TequilaMockingbird said:
Rather than spend alot of time trying to make it pretty, I went ahead and strung it up to check things out.
So far so good on the repair (strung up for 2 days now). I did discover a couple of the frets near the fretboard end (19, 20) were a tad high. I filed them down slightly which helped but did not quite get there. I should polish them as well. I'll try again after a few days when I put on a heavier set of strings.
The pickups kind of suck. Surprisingly the pots seem okay. Nice taper on the volume controls and sounds like they either have treble bleeds on them, or it's wired 50s style. I guess I should crack it open and look.
I hate the trapeze tailpiece. If I keep it I'll have a stop tailpiece installed.
The neck is obese like a 50s style Les Paul should be. The tuners are just okay.
Overall it's workable. When/if I get the replacement (and it's not broken) I may dump this one at a pawn shop, or turn it into a clock. We'll see.
Just saw this - but a glue and clamp up, even without splines should be ok here. It's a fairly clean break with the neck wood, and wood glue is known to be stronger than the wood itself. When I first saw the pics, I knew you could get a functional guitar out of it yourself, but you would end up with cosmetic issues with that black headstock.
Since the neck is either stained or dyed, you might want to think of something like
this.
I don't have a huge number of Chinese guitars, but it's really weird how the pickups always suck, but so much of the rest is ok. I actually love good quality, but budget Chinese pickups
like these. I'm always a fan of Wilkinson pickups but haven't ever tried their humbuckers.
I like to have cheap guitars around like this for alternate tunings or weird add on like this
kill switch. Learn how to put a hole in a guitar with something you almost have to throw away.