A Speedy Refinish of a Mahogany Ibanez RG321

I just bought an Ibanez RG321 MH (mahogany) on eBay. I have wanted to try one for quite a while and the price was low enough for an impulse buy. When I got it, it had a couple more scratches than were visible in the listing photos (a pox upon thee, seller!). One of the scratches was kind of deep, so the exposed wood was in high contrast to the guitar's dark stain.

Fig. 1. One of the eBay listing photos for the Ibanez RG321 MH.
You can see that the finish is not perfect, but the worst gouge
does not show up in this photo.

 I started lightly sanding it to remove the scratch. One thing led to another, and in only a couple of minutes, it looked like Fig. 2 below. If you have ever tried to sand a poly-coated guitar, you know that this amount of sanding can easily take an afternoon. The stain came off quite easily, so I kept sanding. While I was at it, I rounded the lower horn a little. The original was too pointy for my liking. It's not that noticeable, but woodworking is not my thing, and I didn't want to risk altering the guitar too much.

Fig. 2. In contrast to poly-coated guitars, getting down to this much
bare wood only took a couple of minutes on this guitar. Also note
the slightly more rounded tip on the lower horn.

Over the course of a couple of short evening sessions, I removed the neck, hardware and electronics, and sanded the body down to bare wood. The only tricky part was sanding the back without scratching the chrome string ferrules. I used an old razor blade for that (Fig. 3) to scrape around the ferrules. Keeping it flat and working slowly, I was able to remove the finish without scratching the ferrules or gouging the wood.

Fig. 3. Using an old razor blade instead of sandpaper to avoid 
scratching the shiny chrome finish on the string ferrules.

On each of the next three evenings, I put on a thin coat of tung oil, lightly sanding with fine steel wool between coats. I ended up with this:

Fig. 4. The body, after three light coats of tung oil.

 
Unfortunately, the seams between the different pieces of mahogany show up more clearly with the lighter finish. But I like it better than the original dark stain, which made the guitar look too dated. I just reassembled and restrung the guitar—here are the before and after pics:

Fig. 5: The guitar as purchased (left) and after refinishing (right).
Not a huge difference, but the scratches are gone, and I greatly
prefer the lighter finish.

Fixing a Sears Silvertone 1448 Guitar Case Tube Amplifier

Fig. 1a. Sears/Silvertone 1448 Guitar Case/Tube Amplifier

Fig. 1b. The innards—a 3-watt tube amplifier with a 6-inch speaker.

In the summer of 1984, I bought a Sears/Silvertone 1448 guitar and amp-in-a-case at a flea market for $3. Several years later, before I starting buying and selling on eBay, I sold it for $125. It currently goes for $500 and over on eBay these days, depending on the condition. Whenever I regret selling it for only $125, I remind myself that at least I didn’t sell it for $3. I only played through it a few times, and the amp had a sweet bit of overdrive when cranked.

The one you see in these photos did not. I was charged with repairing this one, which had very low output and an input jack that had been pushed through the control panel (Fig. 2). The first thing I did was to secure the input jack, so I could play through it. I had a washer on hand, drilled the center hole big enough for the jack and tried that. It’s not pretty (Fig. 6), but it’s cheap and solid.

Fig. 2. The input had been pushed through the control panel. Also note the missing bolt to the right of the Volume knob.

With the input jack in order, I tested it myself, and the output was very low, with a lot of crackle. The first thing I noticed was bad connections on the speaker wires (Fig. 3), which had been pretty poorly spliced and not even soldered. I found two other bad joints under the panel, which was a mess (Fig. 4). Five bolts were missing, so the transformer and capacitor were just hanging loosely, as was the bracket holding the tubes.

Fig. 3. The speaker wires were just pinched together, like the red one in this photo. (Another missing bolt in the upper right.)

Fig. 4. This is seriously what the guts looked like when I removed the control panel. The missing bolts attach the big capacitor, the transformer and the bracket holding the tubes.

I re-soldered the bad joints and bolted the cap to the back of the panel. The bolt head looked like hell, and I couldn’t justify using it on such an old amp, so I removed that and used rivets instead (Fig. 5). These rivets alone were too small for these holes, so I had to buy some rivet washers. The rivets I used for this were 1/8” (3mm) diameter with a 1/4” grip. The washers were 1/8” (hole diameter). This worked very well. When I was done, everything was securely attached—no wobble—and looked much better on the front of the panel (and on the back of the panel for that matter—see Fig. 6).

Fig. 5. The rivets and rivet washers used to secure the chassis, capacitor and transformer

Fig. 6. These rivets were the perfect size. Unobtrusive, but big enough to secure everything tightly.

Before looking too much further for any other problems, I plugged in and tried it again. It worked and sounded pretty good. There was a little crackle when adjusting the volume, so I sprayed the pot and called it good. Here's the finished panel:

Fig. 6. Good to go. The rivets fit in with the vintage vibe. The input jack less so, but it is sturdy and easily replaced.