Relic Guitar is an itch for guitar lovers. Guitar relicing idea is always contagious. Sometimes we just love to see an old guitar with fully working parts, decent actions and playability which are difficult to find. Or the vintage image on guitar is so sexy, so we feel good when we play it. The senses and vibrations from old wood are just irresistible and I fell for those reasons.
I bought an old-cheap guitar for this. It’s a strat branded “vantage” on its headstock.From what i’ve learned when i got it on my hands, this guitar actually has a decent neck profile, while its body is plywood. Yes, it’s a plywood body guitar. It came so dirty with motor oil smell on it.
I read some articles on the internet, saying this guitar is korean made while it was on matsumoku (japan?) era. the headstock is similar to other matsumoku guitars product.
well, I’m not good at conclusions, here’s the pics when i first got it:
My best guess for this guitar series is Vantage stratocaster vie 10. the body and neck were good, but not for the other parts. so i change them with new ones and did relicing the guitar. basically i just messed up with it 😀 so here the results:
does it look good? well, for me it’s just an amateur job done by me for the sake of curiosity. The pickups were default and I’m so happy with the way this DIY relic guitar sounds.
I’m not interested explaining about how i done this project, but I DO have something to say after doing this.
here’s some thoughts on relic guitar :
- The Art of Aging Guitars is NOT that easy. To make guitar looks old and worn is one thing which is different from destroying things. We need to research on how it’s made; the materials, the finishing types, then we do research on how make them look aged, not destroyed.
- Guitar parts are NOT CHEAP. surely we can find cheap parts anywhere on the net, but the durability and low quality cheap parts are just making thing worse. Arrange your budget for DIY relic guitar project.
- Do this project with proper amount of time. rushing it will make us loosing the learning moments. take some espresso and begin reading relic’d guitar stuff. it will help us to get exact image for the guitar.
- Know our limits. if we just don’t get it about things, ask to a luthier and get educated. This is the real purpose of this project. knowing deeper and understand the closest real value of a guitar and compare it to the way it sounds and played. If we don’t get it, let other people educate us.
well, this relic guitar project is the most intensively fun, entertaining project I’ve done so far. I remembered when i wanted this project result would look like Steve Ray Vaughn relic SRV stratocaster guitar, but I’m glad i didn’t. this relic guitar design looks much lovely with my sweat on it