Years ago, I was eyeballin these MIC Maestro SG "junior" guitars as a cheap candidate for road / plane travel
I found a cherry one with a huge neck , pawnshoppin , May Day 2020...80 bucks ,couldn't pass it up
When I got it home , I found "the flaw" .The pickup placement is way too far north of the bridge . You aint gonna get no Angus Young outa that !!! I scavenged the big neck and put it on a LP body ....they kinda got that one right . I put the SG body into mothballs , until I figured out how I wanted to remedy the flaw
Still, I kept thinkin about it . I bought another one off Goodwill .This time in a cool sunburst finish.This one sat in the barn for about a year
As you can see here, it's almost like a middle pickup ....no good
Finally ,the gears started smokin in my head. I measured the gap between the bridge nd the p90 on my '63 Junior and began to lay it out like that . I don't like to put too much effeort into a cheap guitar ,so cutting a new pickguard was out .
But what to do about the gaping hole in the pickguard ,where the humbucker was originally placed ??
I thought about how Gibson would put a "Custom Made" badge over stud holes when they'd install a Bigsby or somethin ......
So that's the way I'd go .I found some old MIJ acoustic pickguard in my hoarded sh*t and cut out a piece .It's got flowers on it ,so it has that Gibson Mary Ford vibe , or a Bushwhacker shirt . I ended up cutting a piece for a matching truss rod cover just to give it a "theme"
I ditched that^ bridge
I found some Epiphone nickel plated wraparound bridges , compensated for an UNWOUND G , and put one of those on there .Drastic improvement in tone ,from the original piece of "Chineseum" . The Epi bridges are the same ones used on the Coronet , a guitar that requires very little tweaking outa the box .
Here it is ,posing next to my 63 Junior . This stuff is still fun after near 50 years
I found a cherry one with a huge neck , pawnshoppin , May Day 2020...80 bucks ,couldn't pass it up
When I got it home , I found "the flaw" .The pickup placement is way too far north of the bridge . You aint gonna get no Angus Young outa that !!! I scavenged the big neck and put it on a LP body ....they kinda got that one right . I put the SG body into mothballs , until I figured out how I wanted to remedy the flaw
Still, I kept thinkin about it . I bought another one off Goodwill .This time in a cool sunburst finish.This one sat in the barn for about a year
As you can see here, it's almost like a middle pickup ....no good
Finally ,the gears started smokin in my head. I measured the gap between the bridge nd the p90 on my '63 Junior and began to lay it out like that . I don't like to put too much effeort into a cheap guitar ,so cutting a new pickguard was out .
But what to do about the gaping hole in the pickguard ,where the humbucker was originally placed ??
I thought about how Gibson would put a "Custom Made" badge over stud holes when they'd install a Bigsby or somethin ......
So that's the way I'd go .I found some old MIJ acoustic pickguard in my hoarded sh*t and cut out a piece .It's got flowers on it ,so it has that Gibson Mary Ford vibe , or a Bushwhacker shirt . I ended up cutting a piece for a matching truss rod cover just to give it a "theme"
I ditched that^ bridge
I found some Epiphone nickel plated wraparound bridges , compensated for an UNWOUND G , and put one of those on there .Drastic improvement in tone ,from the original piece of "Chineseum" . The Epi bridges are the same ones used on the Coronet , a guitar that requires very little tweaking outa the box .
Here it is ,posing next to my 63 Junior . This stuff is still fun after near 50 years
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