Was planning to list it for sale somewhere, but no idea what to price it at. Any idea? Is it even worth someone's time fixing it up?
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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Without getting too deep into it...
It has notable corrosion, especially around the pickups and the strings.
Would you want to be electrocuted by testing a guitar with corroded pickups?
Other obvious things, like lubricating sticky tuner knobs, needs new strings, needs cleanup, needs the truss rod adjusted for a warped neck, etc...
It's not all as easy as you'd think. And looking at the corrosion on the pickups, I wouldn't wanna plug that thing in to test immediately, I'm not in any hurry to get electrocuted.
Sure it might come out pretty damn nice, but it needs some professional work before anyone with experience would even dare test the sound.
Edit: I love how I'm getting downvoted, when I have experience refurbishing both acoustic and electric guitars. Rust on the pickups? That's sat up so long you don't just randomly plug it up, unless you like short circuits...
I'm not an electrician, but I really doubt the kind of electricity coming through a cable is enough do anything more than a slight ouchy. There are amps powered by 9 volt batteries.
Please educate yourself before insisting what is or is not potentially unsafe...
Why is My Guitar or Microphone Shocking Me?
Please do not take unknown electrical issues for granted.
It’s oxidation on the pickups. This will not short anything. This person has no clue what they are talking about.
A guitar pickup, wires and magnets, don’t suddenly start shocking people and shorting amps with “rust” or oxidation.
Have you ever worked on antique electronics? I'm assuming not, but I have. The pickup coils are likely just as corroded and probably shorted from the back side with that much corrosion, which I assume from experience is from many years of age in a humid closet or basement.
I know what I'm talking about, that guitar shouldn't be plugged up until an experienced tech opens it up and at least does a basic inspection and makes sure the pickup coils aren't shorted out with a multimeter, at least to start with.
You can literally short the input to the amp and be fine. In fact, cheap cables do this all the time. There would have to be a major issue with the amps isolation between the preamp and power amp to have an issue. This is possible, but a rusty pickup is not really the issue. You're simply ill-informed. It happens to the best of us.
Have you ever studied Samuel Goldwasser's PhotoFacts?
I have. I've actually studied it so many times that I know the typical failure mode of electronic components in almost any situation.
Amplifiers are powered by transistors (or tubes back in the day, not much difference). When they happen to be stressed to the point of failure, they practically always fail as a short circuit.
Short circuits aren't fun, that's why they invented the Variac to properly test suspicious devices.
Edit: I hate to repeat myself, but would you plug in a rusted toaster? Do you not value your life, or would you rather test the components and clean things up first?
If you don't understand the difference between a toaster and the front end of an amplifier, then you've outed yourself.
Also, no. Nobody tests their toaster when they plug it in.
No, everyone tests their toasters when they plug them in. Only the dead don't report results, so the results are biased towards the living.
Please tell me WTF is your problem with maintaining a guitar?
Lol. If someone plugged in a shorted toaster, it would trip a breaker at worst. But survivorship bias is an awesome mental gymnastic. 8/10.
And nobody is arguing against maintaining a guitar. Just that you are being dumb. And maybe are a troll.
You mean you have no respect for electrical safety? None whatsoever? So you'd be okay if someone threw a live toaster in your bathtub?... 🤔
Bruh, get real, you have no respect for electrical safety. Go screw an outlet if you're so confident..
Gee, the bathtub isn't the same as plugging it into the wall. Is it?
No, it's not. And you know it's not. But you probably don't know why it's not.
Or you are a troll.
Or perhaps there are already videos about such risks?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xS_5K5YEYv8
I've built multiple amplifiers from scratch, both tube and transistor based. But go off.
Good for you, awesome! Have you stress tested your circuits with corrosion to see what may or may not fail first?
http://repairfaq.org/
Nobody asked you what you could build from fresh scratch, I'm asking you what you'd do with electronics that have 15+ years of salt water vapor damage...?
Yes, I have experience with old electronics as well, and guitars, repair work, the whole lot. And I have an bs in EE.
But none of that matters because what is really happening here is that you are wrong, and instead of learning and moving on with a better understanding, you are tripling down and pulling the wool over your own eyes.
And you and all of your friends are dismissing safety. Fuck all that, I respect safety and always have. You've got mains going into the amp, the cable going into the guitar, and metal wires on the fingers. Oh, don't forget about the metal whammy bar...
Although the risk of electrocution is minimal, it still exists. My folks had a rule to not fuck around with sketchy equipment. What the fuck is your deal with cleaning and maintaining a goddamn guitar?
Lol. Nobody is saying to not maintain a guitar, wtf. What a wild stretch. You must be defensive.
They are just saying that you are wrong that a rusty/shorted pickup is some serious safety risk. Because it is not, and you are acting self-righteous, ill-informed, and paranoid.
Yeah, and the guitar only has 5 of 6 strings, and some nitwit asked how it sounds...
Get real, lemme ask you how a 6 cylinder engine would sound with a dead cylinder. Lemme ask you how a motorcycle would drive with a broken spoke or two...
Nothing that relies on timing is gonna sound right without proper maintenance. I mean goddamn, at least WD-40 the existing strings and tune them first, how TF anyone gonna judge the sound of a corroded guitar without a basic checkup and cleanup?
What the fuck are you talking about. Did you forget your point?
Hahahahaha this isn’t an antique guitar. Those aren’t even active pickups.
You are clueless about guitar electronics and how magnetic pickups work and are made.
I'm using the word antique a bit loosely here, as I don't know what year it was made. But obvious context clues tell me that the guitar definitely has some years behind it. There's the obvious corrosion, plus OP said they inherited it, meaning almost certainly the original owner has passed away.
I actually spent about 6 years as a guitar technician for a band that amongst other equipment rocked a Fender Stratocaster and dual 1000W Peavey stacks.
They'd never allow such a corroded guitar to hook up to their equipment willy-nilly without a full professional teardown, inspection, cleanup, any necessary parts and repairs, new strings, set the intonations, etc.
Maybe just maybe I've got a more professional attitude about it, from experience.
Hell, at bare minimum at least clean the old strings and spray some WD-40 into the tuner knobs and tune the thing up, can't tell much of anything about how an old guitar is supposed to sound if you don't at least try tuning it.
But I still wouldn't go plugging it into an amplifier without checking the internals first, for all I know it could end up shorting out and blowing a perfectly good amplifier.