new/old Hondo II lots of pics

[VintAxe]

Glad to hear you got the stickers removed daan.

Just a note of caution on the steel wool. I've never used steel wool on a guitar finish but I have used it to polish frets. What I've noticed is that the tiny fibers of steel that break off the pad during polishing get attracted to the pick up magnets and can be a pain to remove.

Since the finish on your guitar seems to be poly, you may want to consider using a fine polishing compound designed for rubbing out car finishes. This is essentially what a luthier would do although they would likely use a buffing wheel rather than polish by hand.

[Bassassin]

[deenature]

I love the info on this board. Nice to see an appreciation for Japanese wares. You gotta have an open mind on them.

[daan]

So I had a little free time to do more work on this, apparently I DO have Dimarzios in here.
I still can't get it to make noise, so I started looking at the switch:
it looks like everything on here is "mini" parts, mini pots and this weird switch (unlike the back of the toggles I've seen before) and all the routing is smaller than the "real" Gibson I got a look inside. (Hey for 1/12th the price I'm not complaining!) SInce I didn't get that figured out, I started working on the tuners and the cracked nut. Allparts to the rescue...
When I unscrewed the backs off a couple of the tuners, they just fell apart. No wonder it wouldn't stay in tune, even with 9s on it. Oh yeah, it definitely is solid wood, not plywood:
The top is at least 5 pieces, which is weird because the back is only 2. My daugter was helping, too: she only lost 2 or 3 of the screws in the process... anyway most of the screws for the pickups and back cover were rusty and mismatched so this thing has come apart at least a couple times before, but all the wires looked intact (no soldering/electrical tape) so who knows what's going on in there. I got a truss rod cover that definitely won't fit, a set of "bell-shaped" tuning machines, some nuts (why do they come in sets of 10, anyway?) and a big sheet of pickguard material so I can cut a back plate cover out, so with any luck it will be back in one piece and makin' noise soon!

[cheepaxes]

Cool pictures, cool project. Good luck and keep us in the loop. :)

-Scott

[auriemma]

I know I'm a little late, but my Bradley had the same style 3 way toggle. It kept cutting out. I opened it, cleaned and checked it, and put it back together. I worked for a while and quit again. I replaced it with a Gibson style switch (open, not sealed). Never had a problem since.

[daan]

Man I need more free time... with my 2 kids running around, I'm suprised I ever get to work on this thing... anyway, some pix:


I started plugging some of the dozens of holes in here, while I was doing that my younger daughter grabbed and yanked on the wiring from the cavity, so since she un-hooked half of it, I took all of it the rest of the way out. Good thing I took all the nuts off the pots, huh? Nothing other than the rat-nest of wires was damaged. Unfortunately the wiring diagram I got for it is for "4-wire pickups" and these appear to only have 2, the silver braids and a white wire. Go figure.

the routing in there is really rough, I'm thinking of cleaning it up before lining the cavity with the copper foil. The pickup routs are just as rough, it definitely looks like they didn't take their time in there.
Anyway the weird thing here is it looks like someone put blobs of solder into the screws on the pickups:

Would this explain why it never made any sound? Are these PU's worth trying to fix? Ah the stupid things teenagers do to guitars...

[daan]

I had a few more minutes to work on this (2 full-time jobs+ 2 kids under 2 yrs old= NO free time... ) Anyway I decided to try to get all the nasty funk off the frets and fretboard. The frets closest to the neck pickup actually had greenish corrosion on them...eww. These firs couple pix make it look better than it was, you could barely tell the board wasn't black. Plus it's kinda hard to hold a baby, the guitar and a camera at the same time...



I started out with plain water on Q-tips, that did nothing. Then I tried some "Goo Gone", but that didn't touch it either. Then I went and got some Naptha and a couple of the green Scotch-brite pads, that went right thru the crud on there. (I tested it first to see if it would scratch the board, and it didn't seem to. The frets are nice and shiny now, too.) Even the cracked binding looks better, I should do all of it so it matches.



I also dragged the Dimarzios over to my Dad's and we tested them with his multi-tester, they both registered 0.0K. Nuts. It kind of looks like they had the chrome covers at one point, maybe someone broke the windings when they took the covers off. The screws holding the pup rings to the guitar were stripped and bent, so they had come off in the past. Back to the drawing board... I do have 4 cheap pots, a switch and an input jack in my parts box, so if I can come up with some affordable (cheap, remember the kids I mentioned earlier?) pickups, I can put this all back together someday.

[cheepaxes]

I would think, if the pups had a broken wire, that it would appear as an open circuit with infinite resistance, not zero, no? The first time measured the resistance of pickups I had the range set wrong and got nothing. Later I went back to the same pups with meter set correctly and found they were ok. I think setting the meter for 20 ohms is best. Any experts care to confirm or correct me?

Scott

[daan]

I'm sure we tested the PU's wrong. The guys at the music store by me offered me $ for them though... we'll see. Anyway I had some more free time so I started taking the finish off (seriously, it looks like someone took a weed whacker to this thing, it has to come off. I will be trying to duplicate the color once I'm done though. The plan is to get the back & sides all nice and level (it looks like this was machine sanded at the factory and they gobbed on the clear to make it flat, lots of waves and low spots for me) I'll leave the top alone and take it to a freind who works at the paint store to see if she can match the stain color before I strip that off.
Oh yeah, the back is definitely 2 pieces, but the top is at least 5, go figure. Nice grain pattern, I can see the same rings in the pickup routes.
Some of the top grain, it looks made of about 2" wide pieces
starting to sand it, the back of the headstock has a veneer on it, even though the neck is one piece


Strange neck joint, lots of shim pieces in there. It's pretty solid though. THey also painted over some of the binding instead of letting all of it show.

[Spud1950]

[cheepaxes]

[Spud1950]

Whoops! Right,20K ohm,not 20.

[daan]

Oh yeah, I was just at the store today, the P/U's metered at 10.1 and 8.5. I got $40 for the pair of them, and put a pair of zebra Dimarzios on hold. I remember a friend getting some waaaay back when and liking the sound and look of them, so if the fake P-90s don't work out, we'll go full 70's on here. Oh yeah, I got the sides and neck all cleaned up now, time to go stain shopping. I don't suppose anyone who posted their similar guitars at the start of this thread are still around? Id' like to see their guitars again.

[PISCES19]

HELLO DAAN, I HAVE A HONDO II GUITAR SIMILAR TO YOURS, I BOUGHT IT NEW AROUND 1975ish, I THINK I PAID AROUND £85 FOR IT ,CAN'T REMEMBER EXACTLY. I WENT INTO THE MUSIC SHOP TO BUY A LES PAUL COPY (MAPLE WITH MAPLE FRETBOARD & BLACK INLAYS, LOOKED GOOD). THE SALESMAN SHOWED ME THE LES PAUL COPY, SAID IT WAS OK BUT HE HAD ANOTHER WHICH WAS SIMILARLY PRICED BUT IN HIS OPINION FAR SUPERIOR. IT WAS THE HONDO II. HE TOLD ME ALL THE SPIEL, DIMARZIO PICKUPS ETC. ETC. THEN HE GAVE ME A DEMONSTRATION, FIRSTLY THE LES PAUL COPY, IT SOUNDED OK BUT A BIT THIN SOUNDING, THEN HE DEMONSTRATED THE HONDO II IT SOUNDED AWESOME, CLEAN & CLEAR, FAT & DIRTY. I'D MADE MY MIND UP THE HONDO IT WAS. OVER THE YEARS I'VE TRIED OTHER GUITARS, I TRIED A STRAT OBVIOUSLY A GOOD GUITAR BUT I FOUND IT A BIT BIG AND AWKWARD & I OWNED A GIBSON LES PAUL STUDIO (EBONY WITH GOLD HARDWARE)GREAT GUITAR, FELT MORE COMPACT AND SLEEKER TO PLAY THAN THE STRAT.WHILST I HAD THE GIBSON I LET MY NEPHEW USE THE HONDO TO LEARN TO PLAY GUITAR. UNFORTUNATELY IT SUFFERED A BIT IN HIS HANDS, A FEW SCRATCHES & DINGS & HE MANAGED TO LOSE THE TOGGLE SWITCH TIP, AND THE VOLUME/TONE SWITCHES BECAME LOOSE MEANING THEY ROTATED INSIDE THE BODY BREAKING SOME OF THE SOLDER JOINTS STILL NOTHING THAT CAN'T BE FIXED. I HAVE NOW SOLD THE GIBSON AND GOT THE HONDO BACK FROM MY NEPHEW, HE 'S NOW BOUGHT A STRAT COPY. THE HONDO IS STILL IN PRETTY GOOD CONDITION FOR A 35 YEAR OLD GUITAR AND WHILST CONSIDERED A BUDGET GUITAR STILL SOUNDS AWESOME AND TO ME FEELS EVEN MORE COMFORTABLE THAN THE GIBSON AND EVEN SLEEKER TO PLAY (ONCE SET UP PROPERLY)PHOTOS HERE http://s800.photobucket.com/albums/yy287/PISCES190256/