... and judging by the photo above, this is certainly a "manly" guitar. A player found this Japanese 1960's Teisco May Queen in the trash (!) and brought it by to get it playing. Surprisingly it had no major issues (other than the unfortunate phallic control cavity rout).
First thing I did was to glue down the loose frets. Just about every fret end on the neck was sprung and needed to be locked back down. Not an ideal solution, but will definitely improve the playability and save the player some cash on a total refret for a little while.
New components were wired up with the original pick guard and large single coil pickups. The guard had shrunk over the years and the screw holes did not line up anymore. I plugged and relocated the mounting holes in the body in order to reinstall it. Initially the owner was considering making a new guard, but the original adds tons of style points to this already unique hollowbody.
(If for nothing other than common decency, something has to cover up this control cavity - somebody put some pants on that guy!)
The only piece missing from the guitar was the vibrato arm and spring, but it's new owner had included reproductions when he dropped it off. I just had to clean up the arm's mounting threads in the original vibrato block to get the new screw to fit. This vibrato is surprisingly stable and has a great feel to it.
Super, super fun guitar but the string spacing is really tight on this small neck (for my hands). The video above is a quick impromptu loop. Bonus points If you make it to the end of the video (ol' Lady Pinkham drops by - she haunts this old building).
So what stories do you have about a cool guitar that found it's way into your life? Please feel free to share in the comments below. As the saying goes, one man's trash ...