Yet more of the same

So, having repaired the first broken Mercury II and it seeming to have held I've now done the second one.

This was exactly the same process as the first repair. The second and third photos show how little wood there is in the bridge area, it's broken through where I've drilled the holes for the bushes out.

It's not like these are huge bushes either, I was drilling a 10mm hole. While this is the 'large' size bush I've noticed in use it's just that, not super-extra-humungeous.

Once this was done, it was just a case of refit the neck, solder the electrics back up to the outlet and earth then set it up.

Sadly this one is probably going to need me to shim the neck. The 'lockdown bar' reduces the clearance between the tremolo base plate and guitar body and with even a slightly high action it was close enough to restrict movement.

Once together it plays nicely enough and I think I prefer the neck to the 'padauk' one even if they're ostensibly the same guitar.

None of this answers the question about what I'm going to do with these long term. I think I'm going to shed a few guitars and these might be going straight back out of the door.

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.

Mercury II trem bushings

With the damage to the body at the trem studs on my two Mercury IIs, I need a solution that's going to hold things in place.

This 'lockdown bar' from AxesRus should do the trick but as you can see the bushes are much larger than the Takeuchi ones. There's about 2mm in it.

This means I'm going to have to drill the bodies which I'm not so keen on, but currently they're scrap anyway. It occurred to me that I could also put some small screws in the bottom of the bushes so they screw down into the body there, but the heads would need to be just the right size.

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.

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.