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I had been looking for a rearloaded RR with a non-recessed Floyd for a long time as I had various schemes for them. And back at the start of 2009, one appeared on ebay with a decent BIN. So, with some help from Ian Lee, I grabbed it. This guitar had certainly seen some living, but that suited me as it was gonna be refinished anyway. Here's the pics of the guitar as it was, and then some pics of the damage (again, courtesy of Ian).
As you can see, it needed some TLC
So Ian shipped the guitar to Dan Lawrence for refurbishment. I had a few different ideas in mind but Dan talked me out of some of the more crazy ones, and in the end I just opted to remove the tone control and move the switch, then retop the guitar to hide the move and the crack by the neck. Dan pointed out a few oddities on the guitar, some of which I already knew of, some I wasn't so sure about. The main strange thing was the Kahler Steeler bridge and the Kahler nut. However, the conclusion seems to be that the guitar originally had a JT6 and towards the end of the JT6 era, they ran out of 'behind the nut' string locks, so the use of Kahler locking nuts was not unusal at all. Other than that, the big 'strange' factor is that the serial number stamp, which is 'oversize' and no-one can make much sense of that. But Dan believed the guitar to be a legit Jackson, just with some odd features. So onward we went....
I had come up with a few ideas in terms of paint, but in the end, I harked back to a guitar which I'd loved when I first saw pics of it from NAMM. The problem was that this was the only pic of it I could find, which didn't give me much to go on:
Fortunately, at times my memory surprises me (and Jani I'm sure
) and I remembered Matt Crooks (formerly of Division) owned the NAMM guitar, so I did some digging around and found his contact details. So I dropped Matt an email, and he provided me with some great pics of the original. Really, I just wanted these pics so I could play around with different flame sizes / designs and also with adding the neck pickup and Floyd. In other words, I wanted to make sure that the graphic wasn't gonna look too busy or lost on a guitar with less 'room' for the design.
When I sent the pics to Dan, he told me that the original design had come from a shirt that Kevin Easton had. Back when Easton was at Jackson, he asked Dan use the design from his shirt for the NAMM guitar, and so there you go. Dan sent me a few pics of the progress:
In the end, Dan installed a new Floyd on the guitar which is something we'd discussed and I'm glad we went for that option. As a worn looking Steeler would have looked stupid next to new paint, and finding a NOS version was probably gonna be a headache.
Anyway, it arrived today and here's the pics of the complete guitar. Review of playability and tone to follow....
Much thanks to Ian Lee, Matt Crooks and Dan Lawrence
As you can see, it needed some TLC
So Ian shipped the guitar to Dan Lawrence for refurbishment. I had a few different ideas in mind but Dan talked me out of some of the more crazy ones, and in the end I just opted to remove the tone control and move the switch, then retop the guitar to hide the move and the crack by the neck. Dan pointed out a few oddities on the guitar, some of which I already knew of, some I wasn't so sure about. The main strange thing was the Kahler Steeler bridge and the Kahler nut. However, the conclusion seems to be that the guitar originally had a JT6 and towards the end of the JT6 era, they ran out of 'behind the nut' string locks, so the use of Kahler locking nuts was not unusal at all. Other than that, the big 'strange' factor is that the serial number stamp, which is 'oversize' and no-one can make much sense of that. But Dan believed the guitar to be a legit Jackson, just with some odd features. So onward we went....
I had come up with a few ideas in terms of paint, but in the end, I harked back to a guitar which I'd loved when I first saw pics of it from NAMM. The problem was that this was the only pic of it I could find, which didn't give me much to go on:
Fortunately, at times my memory surprises me (and Jani I'm sure
) and I remembered Matt Crooks (formerly of Division) owned the NAMM guitar, so I did some digging around and found his contact details. So I dropped Matt an email, and he provided me with some great pics of the original. Really, I just wanted these pics so I could play around with different flame sizes / designs and also with adding the neck pickup and Floyd. In other words, I wanted to make sure that the graphic wasn't gonna look too busy or lost on a guitar with less 'room' for the design.When I sent the pics to Dan, he told me that the original design had come from a shirt that Kevin Easton had. Back when Easton was at Jackson, he asked Dan use the design from his shirt for the NAMM guitar, and so there you go. Dan sent me a few pics of the progress:
In the end, Dan installed a new Floyd on the guitar which is something we'd discussed and I'm glad we went for that option. As a worn looking Steeler would have looked stupid next to new paint, and finding a NOS version was probably gonna be a headache.
Anyway, it arrived today and here's the pics of the complete guitar. Review of playability and tone to follow....
Much thanks to Ian Lee, Matt Crooks and Dan Lawrence
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