Guitar for nephew for christmas

[maltomario]

Well my brother in law calls me up, says his boy wants an electric guitar for christmas. Budget of $200, and he was considering one of those squier affinity combo kits.

i said ONOOOOOZZZZZZZ!!! Told him to wait and let me go to the store with him.

So friday I went to guitar center. Helped him score a used Jackson DK2M in the inferno red color for $199. It needed a lot of work but I gutted it, polished frets, adjusted truss rod, setup / intonate trem, wrapped teflon tape around the post threads to eliminate 'play' in the pivot studs, glued down 5 inlays that were starting to separate, polished some scratches out of the paint.. installed a trem stop too since he's a noob and will have a bit of a struggle with a floating trem until he gets hang of it.

AND i call up a buddy of mine who is selling his hughes and kettner blue 30-r amp and he is selling it to me for $60 (which will be my gift to him)! And I have a leftover gig bag from my charvel, plus some other goodies like strings and picks, straps, cables, etc.. I even made him a cool laminate badge and attached it to the gig bag with his name on it. LOL

So all in all, my nephew's getting a pretty sweet 'first guitar' setup for about the same price as one of those beginner kits. I don't know why i am even posting this but i'm just really excited to have helped make his christmas be very memorable. Can't wait to see the look on his face come Christmas morning.

here's a pic of it:


Merry Christmas everyone!

[Spiderman]

Wow - nice work, congrats. You're nephew is getting a great "starter kit".

[DrJackson]

that is a Brutal piece of guitar for that money! congrats!

[DonP]

Awesome job! Hopefully he'll be really stoked.

[maltomario]

i asked my sister (his mom) to take a photo of his face when he realizes what he's unwrapping. that is payment enough for all the work I did on this guitar. This project really put me in good spirits!

[MartinBarre]

That's awesome. You did a good thing there, no wonder you're feeling pleased about it!

I hope he sticks to it and makes it worth your effort.

[DrJackson]

post the pics too! hahaha

[RacerX]

What a kewl uncle you are!

[wr3k3d]

Wow, for 200 thats great. I wish that was my first guitar, but the peavey i had wasn't all THAT bad i guess..lmfao

[MetalMedal II]

Very cool of you! Beats my first electric...a cort strat copy with a broken trussrod

You put a lot of effort in cleaning/setting it up too, so hopefully he'll appreciate it and not trade it in for an indonesian-made strat.
I only state this is that the 2 guys (non-relatives) that I gave advice for buying a 1st electric wound up getting Mexi-Fender strats. This isn't a bad thing itself, but I mentioned the better bang for your buck for used gear, and my penchant for model series charvels. But they both had strats in mind. After they had their's for a while, they compared with my Model 2 and both said that guitar played far better than their's.

[maltomario]

my first guitar was a peavey raptor! LOL. I think nearly everyone started on those back in the day.

[Mazz]

Well my brother in law calls me up, says his boy wants an electric guitar for christmas. Budget of $200, and he was considering one of those squier affinity combo kits.

i said ONOOOOOZZZZZZZ!!! Told him to wait and let me go to the store with him.

So friday I went to guitar center. Helped him score a used Jackson DK2M in the inferno red color for $199. It needed a lot of work but I gutted it, polished frets, adjusted truss rod, setup / intonate trem, wrapped teflon tape around the post threads to eliminate 'play' in the pivot studs, glued down 5 inlays that were starting to separate, polished some scratches out of the paint.. installed a trem stop too since he's a noob and will have a bit of a struggle with a floating trem until he gets hang of it.

AND i call up a buddy of mine who is selling his hughes and kettner blue 30-r amp and he is selling it to me for $60 (which will be my gift to him)! And I have a leftover gig bag from my charvel, plus some other goodies like strings and picks, straps, cables, etc.. I even made him a cool laminate badge and attached it to the gig bag with his name on it. LOL

So all in all, my nephew's getting a pretty sweet 'first guitar' setup for about the same price as one of those beginner kits. I don't know why i am even posting this but i'm just really excited to have helped make his christmas be very memorable. Can't wait to see the look on his face come Christmas morning.

here's a pic of it:


Merry Christmas everyone!

I wish you were my uncle...

That is a fucking awesome starter set-up!

all I had was a cheap strat that got wrecked by my brother and his 5 year old amp, but heck, it had 35 watts that was probably the best bit of it...

Now I have a JS30RR and I'm getting a JS30KE for about $100 after xmas so I can then modify my RR and use the KE for the set-up I would of used to had with the RR

[BenoA]

I wish you were my uncle...

That is a fucking awesome starter set-up!

+1!!! Lucky nephew!!!

And Mazz, nothing wrong the JS30KE... I own one and use it regurlaly. I wanted a cheap fixed bridge Kelly and it does the job. I put a ToneZone (I had somewhere) in the bridge and some Planet Waves tuners.

Thanks to Newc, I have an Evo neck PU that I will put in the neck position.

[wr3k3d]

yeah man mine was a raptor aswel

[Alvin_Wilson]

That is really cool. I've been doing the same for my nephew by getting him some pedals and helping him learn the basics.