So I reached out to the seller with the issue saying I could fix it if he reimbursed me for parts, or have someone else fix it with their labor added, or could return the guitar for a refund. He chose a 4th option, which rhymed with "puck off". He went into a conspiracy theory tirade claiming the guitar was perfect and I was trying to rip him off. I told him the ill fitting case probably had something to do with knocking the pickup out of commission and we were lucky the guitar didn't suffer a neck break or headstock damage. Of course, ebay had to intervene and I wanted to return it for a refund. After a few weeks of angst, ebay decided to refund all my money and told me to keep the guitar too. That was unexpected and good. I took it apart enough to determine the pickup was bad, and ordered another. After playing it more (neck pickup only), I did not feel like working on the guitar or playing it after that (bad ju-ju from the fight), so it sat in the back room for over a year waiting. It's not the guitar's fault.
Today I decided to further evaluate its issues and decide what to do with it. I quickly recalled it goes out of tune too easily, and the action is terrible. The tone pot is 0/100 (wired wrong like half the lefties I've ever encountered). The saddle is not big enough to shave down to correct the action, and the relief is reasonable. I decided to try shimming the neck to correct the high action, and that's when it struck me: The top 2 neck screws turn freely, they are stripped!
I have to guess this guitar actually took a head-shot in shipping, and being tight against the top of the case, what gave way was the neck at the joint. I think that's actually lucky, given alternatives. I should be able to fill those screw holes and make it good as new. That will probably fix the action and the tuning issues. So if I can find that replacement piezo pickup I already bought, I can do the neck joint repair, pickup replacement, and tone pot rewiring all at the same time and have a guitar worth buying a new case for.
