Saturday, March 28, 2015

Now what?

This past week, the Mrs. S and I participated in an estate auction. There was a nice authentic German doll that she wanted, and there was an Ibanez mandolin in the mix as well. The lot next to the mandolin was an unloved-looking Sears Silvertone acoustic guitar. When I went and looked at everything, the doll looked okay, the guitar looked kind of junk, and the mandolin looked great. We decided to see where the values went before we bid.

That doesn't look that bad for $46, does it?
Without telling you the story of the decidedly unexciting auction, we won the mandolin, the doll, and the guitar, all for what seemed good prices. The doll is porcelain and mohair but has a crack on its face. Still, it is cute and the cotton dress is in good shape. It is secure on a metal stand. Not bad for $6. Likewise the mandolin was bought for nearly $400 new, came in a case, and was virtually new, as the previous owner didn't know how to play it. (Neither do I, but so what?) The Silvertone guitar was beat, so I decided to take it apart to clean it up.

The color is gone, and, yuck!
Well, the more I looked at it, the more I realized, this guitar is just not worth saving. Even after washing with warm water and Dawn and scrubbing everything with a toothbrush (I know), the color is all faded, the wood is cracked and the paint job is a mess. It could be cleaned up and made spiffy again, but after the square grand piano turned into a bar project, I’m thinking I’m going to jump right to the artistic project and make the guitar playable, but make it something special, not an old Silvertone.

Parts are all there, so I can make it playable again.
I've already started looking for ideas. Suffice to say, it involves a lot of spray paint, glitter, and jazz imagery. I even have some mother of pearl from the piano that I can put into the fret board.

Even after a scrub down with dish liquid and warm water (it's my guitar, so too bad if you don't like my cleaning methods), it doesn't look all that ... jazzy.


Yeah. I've got myself into something. Stay tuned. (Heh-heh. Stay “tuned”. I think I've got my new catch phrase.)

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