This bolt-on guitar was simply unplayable. It still had the three lower flatwound strings on it, and decades and decades of dust and dirt! Luckily, it appeared that nothing was ever damp as there were no major rust or humidity issues! I completely took it apart and cleaned and rebuilt from the start - wanting to obviously keep the patina "as it was" when he played it. One of the string ferrules on the headstock were missing, some were cracked, and just falling apart. I decided to make a full set of replicas of them out of Delrin on the lathe and color them to look old. The tuning machines had to be taken apart, sand blasted, polished, lubricated and put back together, as well. Then you had just general cleaning of the neck and body, electronics cleaned with Deoxit, and the neck cleaned and treated with lemon oil. All of the chrome parts were cleaned and soaked in Balistol.  

I am happy with the results after putting it back together. I have this guitar adjusted playing as well as it can, considering its physical limitations like no trussrod and no routing on the pickup cavities combined with tall pickups! In fact, my father tells me that my Uncle complained that it WAS hard to play. Well… its better, but the Harmony H-59 Rocket III that came after it (which I have) is light years better than this budget Japanese guitar. Two weeks ago I took it back to my cousin. He has a son that plays now, and while it’s sure not much to learn to play on, it is a cool piece of family history that is worth hanging on to!