Was planning to list it for sale somewhere, but no idea what to price it at. Any idea? Is it even worth someone’s time fixing it up?
Was planning to list it for sale somewhere, but no idea what to price it at. Any idea? Is it even worth someone’s time fixing it up?
I’m not an electrician, but I really doubt the kind of electricity coming through a cable is enough do anything more than a slight ouchy. There are amps powered by 9 volt batteries.
If there is high voltage present anywhere in your guitar, it’s a serious issue with your amp. There are high voltages present within a tube amp, but the amp isolates those from the input jack. The guitar itself only generates a tiny audio signal.
Please educate yourself before insisting what is or is not potentially unsafe…
Why is My Guitar or Microphone Shocking Me?
Please do not take unknown electrical issues for granted.
It’s oxidation on the pickups. This will not short anything. This person has no clue what they are talking about.
A guitar pickup, wires and magnets, don’t suddenly start shocking people and shorting amps with “rust” or oxidation.
I’ve been looking at my trust axe sideways after reading that comment. I’ve been playing it and it’s corroded pickups for 20 years and I’m not dead yet. So, must not be that big of a risk.
The rust was from my parents basement growing up. Our house was built into a hill and it’s a high humidity environment. Didn’t take proper care of it until later life. She’s no gem, but she’s mine.
Have you ever worked on antique electronics? I’m assuming not, but I have. The pickup coils are likely just as corroded and probably shorted from the back side with that much corrosion, which I assume from experience is from many years of age in a humid closet or basement.
I know what I’m talking about, that guitar shouldn’t be plugged up until an experienced tech opens it up and at least does a basic inspection and makes sure the pickup coils aren’t shorted out with a multimeter, at least to start with.
Hahahahaha this isn’t an antique guitar. Those aren’t even active pickups.
You are clueless about guitar electronics and how magnetic pickups work and are made.
Yo the dude is able to recognise a warped neck just from that picture, you better listen to him!
Also you definitely can die from corroded pickups, but only if you play High Voltage by AC/DC.
Ah shit, no wonder I just busted out of that TV…
I’m using the word antique a bit loosely here, as I don’t know what year it was made. But obvious context clues tell me that the guitar definitely has some years behind it. There’s the obvious corrosion, plus OP said they inherited it, meaning almost certainly the original owner has passed away.
I actually spent about 6 years as a guitar technician for a band that amongst other equipment rocked a Fender Stratocaster and dual 1000W Peavey stacks.
They’d never allow such a corroded guitar to hook up to their equipment willy-nilly without a full professional teardown, inspection, cleanup, any necessary parts and repairs, new strings, set the intonations, etc.
Maybe just maybe I’ve got a more professional attitude about it, from experience.
Hell, at bare minimum at least clean the old strings and spray some WD-40 into the tuner knobs and tune the thing up, can’t tell much of anything about how an old guitar is supposed to sound if you don’t at least try tuning it.
But I still wouldn’t go plugging it into an amplifier without checking the internals first, for all I know it could end up shorting out and blowing a perfectly good amplifier.
This is an Epiphone Les Paul Pro in alpine white. Judging off the tuners and truss rod cover this guitar is from around the early 2000’s. This doesn’t have “years” behind it.
Back to the oxidation on the gold pickup covers. That is super common with any style of gold pickup covers. Oxidation doesn’t cause any issues with sound from a pickup.
It is okay to be wrong even with experience because you are misinformed about the basics of guitar electronics and how they function.
This guitar won’t short anything out. A guitar with passive or active pickups for that matter will never short out an amplifier or pedals. If there is a short in the guitar’s wiring, no sound will be produced. It won’t cause any damage to whatever device it is plugged into.
I would suggest learning about how guitar pickups and wiring work before helping anyone else out with their rigs.
I’d be much more worried about the potentiometers having internal corrosion and possibly sending a strong crackle into the amplifier, which it isn’t particularly designed for. If the amplifier happens to be turned up extra high, a random crackle like that would be way louder than even plucking the strings, which would put undue stress on the amplifier transistors/tubes.
Not saying this is very likely to happen, but it is possible for such a scenario to cause a shorted amp or a blown speaker.
Aside from that rare possibility, you said the guitar is from the early 2000s. Well it’s 2023, that makes it around 20 years old, so it does have some years on it.
I’m glad you admitted to being wrong about the guitar shocking someone or shorting out an amp.
A crackle isn’t going to short out an amplifier or blow a speaker either. This again speaks to your fundamental lack of understanding around guitar electronics or amplifiers.
The guitar itself can’t be from older than 2006. The sticks on the guitar are both from bands who started around 06/07. This production for this model stopped in 2012. If you think things that are 12-17 years old have “some years on them” maybe avoid school zones.
This is a weird flex.
You can literally short the input to the amp and be fine. In fact, cheap cables do this all the time. There would have to be a major issue with the amps isolation between the preamp and power amp to have an issue. This is possible, but a rusty pickup is not really the issue. You’re simply ill-informed. It happens to the best of us.
Have you ever studied Samuel Goldwasser’s PhotoFacts?
I have. I’ve actually studied it so many times that I know the typical failure mode of electronic components in almost any situation.
Amplifiers are powered by transistors (or tubes back in the day, not much difference). When they happen to be stressed to the point of failure, they practically always fail as a short circuit.
Short circuits aren’t fun, that’s why they invented the Variac to properly test suspicious devices.
Edit: I hate to repeat myself, but would you plug in a rusted toaster? Do you not value your life, or would you rather test the components and clean things up first?
If you don’t understand the difference between a toaster and the front end of an amplifier, then you’ve outed yourself.
Also, no. Nobody tests their toaster when they plug it in.
No, everyone tests their toasters when they plug them in. Only the dead don’t report results, so the results are biased towards the living.
Please tell me WTF is your problem with maintaining a guitar?
Lol. If someone plugged in a shorted toaster, it would trip a breaker at worst. But survivorship bias is an awesome mental gymnastic. 8/10.
And nobody is arguing against maintaining a guitar. Just that you are being dumb. And maybe are a troll.
I’ve built multiple amplifiers from scratch, both tube and transistor based. But go off.
Good for you, awesome! Have you stress tested your circuits with corrosion to see what may or may not fail first?
http://repairfaq.org/
Nobody asked you what you could build from fresh scratch, I’m asking you what you’d do with electronics that have 15+ years of salt water vapor damage…?
Yes, I have experience with old electronics as well, and guitars, repair work, the whole lot. And I have an bs in EE.
But none of that matters because what is really happening here is that you are wrong, and instead of learning and moving on with a better understanding, you are tripling down and pulling the wool over your own eyes.
Holy shit you are going to die on this hill.
You won’t even explain how in the fuck this could actually happen. Give it up already, your amplifier is not sending all the power through your guitar, if it was, it still wouldn’t matter if your coils are corroded or not.
My buddy John Fields, legendary electrical engineer for Peavey Electronics (he has done work on the 5150/6505), has told many people who have spread this myth that they are full of shit. If you are getting shocked while playing, it is not your guitar, it is the fucking thing giving it power.
Yes, the thing giving it power is the amplifier and the electrical circuit it’s plugged into. And unless the guitar itself is wireless, the guitar is plugged into the amp…
It’s entirely possible to plug a messed up guitar into a perfectly good amplifier, and then the next thing you know you’ve got a shorted amplifier. It’s called a cascading failure. No it’s not all that common, but it can and does happen.
Is it so much of a stretch of the imagination to be better safe than sorry, not take any chances, and treat the equipment with a little respect and at least inspect the internals before plugging it in?
It’s not going to happen with corroded coils.
I’m an electrician and a guitar player. You’re a fucking idiot. Stop posting misinformation.
If you have a multimeter, you could safely check all contacts on the guitar, and ensure it has been properly grounded via a brief disassembly.
If you decide to do this basic due diligence before posting I’m sure you would be able to approach this with a more tolerable attitude.
If you just want a price, without restoration, you’d be lucky to get $100usd shipped.