Hi All, I recently pulled an X-79 out of storage that I haven't played in a few years (A sure sign that you have too many guitars) and thought I'd tell its story.
About 20 years ago I bought my black Chesterfield headstock X-79 that someone had changed all the electronics on. In searching for a beat up X-79 that may have all its electronics intact, I found a severely abused black holograph sparkle X-79 for $212 on ebay. I removed the pickguard and all electronics to restore the black Chesterfield X-79 back to factory specs and was going to put the shell of the abused guitar back on ebay for $50 or whatever I could get.
I had a can of paint stripper out in the garage and thought I'd strip the paint of the back of the abused black sparkle body. Much to my surprise, the body was one solid piece of wood. I fully expected that a guitar painted with solid opaque paint would be composed of multiple pieces of wood glued together, especially a guitar with as wacky a shape as this model has.
I thought, well, this looks like it may be worth being a rescue project. So, I stripped all paint off the guitar, except the Guild logo on the headstock. Then I sanded down the body and neck to remove gouges and scratches. I also reshaped the headstock where the long horn had been snapped off by the previous owner. I refinished the mahogany neck with pure Tung oil. The poplar wood body was paper white, so I put two coats of cherry stain on it to bring out the grain. As I recall, I think I then refinished the body with Formby's Tung Oil Varnish.
For electronics, I bought a pair of Bill Lawrence L-500 humbuckers (back when Bill was still alive) and found a blank X-79 pickguard someone had ordered from a music store but never picked up. That gave me a blank slate on a configuration, so I decided on a Master Volume, Master Tone and 2 mini-toggles as a coil cut switch for each humbucker.
My son, at the time, was 8 years-old. He took a look at the finished project and said "You should call it Woody". And so it is Woody. Here are some photos taken yesterday.
About 20 years ago I bought my black Chesterfield headstock X-79 that someone had changed all the electronics on. In searching for a beat up X-79 that may have all its electronics intact, I found a severely abused black holograph sparkle X-79 for $212 on ebay. I removed the pickguard and all electronics to restore the black Chesterfield X-79 back to factory specs and was going to put the shell of the abused guitar back on ebay for $50 or whatever I could get.
I had a can of paint stripper out in the garage and thought I'd strip the paint of the back of the abused black sparkle body. Much to my surprise, the body was one solid piece of wood. I fully expected that a guitar painted with solid opaque paint would be composed of multiple pieces of wood glued together, especially a guitar with as wacky a shape as this model has.
I thought, well, this looks like it may be worth being a rescue project. So, I stripped all paint off the guitar, except the Guild logo on the headstock. Then I sanded down the body and neck to remove gouges and scratches. I also reshaped the headstock where the long horn had been snapped off by the previous owner. I refinished the mahogany neck with pure Tung oil. The poplar wood body was paper white, so I put two coats of cherry stain on it to bring out the grain. As I recall, I think I then refinished the body with Formby's Tung Oil Varnish.
For electronics, I bought a pair of Bill Lawrence L-500 humbuckers (back when Bill was still alive) and found a blank X-79 pickguard someone had ordered from a music store but never picked up. That gave me a blank slate on a configuration, so I decided on a Master Volume, Master Tone and 2 mini-toggles as a coil cut switch for each humbucker.
My son, at the time, was 8 years-old. He took a look at the finished project and said "You should call it Woody". And so it is Woody. Here are some photos taken yesterday.
