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I also clean the finish around all the cavities while I have unobstructed access, but I’ll discuss that in more detail later. This is an opportunity to read the date codes on the potentiometers and I discover they were all made by CTS in the 46th week of 1964. I decide to test the harness while it’s out of the body and to my relief, I discover that the bridge tone control is functioning again and everything appears to be in perfect working order. The pots feel stiff, so they all get a generous squirt of DeoxIT D5 cleaner, which loosens them up considerably. A colossal dust ball has wrapped itself around the harness and after dislodging it, I set about brushing all the remaining dust off the pots and switch. With a little encouragement, the harness drops into the body and I’m able to pull everything out of the bridge-pickup cavity. I remove both pickup covers and pull the pickups out of their holes and place them to one side. I also remove the jack-socket nut and use a specialised tool to release the knurled nut from the switch. Since the harness is coming out, it’s not necessary in this case and I remove all the nuts and pointer washers from the potentiometers. Lifting off the tailpiece reveals the ground wire and I suggest placing masking tape over the wire if you want to prevent it from being pulled inside the body.
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I begin by removing the strings, tailpiece, bridge and thumbwheels. It’s all too easy to lose vital parts when dismantling a guitar, so I always have an old tub in close proximity to keep everything in one place.
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There’s a cloudy milkiness that’s particularly apparent on the darker edges of the ’burst, along with the grease marks and dirt build-up that are typical of any well-used guitar. Lacquer checking is fairly moderate but the finish looks dull and grimy. Happily, the finish is largely unfaded and retains its vibrant mid-60s sunburst. I would make a distinction between dirt and patina and, on a practical level, I find that guitars play better and strings last longer when fingerboards are dirt-free and frets are shiny and smooth. The upshot is that the finish is in decent shape, but the lacquer is very dull and dirty and all the nickel parts have oxidised.Īlthough some vintage-guitar owners are reluctant to clean their guitars, I prefer them when they look cared for and feel nice. But that’s the least of it – Paddy stopped playing a long time ago and the guitar has spent most of the last 30 years stored in its case. Sadly, Mike Japp passed away in 2012, so these strings do need changing. When Paddy switched to drums, Mike would often play this ES-330 and according to Paddy, he was the last person to string the guitar up. Paddy’s bandmate in the early days was Mike Japp, who later played with Marmalade and Joe Brown’s band and went on to write songs with Paul Stanley, among others. This ES-330 was recently acquired from its second owner, Paddy Collins, whose dad bought it for him from Snell’s music shop in Swansea, UK back in 1967.