New project!!

After spending a few days restoring the abandoned Squier Tele I kinda got the bug for it. So much so that I found myself looking on Ebay for guitars in need of repair (wasn't much worth looking at to be honest, no surprise there as Ebay sellers have a habit of just forgetting to mention things that may need repairing and just sell the item as in working condition!) and even thought about going down the build your own guitar effect pedal route via clone pedal kits.

Before I spend any of my own actual money (which I lack in!) I thought I'd check out my own old abandoned guitar.

This is an old Grant semi acoustic which I purchased from Crime Converters around ten years ago. For some reason I never took to it, think it was something to do with the neck being wrong and despite a little tinkering with the pickups several years ago (replacing the bridge pickup) I've pretty much left it to rot in the garage for years.

So I brought it in from the cold, dust it off a little and went at it with a screwdriver to see what I had.

At this point I found that the screw/bolt on the bridge tone controls was threaded and I couldn't remove it. Also had trouble removing the jack input plate too.

But with a bit of brute force, a screwdriver, hammer and a hacksaw I did manage to get in.

Removed jack

The guilty culprit (tone control)

After that (well actually between removing the jack and going at the tone knob with a hacksaw) I tried it out and was pleasantly surprised.

The neck does need adjusting (not that much of a job really after my foray into truss rod adjustment with the Scrapocaster) but all the electrics (with the exception of the bridge tone) work perfectly.

Also the neck isn't too bad to play and is much nicer than the Squier neck. I'm thinking that new this might have actually been worth more than the Squier as it is much nicer to play.

The bridge humbucker which I fitted a few years ago is awesome (well in comparison to the neck humbucker at least!) and is a complete contrast to the neck one which now sounds pretty cheap so it looks like I'm going to rip that out and replace it.

Other adjustments I fancy making at this point are:

• A Bigsby bridge if possible
• Addition of a scratchplate (screw holes are there so one must've existed at some point)
• All new tone and volume knobs (this is also kind of necessary as I only have one of each at the mo instead of 2)

I would also need to purchase a new tone pot and jack plate.

This is definitely a custom project and although in reality it may just be a simple restore and add a new neck humbucker it will end up being one of my own personal guitars as the sound it produces already is amazing and unlike anything I actually own (including the humbuckers on the Jim Reed PRS copy).

Also as Grant isn't an easily recognisable guitar manufacturing brand I can't see there being much re-sale value in it so wouldn't even be worth fixing up and selling never mind fitting a half decent pickup to the neck.

Can't wait to get started on this next project although with there being more cost involved (ie that replacement humbucker) and it not being as simple as a clean up, sand down and replace parts job I can see this being more of a longer project maybe taking several weeks or even months to complete.

Be worth it in the end though. Especially as I get to rescue a long forgotten guitar that I originally purchased for myself. :)