I bought this Fender in 2003/2004 as I wanted a guitar and a colleague had one collecting dust. As it was a Fender, I paid probably to much for it (€ 400), but I could spare it.
It had a not much better future here, as I stored it and totally forgot about it. I looked a tad closer to it today and I can’t place a lot of parts. It has a pickup to many for a Musicmaster, for a Duosonic the layout (and parts) is incorrect, I’m missing screws, pitchguard is off (self made?), but the body, neck and headstock look correct. (tuning nobs and posts are ibanez)
Is it worth it to restore the guitar? Would it be better to keep this FrankenFender in this state,…
I’m currently working on my Ibanez EDB400 which I bought around the same time, setting it up with the help of Bassbuzz on youtube. (I now know why I didn’t like playing it, the setup was way off… and it has a battery that was dead since '06)
Definitely worth trying it out as-is before ripping anything out.
Ok, tested it, loads of buzzing in the guitar until I touch something metal, I expect that’s due to the non-grounded mains I used for the amp (need to test with a grounded socket). The switch has the usual 3 settings, top 2 give sound, bottom one just increases the buzzing. Tapping on the neck pick-up gets fed to the amp, tapping on the bridge pickup just decreases the buzzing (same as touching anything metal). I assume that pick-up is dead a door nail. I don’t assume anybody would mix active with passive pickups, but it’s a FrankenFender, who knows. The knob on the pitchguard doesn’t do a thing…
I found some spare strings in the case, so that set is now complete, but the electronics need work, a lot.
Will do tomorrow, after dusting off the Squire SP10 amp that came with it.