Stripping down

First job on the refurb is to strip down the guitar in order to ascertain the level of damage. The strings were removed and discarded. Sone of the bridge pegs were a little stubborn at first, but a gently prying with a pair of pliers soon freed them.

With the strings gone and after a quick wipe down with the proverbial oily rag, it was noticed that several of the frets at the 'dusty end' had been filed down in places. Not a catastrophe as I had intended to replace the frets anyway.

Lifting out the saddle it was noticed that it had been packed up with layers of tin foil. Presumably in an attempt to make this thing playable. Removing the adjustable bridge showed that it had acquired a slight bend from being under stress for all these years. I shall attempt to gently straighten it at a later date, bug as it appears to be made out of Mazak, there's a chance it'll crack when bent back. If need be I can replace it with a shiny new stainless steel one that I can knock up in the workshop. The saddle itself looks too far gone to be salvaged, so will have to be replaced. I've a nice lump of nylon I can replace that with.

Luckily the KD-28 has a bolt on neck, so it was easily removed by unscrewing the 4 long screws. It was noticed that all the screw holes must've been drilled free hand at the factory as they were all over the place and one of the screw holes in the neck was stripped and wouldn't tighten up at all. My intention is to open out the holes and make some sort of stainless insert to pop into the neck. This should allow me to tighten the neck up properly when it eventually gets bolted back on. Also, when removing the neck, several layers of card packing fell out. Presumably fitted by Colin in the past to compensate for the warped neck.

Next up the machine heads were removed. Apart from years of nicotine abuse and a thin layer of rust, the machine heads are in very good condition. Nothing a quick wipe with some cleaning fluid and a buff up won't fix. It's little 5 minute jobs like these that I can fit into tea breaks at work. I actually enjoy the detail work like this.