1987 RG550 restoration project
purchased from a second-hand guitar store for 100 smackers (guitar played and was assembled)
rhaylor@yahoo.com
Status: scratchy everything, defective bridge lower coil (unsalvagable), countless dings, damage to fretboard.
Here are the before pictures.
A little sandpaper goes a long way. Man basswood sands easy, I had to be careful not to take off too much wood! It doesn't look so hot in the pics, but man it feels smooth :). Used 100 for reshaping to eliminate deep dings/gashes, then 330 light to smooth out surface.
Color Swatch... Turns out it will be the bottom left color, but flip/flop with yellow! Now I'm getting excited...
2/15/2008
Dimarzio Evolution bridge pickup ordered to replace defective pickup (along with a couple other goodies). Also ordered an Ibanez logo for the headstock (actually two just in case...). Now to get the body painted! Pics coming when that's done! I'm dropping off the body to my car-painting buddy later today.
2/21/2008
Did some reading... Decided to sand the neck and apply oil based lacquer. Here is the sanded neck. Looks better than I thought it would!
2/27/2008
Applied decal! I ordered it from ebay shop http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/paintandcut, and I highly recommend them! They made it to my specs and sent me an extra decal in blue in case I didn't like the purple (I didn't ask for it). I will say that you need to be careful when peeling the white backing of the clear sticker holding the decal, it will want to pull the decal off and may tear it. Just go very slow and watch the whole time. Following the directions, I taped one side of the decal to the headstock (see photo with decal still in it's protective cover) per the instructions and it worked out nicely.
I also tried out the clear (well opaque) lacquer I got on frets 9 and 10. They're still wet, but it should be dry in the morning, so I can decide if I like it or not. Bear in mind that I tried the lacquer on scrap maple first to be sure it wasn't too ugly...
Here's the whole neck lacquered. There's one more coat coming, then I'll probably buff it a little to smooth it out. This was taken about an hour after applying the first coat to the whole neck.
2/29/2008
The body came back! It's hard to tell in the pictures, but it changes from lavender to light yellow when you look at it from a different angle. The rest of the hardware is soaking in some gasoline, and the last coat of lacquer is on the neck.
2/3/2008
The guitar is done!!! It plays great since I went through and adjusted everything to fit a new set of hybrid slinkys. The bridge adjusted up easily, and everything works like it should. I figure I spent around $300 all together, including the price of the guitar. Like any projects there are things I would have done differently in hindsight, but overall I'm very happy with the results!
www.randyhaylor.com
