GRM Guitar Rehab Round 2: Jackson PS4 Performer and Epiphone Les Paul Special II

Well, I'm back at it again.

My nephew has been playing for two years now, and he has gotten very good at it, so I felt it was time to give him an upgrade.

For the past few weeks, I've set out to find another cheap guitar that needed some work that's a step up from his Squier HSS Affinity Strat. He has been playing a lot of shredder-style stuff, and his favorite guitar players are Eddie Van Halen, George Lynch, Paul Gilbert, and other virtuoso types, and most of those guys play "Super Strats" of some sort. He has played my Jackson PS4 and loved the wide, flat neck, so I set out to find something similar.

I was perusing one of the local Facebook "yard sale" groups I belong to, and a lady had three guitars for sale: a crappy toy acoustic from the 70's, a Epiphone Les Paul Special II that had no strings on it and missing the input, and a nearly complete Jackson PS4 Performer. Weird! She wanted $80 for each one or $200 for all three. I messaged her, told her I was interested, and asked her to bring the Jackson and the Epi with her. She reiterated that she was "firm" on the prices. So, I brought $80 and expected to leave with the Jackson.

We met, and the Jackson had some small issues. One of the three locking nut lockdowns was missing, there was a small hook screwed into the back of the headstock, the knobs were not original and mismatched, strings were missing, and it badly needed a cleaning and a setup. The good news is that all the JT-500 Floyd Rose Licensed tremolo bits were intact, and all the pickups/pots worked fine (I brought a headphone amp to test it). So, I told her about what it needed and why I was buying it, and I talked her down from her "firm" $80 to $60. It gets better: the Les Paul was a mess, but aside from the input, it was intact and in decent shape. I offered her $15 and she took it! So yeah, 2 decent guitars for $75? I'll take that all day long.

Not the actual guitars, but this is what they look like:

The plan is to fix up the Jackson for my nephew, and then fix up the Epi for myself. I already have a Epi Les Paul Standard, but I have been looking for something like this to really go nuts with and modify, and people seem to like them. I'll get some actual pics up later on.

The Jackson obviously comes first. #1 on the agenda is to try and source that lockdown for the locking nut without having to pay for all three of them (they are $16 for all three, which is stupid for what they are), clean it up, get some strings on it, and make it nice and playable. I start tonight.

Stay tuned folks!

Sweet! Awesome score!!!

I picked up a decent drum kit 2-weeks ago off our local FB musicians trader group. It's a 5-piece with some decent cymbals & stands, a nice piccolo snare, and separate bags for the cymbals, snare & hardware for $300. I don't play drums, but took a long a friend who does to verify quality/condition.

I just stuck them in the corner, figure they'lol be good to have around for impromptu jams, etc.

In reply to petegossett:

I'm actually rehabbing a drum kit to sell on my spare time too! I haven't posted a thread on that yet because it's not quite done. I wanted to have it complete for Christmas but I've just been too busy, and this guitar skipped it in line.

Yours sounds like a decent score, especially if it came with cymbals and hardware.

SilverFleet wrote: He has been playing a lot of shredder-style stuff, and his favorite guitar players are Eddie Van Halen, George Lynch, Paul Gilbert, and other virtuoso types,

I feel like this thread could easily have been from 1986.

Seriously though how old is your nephew? I'm picturing you doing this for like a 14 years old kid and I didn't know anybody under 35 that likes or even heard of Dokken or Mr Big MUCH less have those guitarists as his favorites. That's interesting.

If your nephew IS over 35 then thats cool too I suppose.

In reply to crankwalk:

I will be 33 next month, and he is going to be 17. His mom is 7 years older than me and she got me into Metal (mostly the Classic and Hair kind) at a VERY young age, and I returned the favor. He has grown up with all the classics. He used to sing Bark at the Moon by Ozzy at the dinner table in his high chair! I remember him telling me a few years ago that no one in his school knew who Iron Maiden was, and how he had to re-introduce them to the "Metal" kids. That is sad.

He is starting to get into the teenage rebellion phase, and that means he is listening to MallCore/CrabCore, which I just can't tolerate. I hope he will grow out of it. At least he's not doing drugs or being a drunken idiot like most of the other teens in his town.

That's a helluva score.

I played a similar Epi recently with P90s and really liked it. That's high praise coming from me, because I can count the number of Les Paul-style-guitars I've ever actually liked on one hand. I find them to nearly always be muddy, indistinct boat anchors. But that little P90-equipped Epi was a sweetheart.

So, if it were me, I'd put P90s (or whatever the HB-sized P90s are) in, and then probably wire it up more or less Tele style, only with a coil tap for series/parallel switching.

But that's me. It looks like a fine platform for going nuts in all sorts of directions.

I don't know if I ever played anything with P90's in it. I do like humbuckers, and I was thinking of getting something cheap like these:

http://www.guitarfetish.com/Crunchy-Pat-High-Output-Humbucker-Zebra_c_49.html

I may add a flat pickguard to it, and maybe a Trans Am hood bird decal to it, just because. But I need an input before any of that. It is completely missing!

Also, I think I'm going to have to replace the tuners. A few of them are loose inside, and I can't imagine they will stay in tune for long.

If you like humbuckers, especially of the dirty sounding kind, I think you'd like P90s. A proper old LP Junior with dual P90s is still on my wanna have list.

They do make them with P90's as well:

I already have another Les Paul: a 1993 Epiphone Standard Cherry Sunburst, so I was looking to make this more of a high output axe. I will have to try something with P90's out.

Thats cool. Either way on those guitars I think you could double your money selling them down the road if he didn't stick with it.

For some reason I prefer p90s in big semi hollow Gibsons but solid body guitars get that muddy sound (fine for metal).

SWMBO wants me to sell some of my guitars if I keep this Epiphone. I countered by telling her that I would get one of those stage stands that holds 6-8 guitars at a time and I would move all my stuff to where the drums are. That won that argument.

Cool story. Neat project.

PICS!!!!

The Jackson:

Weird knob, and missing switch cap:

There's a crack in the paint:

Someone screwed an eye hook in the headstock for no good reason:

Found a locking nut hold-down, but I had to buy all three. Guess which one was missing

The Epi:

Paint is gross, and tone selector knob was broken so I removed it:

I have never seen a fingerboard more gross than this one!

It's... SPECIAL!

Where's the rest of ya???

That Jackson is sweet!!!

petegossett wrote: That Jackson is sweet!!!

Honestly, it's a lot nicer than my Jackson. Mine has some mismatched parts on the tremolo, an annoying dent in the neck, it needs a new set of tuners, and the pickups are all loose and won't tighten up. This one just needs a cleaning and a re-string/quick setup.

I'm really excited to dive into these two. I'm extra excited to dive into the Epi and build it the way I want to.

Those are a great find for a great deal! Can't wait to see them when they're done. I'm looking for an old, used parlor-sized acoustic to turn into an acoustic/electric so that I don't have to tote my expensive Guild around when I go camping and so I can plug in when I play the open mic nights.

SilverFleet wrote: Where's the rest of ya???

You can get a 1/4 mono jack from Radio Shack for about a buck. For the plate, StewMac has them for $8, but you can honestly make one from pretty much anything. Leftover sheet metal, a piece of plastic.. whatever. The rest is just drilling and screwing.

Tim Baxter wrote:

SilverFleet wrote: Where's the rest of ya???

You can get a 1/4 mono jack from Radio Shack for about a buck. For the plate, StewMac has them for $8, but you can honestly make one from pretty much anything. Leftover sheet metal, a piece of plastic.. whatever. The rest is just drilling and screwing.

Guitar Fetish has them with the trim plate for $6, but I've never ordered from them before. People seem to like their stuff. I was thinking of ordering tuners from them too.

GuitarFetish is awesome. Have no worries about purchasing anything from them. They ship quickly.

Well except for their Xtrem Vibrato. That thing is just as bad as the Tiesco Del Ray version they copied.

In reply to SilverFleet:

eye hook in headstock = cigarette holder

AngryCorvair wrote: In reply to SilverFleet: eye hook in headstock = cigarette holder

Could have been, although it was the smallest hook I 've seen. It's like it was just there to spite me.

I think you could wood putty that little hook hole down to near-invisible.

In reply to Tim Baxter:

Definitely. If I have some kicking around, that's what I'll probably do.

If all goes well, I will be starting the disassembly and cleaning of the Jackson tonight.

Finished up the Jackson today. It was kinda gross, but I think it cleaned up nice. Plays better than mine!!!

I had to take it the bridge out, and I mean completely out. It needed a cleaning, and the previous owner messed up the spring tension bad, so I had to just start over.

I then set out to clean it really well and de-crud it. My arsenal:

Soap and dish detergent with a nylon brush:

Steel wool:

GHS Fast Fret for the fingerboard:

And some Meguiar's Gold Class paste wax:

Not pictured: Sprayaway glass cleaner, Eagle One Never-Dull wadding polish (for polishing the frets), and Mother's Back to Black.

Getting the bridge to sit back where it's supposed to is a giant PITA on a Floyd Rose-type tremolo. I watched about 15 Youtube videos until I found some dude in Germany that suggested to use a spoon to shove under the bridge while you are setting tension on the strings. That is a great little trick, and it worked great!

And the finished product:

Twinsies!!!! Mine is on the left, my nephews is on the right.

All in all, I am very happy with the results. It sounds great, plays great, and looks great. Total invested in the Jackson:

-Guitar, used: $60

-Strings: D'Addario 10-46's: $3.49 at Guitar Center

-Locking Nut Screws/Plates, Guitar Center: $15.99

-Pickup Selector Cap, Local Music Store: $1.75

TOTAL: $81.23

That is an absolutely ridiculous deal.

I also found a tremolo screw for my Jackson while at a local music store this afternoon to replace some random screw someone put in mine years ago. Now I have a fully functioning tremolo! I couldn't bend it in one direction, as the extra long screw was hitting the body. Now I can bend both ways, and that makes me happy.

Stay tuned for more, because I have parts for that Epiphone Les Paul Special II on order.