Guitar Blog

Yamaha Pacifica 112 Guitar Project, Part 2

Today I spent quite a while sorting out the bad sanding job that someone had done when they stripped the body of the guitar. I don't think they even took the neckplate or perhaps even the scratchplate off the guitar as there was evidence of the guitar's finish underneath both of these!

I did the donkey work with an electric orbital sander and then switched to sanding by hand - you always get the smoothest finish that way. There was also some of the original finish lurking inside the cutaways so I applied Nitro Mors to these areas to dissolve it away, before cleaning it up and re-sanding.

I also checked my box of guitar spares to make sure I have everything I need for re-assembly. I have a loaded Pacifica scratchplate, a tremolo bridge (although with no arm and no springs), and various knobs. Pieces I still need to find (or rather, buy) in that case are tremolo springs, tremolo arm, jack socket and plate for side-mounting, pickup selector cap... and that's it!

Here's what the guitar might look like when I re-assemble it:

Bear in mind that it won't be that colour though. I've not decided on the colour yet, other than it'll be a natural finish, but my inclination is to go for a darker stain, perhaps even mahogany-ish.

Here's a couple of options that I'm considering:

Chrome dome knobs for the volume and tone, rather than the ordinary Strat type knobs, and replacement black pickup covers for the single coils (they look a bit weird here in the photo because I simply placed them on top of the existing pickups for the picture). I'm not decided yet which would look the best (the existing white pickup covers are very dirty), I think we'll have to try it and see when I put the guitar together again.