Factory instruments that I have significantly modified, restored or refurbished.
This is probably the cheapest violin bass on earth, and I got a discount on top of that because it had a persistent buzz that turned out to be a bad string. "Brownsville" is a house brand for Sam Ash, where I bought it on a whim. The scale is about 30.5". It's a beauty, isn't it?
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This body style was originally reissued in a range of models - guitar, bass ( long and short scale ) and baritone. I only have the guitar. These were part of Danelectro's Chinese production, and while not bad, are not as nice as the prior or later Korean models. A second reissue in 2015 restored the gloss sparkly finish of the vintage original. None of the reissues use the original headstock shape, though.
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This was a box of junk I got on eBay, originally a vintage Convertible. I replaced the front and back with cabinet-grade birch plywood, as the original mother-of-countertop material is no longer available. I rebuilt it as something like a Companion, which is a very rare model. The neck and sides are vintage, the rest is modern.
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This beauty is Evets' reissue of a 1960s Danelectro Hornet. The solid-body Hornet has the same body outline as the Silvertone 1452, a sort-of cross between a 1457 and a Fender Jazzmaster. But unlike the slab-sided 1452, the body of the Hornet is a continuous curve, front and back, with a completely rounded edge. ( This is as sexy as a guitar gets, but makes it a little slippery on your knee. ) The reissue from Evets has the same contours as the original, and even the same 'lightshow' pickguard. The three-tone sunburst on this one was an exclusive to Guitar Center. I picked this one up as an 'open-box' from their subsidiary Music123 for a song, so to speak. The body was originally slathered in dullcote, which I polished off, resulting in a beautiful shine with just a bit of orange peel that I left.
This is a factory guitar, but I have modified it enough that I guess I can call it a project. This is a reissue produced by Evets around 2007. This was not a high point for Evets quality, they had shifted production from Korea to China, and it showed. The reissues from the '90s are Korean-made, and quite nice, and this guitar is not in the same class. That said, it's not terrible either, but there's quite a bit to go into. Evets eventually shifted production back to Korea, and the quality went back up.
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This OLP Stingray was one of the first basses I ever modded heavily. I routed a battery and a second pickup cavity, and did all sorts of experiments on it, before returning it to it's original single-pickup configuration, but with upgraded active electronics and pickup, and a nice new pearl pickguard.
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The SG, or 'Spanish Guitar', is without a doubt Gibson's best solid-body guitar design. Unlike the massive overweight Les Paul, the SG is small and light and just feels like fun in your hands. Sound-wise, the two are indistinguishable. The SG body has comfortable bevels and round-overs in place of the Les Paul's arm-gouging sharp bound edges. And the little devil horns are unmistakable.
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This is another factory guitar, vintage 1960s, made by Danelectro and sold exclusively through Sears. The 1448 was one of the cheapest electric guitars in the Sears catalog, but it came with something special - it's own amplifier built into the hardshell case. There is almost no wear on this guitar, I don't think it was played much.
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The Silvertone 1450 is a relatively rare model from 1965 to 1967. It is identical to the much more common 1452 "Amp-in-Case" model, except that the 1450 has a three-ply tortoiseshell pickguard in place of 1452's white masonite, and the 1450 did not come with an amp. The three-bolt neck attachment indicates that this is a fairly early example. There should be a date stamp inside the neck pocket, but I don't want to take it apart. For a long time I thought this was a 1452, I was quite pleased to discover while writing this that it is actually the more deluxe 1450.
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This is a real Danelectro Silvertone 1452 from the 1960s. When I got it, it was a sad box of parts. Some hillbilly had stripped it, by rubbing it on the sidewalk, I think. The fretboard had delaminated, and the old repair had simply made the problem permanent. I repaired the neck and fixed all the other issues, replaced the lipstick tubes, which had split, and clear-coated the whole thing in modern poly. I was not able to fully repair the neck, there's just not enough wood left, so I don't keep it under tension. The pickguard is stained dark for contrast. I cleaned tarnish off the old metal bits with oven cleaner, and replaced all the corroded fasteners with shiny new stainless ones.
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This was my first Audiovox project. Below is the original walnut body, fairly true to the original. My goal was to build the closest possible reproduction of the original Tutmarc Audiovox with modern parts. The ergonomics were very bad, much like a Steinberger. The headstock geometry is also not great, you can see how two of the tuners are reversed to make it work. These are expensive Gotoh tuners that are tight enough to work in reverse; I wouldn't try this with Chinese cheapies.
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