Doing Things Wrong

Factory Mods

Brownsville Violin Bass
Danelectro Silvertone 1457 Rescue Guitar
Danelectro Companion Guitar
SX Precision Bass
Schwinn Stingray Bass
Samick SG450 Guitar
Fender Squier Stratocaster Guitar
Danelectro Pro-1 Guitar
Danelectro '63 Guitar

These are factory instruments that I either significantly modified, restored or refurbished.


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.


This is the big brother to the Silvertone 1448, vintage 1964-67. Construction is basically the same, but with a full-scale neck, two pickups, and a much better amp. For a lot of details, see the 1448 page. This guitar is in excellent condition for being almost sixty years old, and apart from cleaning and re-stringing, it needed nothing.


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?

Factory Mods


Water-based "polyurethane" is not alcohol-proof, even when fully cured. In other words, it is not a suitable finish for furniture, floors, counters, bars, or basically anything. And that's any kind of alcohol, including drinking alcohol. As far as I am concerned, that is no kind of finish at all - as bad as lacquer. I'll go forward with this debacle because that seems to be the easiest thing, but now I have an alternative if need be - I know what I can strip it off with.

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