with a file taking a little off the base while trying to keep it nice and flat. I figured that locking nuts were cheap and easily replaceable if I screwed up while the neck of the guitar was kind of harder to replace.

Having taken about 0.2mm off and managed to keep it flat enough, it's not a cylinder head after all, I went to test fit it to the guitar. Half way in the first screw snapped, it must have been made of mystery monkey metal too I was hardly applying any pressure.

So I had a little go with some needle nose pliers trying to grasp the snapped off end, but had to resort to cutting a small 'moat' round the stump with my Dremel to get any purchase.

This wasn't too productive an evening, I'll quit while I'm behind.

Easy win #4 & #5

My G2V and RS8V had annoying rattly tremolo arms courtesy of the grub screws which tighten down on the nylon bush they run past being missing. So, I bought a bunch of M4 grub screws off eBay and fitted them.

After this I messed around with the tremolo on my gold KC90. The tension spring, which is in the bottom of the sustain block, was too tight so you couldn't actually get the arm to screw in. I had thought the jack socket was dodgy but it seems not.

While I was doing this I tweaked the truss rod of the RS8V again and set the intonation on all three. The RS8V keeps needing redoing as I keep altering the neck relief and action while I don't think I've ever done the other two since I got them.

That's some more little niggles dealt with. I was reminded again that the G2V is nicer than its paltry RRP and plywood body would suggest but that it's badly let down by shoddy pickups. At some point getting a three ply scratchplate made up to replace the grotty original and fitting some decent pickups may happen but I'll leave it for now.

Easy win #3

My old RS530 was never going to get played with a crappy jack socket, so it's been replaced with a decent Switchcraft one I had knocking about.

There should now be no excuse for me not to play this more often.

Easy win #1 & #2

So if I'm going to polish off any of my massive project list I need some 'easy wins'. First up was the RS8V.

Today I swapped out the tremolo studs for a pair taken from one of the MG440s. Which I really should have done the other day when I had the tremolo off. Putting them in with a tiny amount of grease on the threads made adjusting the height a breeze and the unchewed posts have made the tremolo more stable.

Also, somebody had at some point removed a tool holder from the back of the headstock leaving nasty holes. I happened to have one that fitted right kicking around so I popped that on.

While I was there I gave the truss rod another quick tweak, the relief is slowly getting towards what I think it should be. However I can already tell I am going to end up lowering the action at the nut slightly. As I get the action otherwise sorted the high nut is really starting to stand out. I don't fancy attacking the nut shelf with sandpaper. This is doubly so as the nut rests on the neck rather than a shelf on the fretboard. So I can see me having to hunt about for a lower nut.

I reckon this is going to be a fantastic fast playing rock guitar if I ever get it set up right.

RS8V setup

When I got my RS8V recently I tried to set it up and found that I couldn't get the action low enough for my tastes.

This was simply because the heads on the tremolo studs were quite chewed up and I couldn't shift them very much with the tremolo under tension. As I wasn't sure if this was because they were stiff or had reached the end of their travel, today I slackened the strings, removed the tremolo and wound the studs down.

It was pretty obvious with the tension off that they're simply a little stiff so I've now got it closer to what I want. There's still a little more bow in the neck than I'd like so I adjusted the truss rod again while the strings were slack.

This still leaves a fair bit of relief, so I may have to revisit this and make a jig to take the tension off the rod while I tighten it. It was getting pretty tight and I don't want to mess it up.

There is a possibility I'll mess the neck up if I go OTT with this, but then again it wasn't the most expensive guitar and I like the process of learning how to make things play better.

Ibanez #3 - 'RS530' marine burst

Like my other RS530, only with a fancy flamed maple top and transparent blue burst finish. This would be lovely if it weren't terribly scruffy. The frets are heavily worn, there are dinks all over the body, the finish is flaking off the headstock and the strings have worn gouges in the pickups from them being too close. It's also missing the 80s boomerang strap buttons and I've substituted some Schaller straplock buttons which I fit to most things.

It's sort of a spares donor for my other Ibanez as the hardware is in OK nick.

It would be tempting to turn it into a refinish project but I've got something simpler I want to tackle first.

Ibanez #2 - 'RS530' black

I've still got the receipt for this. Bought on 2/8/90 in the Kentish Town Music and Hifi Exchange for £115 with a snug fitting hard case. Back in the day when I used to haunt actual shops instead of eBay.

From the same stable of mid 80s Ibanez as my Destroyer, this RS530 was at the upper end of their Roadstar II line. I didn't know this at the time, it's only now with the advent of the Internet that I've a clue what this is. I do remember seeing a secondhand RS1010 Steve Lukather model once for silly money on Denmark street and commenting that this was very similar.

I couldn't afford an RG, let alone the JEM/JS1/Radius I lusted after but this was around and cheap. It became my main guitar for years until the EC29 came along. Much though I like my Destroyer it is a great big uncomfortable lump of guitar and that's kind of why I sold it.

This is packed with fancy stuff for something if its age, 24 frets, push-push coil taps and locking trem but still the Pro Rock'r rather than the Edge that came shortly afterwards. It's just a shame those frets had great runnels worn in them from it having very heavy use before I bought it. I didn't let this bother me and I soldiered on with it regardless.

The Pro Rock'r tremolo is a piece of beautiful engineering that makes a Floyd Rose look basic and agricultural. It's smoother on the hand, you can adjust individual saddle heights and the intonation adjustment is done with a fine pitch screw instead of loosen and shove. The baseplate and block are a great lump of decent cast metal so you've got the mass people try to get back by fitting big blocks to Floyds. You don't have to cut off the ball ends, you pass them down into the block and lock it off.

It's just a shame it doesn't work very well. I'm no expert but I reckon this is all because it moves on brass pins mated up against a channel in the bridge studs, instead of knife edges. So even when in perfect condition and lubricated there's tons of friction that means it doesn't return to the same point very easily.

The top-lock which locks the strings at the headstock rather than nut probably doesn't help either. I suspect both these problems were caused by Ibanez attempts to avoid paying a licence fee to Floyd Rose. Which backfired in my opinion.

So the heavy use that wore out the frets also meant the tremolo is pretty unreliable. You can use it heavily but then it needs a bit of a tweak afterwards to get it back to pitch.

I've recently had the frets dressed on this and it's transformed the guitar, I should have had this done years ago but my usual lack of trust when it comes to 'professionals' stopped me.

This sort of thing is getting genuinely collectible. Not quite as much as the 70s Ibanez or the original RGs/JEMs I couldn't afford at the time, but it's interesting to see how much they go for on eBay sometimes. How times change, when I bought this it was desperately unfashionable and definitely just 'old'. Mine is not 100% original, I replaced the 3-way switch because it failed and the jack socket is now crackly and I can see me replacing that too. Oh well it's not like it's a '59 standard.

Washburn #9 - 'RS8V' white

I said I wasn't going to buy any more guitars for a bit, but this came up. In principle it's a stablemate to my EC29s, RR2V and G2V, being from around the same era. It's also from Washburn's "let's go for some stupid gimmick" department, like the EC29.

So here we have what at first glance looks like a generic 80s superstrat. Only if you look twice you'll notice the body is pretty much a PRS copy and they've just stuck a spiky headstock on. Like the PRS it's also got a set neck, which is unusual in superstrats but daftest of all is a carbon composite fretboard. This is pitch black and looks like bakelite. Oh and the usual 3-way toggle to select pickups is there but it's done with a tiny little switch you'd normally associate with a coil tap.

All in all a mishmash of generic and outlandish in the same thing. I've given it my customary clean, restring and brief setup and it's odd to play too. Despite currently having a quite high action, acoustically it has that light tinny sound I associate with the strings being far too close to the fretboard. It seems like it'll have no sustain but then it does and it's very bright sounding. Pinch harmonics seem to come really easily despite the pickups (EMG selects) not being massively overwound.

How much of this is the construction and weird fretboard I don't know, it could just be the pickups.

Anyway, when I hit 'buy it now' on this I immediately suffered a bit of buyer's remorse as I really didn't need another late 80s superstrat. However now I've got it and played it a little I'm surprised how unusual it is. Also in metallic white with that jet black fretboard it looks cool as fuck (in a retro kind of way) in my opinion.

---

Updates

RS8V setup
Easy win #1 & #2
Easy win #4 & #5
More monkey metal disaster
RS8V setup - finished for now

Router attack

I recently had a go at fixing one of my faulty MG440s but after putting it back together the bridge was simply too high.

I thought about shimming the neck but didn't really fancy that, so today I've taken a router to the body and inset the 'lockdown bar' so it's flush with the body. Obviously this took the finish off the guitar so I splodged a little satin black paint onto the bare wood.

With it all back together this has solved the issue with the bridge height, again I'll leave it a couple of weeks to settle before passing judgement. You can't really see the routed area as it's mostly covered by the scratchplate.

I suspect that it'll be going back on eBay if all is well. The clearance between the lockdown bar and the bridge is slightly lacking on the 'padauk' one so I may do the same to that.

More of the same

Having finished up the repair on the 'padauk' MG440, I stripped the purple one. The neck is a really nice skunk stripe one-piece maple affair, but sadly the body is in some ways worse than the one I just fixed.

The one saving grace is that the crack doesn't extend below the bush, like on the other one. So, do I try and save it or do I just strip it like originally planned.

Some surgery on a quiet Sunday afternoon

Having dismantled the 'padauk' MG440 the other week and tried to glue the cracked section, I've had a go at finishing off the repair.

The 'lockdown bar' I bought to deal with the failure of the wood at the bridge stud needs larger holes drilling. I'm no luthier but the body is effectively scrap at the moment so I couldn't make it much worse.

There's no way I could ever drill the holes out accurately enough by hand so I clamped the body to my cheap Chinese pillar drill and lined it up using a 5/16 drill bit in the chuck. This was a perfect snug fit in the existing holes, so I got the body nicely centred on it then swapped bits to the 10mm one I needed.

I drilled very slowly and after about 2mm stopped to check it was still nicely centred. The first one went well so once finished I moved the body and did the same with the other hole.

With them both done, the 'lockdown bar' is a perfect fit. Sadly the drilling has broken through into the tremolo route, again emphasising that the design of this guitar really doesn't leave enough wood in the area.

Dropping the pickguard into the body showed that it should fit nicely and not need trimming down so I just reassembled and set up the guitar.

Once it was all back together the repair is hardly noticeable. The 'lockdown bar' is visible but it mates nicely with the pickguard so it almost looks like it should be there. Having strung it and played it a little, the repair has held. I'll use this as my practice guitar for a couple of weeks to make sure it stays that way.

Longer term I'm not quite sure what to do with this, I bought the pair to rob for parts (mostly the 600S tremolos) but thought fixing this one would be a fun project and it has been. However I don't really need another midrange Korean superstrat and if I leave it whole I'll still need to find a tremolo. I'm not sure I could sell it given the repair, even though I'd be upfront about it and this leads to me having yet another guitar.

Oh well, I guess there's still the other one to strip down.

Hot and sticky

Or at least I got it hot and I hope it's stuck.

The top photo shows how the wood has cracked due to the tension on the bush and then moved. So I stripped the guitar down to a bare body, pulled the other bush, clamped it back into place and then glued it. The last photo is after leaving it to dry for 24 hours.

As the crack is really fine and there's no way I could manually get glue in there I put a load in the hole then used a damp piece of cotton wool and soldering iron to steam the glue into the crack and surrounding wood. Glue and steam certainly seeped out of the crack.

This appears to have worked as beforehand simply clamping the body back into shape didn't work, it'd spring back when you took the clamp off. I have no illusion this will hold things under string tension this is merely so it's in the right place when I drill the larger holes and fit the lock down bar.

Washburn #7 - 'NX3 Nextar' natural

This is what happens when you hang around the Washburn forum too much.

Washburn have been making the Nuno Bettencourt signature models since 1990. Which is a long time for a signature association when the guitar itself is pretty much unique to the artist rather than just one of the companies normal models with some artist-specific bling. All those units shifted must mean something and it's not like Nuno is a hugely popular figure either.

The Nuno models tick a lot of my boxes as they're well specified twin humbucker superstrats that use the "Stephen's Extended Cutaway" neck joint found on my EC29s. The problem is that I really don't like the reverse headstock and have no interest in Nuno at all. Also, the majority of models are US made so out of my price range. There is the N2 which is very common but this is a budget N4 lookalike model with conventional neck joint.

There were a few 'import' models made with a decent spec. in the shape of the N3, N24 and N61. The N3 was rapidly discontinued, I suspect it cannibalised sales of the very similar US N4 models. The N61 messes the formula up with a scratchplate and single coils and I've never seen an N24 for sale in the UK. Even so these still have the reverse headstock and Nuno association which put me off them.

What I wasn't aware of until I hung around on the forum was that Washburn filed the serial numbers off the Nuno design, turned the headstock the right way up, fitted a tone control (omitted on Nunos) and push/pull coil tap then released this as the Korean made 'Nextar' or NX3.

So that's all the bits that appeal from the Nuno guitars minus all the things that don't. One came up on eBay at a sane price and I bought it.

It's in very good nick, plays nicely and the stock Washburn pickups which get a bit of a slagging at times seem pretty good to me. I really like the very plain satin finish and direct mounted pickups. The body is a 3-piece affair but joined very subtly so it looks almost like a one piece.

It's my first guitar with the Buzz Feiten Tuning System (tm). I am very sceptical about this as I don't like proprietary patented stuff like this that locks you into going to an 'authorised dealer' for servicing/setup. However you can find how to intonate the guitar according to BFTS on the Internet if you look for it. I can't say I noticed the BFTS making it sound any sweeter than I expected.

More on this when I come to do some setup work on it.