Silvertone Progress and Wiring Question

[Tiga]

I picked up a Silvertone 1412 a couple weeks ago (NGD Post here: viewtopic.php?f=37&t=4696 )

When I brought the 1412 home it was just covered in grime and I could barely get any sound out of it. Just about every screw or nut is stripped, corroded, or both. The tuners were mismatched and essentially non-functional. I spent some time removing the tuners and giving the whole guitar a good cleaning. Decades of grime - yuck.

Finally got the pickguard off by removing (or drilling out) the mismatched and stripped/corroded screws. I gave all the switches and pots a deoxit bath and did a little cleaning of the jack and it seems I'm getting signal out of both pickups - win! I have the pickup screws and the jack nut soaking in some penetrating oil so hopefully I can get those to turn as they are currently stuck. I'm looking to order a replacement vibrato but I noticed some of those screws are stripped - soaking them too. What a project!

I've noticed the two slider switches, although they seem to work, are very loose in their movement. They don't "click" like they do on my Jaguar. Any thoughts on this - is this typical with switches of this age? Can something be adjusted inside or should I think of new switches? The other thing I've noticed with these switches in there is a red wire that is connected to both of them (see pic). Although it doesn't look like this wire is soldered - but sandwiched between the switch plate and the pickguard? Any thoughts what this is for and is it needed?

Thanks!

[deeaa]

Great work, looks very clean!

I'm guessing it's someone's crude ex tempore attempt to connect the grounds of the switches in some gig situation or similar.

I've done some emergency extra grounding in sort of the same vein sometime, when a Tele I had just wouldn't be quiet near a computer...maybe someone noticed joining the switch bodies helped with noise reduction in some situation and pushed a bit of wire there, not having the means or know-how or just plain time to solder it.

Or maybe it's come loose somewhere in the wiring, or dropped in by accident upon assembly and just slid there.

Sent from my M2103K19G using Tapatalk

[Tiga]

I think it's some sort of grounding effort that someone installed. I also noticed there is a white wire soldered to a screw. I'm a complete novice when it comes to wiring but that doesn't seem right either.

[Tiga]

A little more progress. The bridge was a mess as it was so gunked up that most of the saddle adjustment screws would not turn. One of the screws was missing and replaced with a cotter pin (ugh). So I hit everything with some penetrating oil to get everything moving. Then removed the cotter pin and the rest of screws and wiped them down and soaked them and the saddles in vinegar for a day. They cleaned up pretty well. Found a replacement screw and everything is functioning again.

[Tiga]

The frets on this thing were all over the place. Working on getting them somewhat leveled and crowned.

[deeaa]

Looking great! You have to make a sound demo of it when it's done!

Sent from my M2103K19G using Tapatalk

[Tiga]

A few more issues - I noticed the nut was actually a left handed nut and glued in backwards - LOL. Luckily I have a graphtech les paul style nut here that I think will work. Also the zero fret was filed a little low on the high E side. At this point I need to install the tuners and get it strung up to make sure I'm getting adequate clearance on the first fret or else I'll need to install another zero fret.

I haven't taken the replacement tuners out of the box so here's to hoping I bought the right ones. LOL.

[Tiga]

Well installing the tuners went a bit wrong. The bushings that came with the tuners seemed a little big for the existing holes. I decided to take out my reamer and give each hole and ever so little touch. And now they are too big for the bushings. I'm such a dork. Ordered some larger diameter conversion bushings that are supposed to get here today. This will teach me to not rush and measure, measure, measure before you cut.

[deeaa]

It happens, no biggie. Don't know how often I've made mistakes that forced me to take a different route than planned at first.

BTW I never dare to use a reamer with tuner holes...I just roll up some 80 grit sandpaper around a.pencil and use that as a drill bit for a cordless. Amazingly quick even with hard maple and easy to get an exact fit even if the bushings are like 9.7mm instead of even 10 or whatever.

By biggest most annoying mistake of late was when planing a fretboard...it was turning out really nice but then I somehow slipped and took off a wee bit too much at the very start of the board somehow with the sander, you know, pressed it down too hard and made a slight angle there just at the nut

It doesn't affect anything but one thing - can't use a zero fret I normally use, because it'd just be too low as the very end of the board slopes down a bit towards the nut. So now it just has a normal nut.

Sent from my M2103K19G using Tapatalk

[Tiga]

Great suggestion about using the pencil - thanks! I did manage to get the new bushings installed along the new tuners. I installed these Dopro models and I'm impressed with them. The quality seems pretty good for the price (~$22). (I wanted to provide a link to them but the link doesn't work when I paste it in)

Pictures of them installed:

[Tiga]

Tonight I got the replacement tremolo arm installed. Seems to be working well - uses two nylon washers on each side of the arm. Provides nice tension on the arm so it doesn't flop around (which I hate). Hoping it holds up- we'll see. The feel of the tremolo reminds me of a Jag/JM tremolo - although a little softer. Can get it moving with little effort. Great for the surfy stuff!

Have a new nut on order as the one I used has too wide string spacing. Once that's installed I'm going to work on the electronics and see what I can do about the switches. Noticed a little bit of hum - seems to go away when I touch the strings. Need to explore that. Also trying to find some knobs that will look appropriate.

[Tiga]

Got the new nut installed and it's an improvement. Some of the frets don't make it to the end of the fretboard so the narrower string spacing of the nut really helps. Next steps are to dowel each pickguard screw hole and redrill and install new screws. Also need to dismantle the switches and see if they are repairable or replaceable. The nut on the input jack is fused in place. I've been hitting it with penetrating oil but it's still not coming loose. The whole jack is turrning. I'm going to try to heat it up with a soldering iron and see if it breaks free - need to be careful to not damage the pickguard. The jack is currently working to I'm a little tempted to just leave it. I also want to reverse the saddles on the bridge so the intonation screws face toward the neck.

I might also do some shielding. Then it's cleaning and new knobs. I'd love to replace the frets. Whew.

I will say that the fretwork I did really improved the playability of the guitar. I like the chunky neck with the shorter scale and light weight. It's pretty cool actually.

[mozz]

Not to discourage you but it's a lot of work for little return. Made by Teisco. These were only $49 when new as I had bought one. I don't think you'll get much playability/ sound out of it.

[Tiga]

Not to discourage you but it's a lot of work for little return. Made by Teisco. These were only $49 when new as I had bought one. I don't think you'll get much playability/ sound out of it.

No discouragement here - that's $400 in today's money LOL. I fully understand that these were cheap guitars in the day but I find these Teisco and other '60s Japanese models to be extremely cool. Plus working on this and seeing/feeling the playability improve is somewhat therapeutic for me. I think this is going to turn out ok.

[andrewsrea]

Not to discourage you but it's a lot of work for little return. Made by Teisco. These were only $49 when new as I had bought one. I don't think you'll get much playability/ sound out of it.

I remember these being displayed on a 'tree' kiosk. Some were rebranded Danelectro, Harmony Guitars, or Tiesco. Same guitars had a different headstock brand, depending on what department store they were being sold at.

[mozz]

"No discouragement here - that's $400 in today's money LOL. I fully understand that these were cheap guitars in the day but I find these Teisco and other '60s Japanese models to be extremely cool. Plus working on this and seeing/feeling the playability improve is somewhat therapeutic for me. I think this is going to turn out ok."

No doubt. I think i get mad at them because i learned playing one with a baseball bat neck and the strings a 1/4" off the fretboard. After that was a LP copy with a bolt on neck which was a lot better sounding/looking. That was still not the greatest and i consider bolt on neck LP's as all bad too.

My therapy now is building strats and Tele's, but they probably aren't set up the greatest but like you said it's great working on them.

Now if i found a Japanese guitar like a Teisco but the 4 or 5 pickup model, or Mosrite style i would be thrilled.

[Tiga]

I could not repair the old switches and had a heck of a time finding replacements. Most of them out there have screw spacing that is too long. Found a seller in Canada that had the correct ones. Got them in last night. This guitar is begging for some shielding so i think I'm going to tackle that next. I've actually never done that before so looking forward to learning something new.

[Tiga]

I think I've got this pretty much finished for now. Since my last post I got the bridge saddles reversed, painted the knob indicators, installed new pickguard screws, shimmed the neck, a good wipedown, and installed the new knobs.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this guitar especially considering it's condition when I bought for a measly $25. I put 9.5's on it and I think it might be better with 10's, but I'm not complaining. It plays very well. It's very comfortable and I like the neck profile. Looking forward to giving it a refret and installing some shielding down the road but for now I have some other projects that I need to focus on. This has been very fun.

[nomadh]

"No discouragement here - that's $400 in today's money LOL. I fully understand that these were cheap guitars in the day but I find these Teisco and other '60s Japanese models to be extremely cool. Plus working on this and seeing/feeling the playability improve is somewhat therapeutic for me. I think this is going to turn out ok."

No doubt. I think i get mad at them because i learned playing one with a baseball bat neck and the strings a 1/4" off the fretboard. After that was a LP copy with a bolt on neck which was a lot better sounding/looking. That was still not the greatest and i consider bolt on neck LP's as all bad too.

My therapy now is building strats and Tele's, but they probably aren't set up the greatest but like you said it's great working on them.

Now if i found a Japanese guitar like a Teisco but the 4 or 5 pickup model, or Mosrite style i would be thrilled.

I had one like the op early on. I call all these tulip guitars as no matter who makes it they have a tulip shape to me. Mine was quite the little rawk machine. Decent action and playability. I didn't know it at the time but probably kinda p90 from memory. As I added in my teen bigmuff it howled horribly so one of my 1sr guitar mods was potting it in some of my grandma's canning wax. It worked.