I'm liking these old oddball guitar rebuilds,. Gives me some ideas for my '70s Japanese Les Paul (shaped) guitar.

love this channel but he makes me think of my dad.. he was a musician that loved to build and fix guitars.. thanks for bring up some great memories.. miss you dad rock on up there...

Great work Tim. It's much easier to set up a great guitar. These inexpensive guitars from the past, are the real challenges.

I just fixed up a 1986-87 squire telecaster that was made in the fujigen factory. It was rough when I got it at the thrift store but I worked hard to get it going again. Everything is almost perfect now and I couldn't be happier. I have about $70ish dollars into it and for that price a playing guitar is a win in my book.

The fact that you were able to make it even playable is impressive to me. I'm clearly not a guitar guy, but you don't usually see the hollow body as the tool of the punk player. 😁 This one has been fun to follow. Hope you have few more of these vintage beauties to show us. Thanks for sharing!

Like everybody else, I'll say great work, and add that I appreciate that you're not a guitar snob.

Well since this is an older video you probably won't see this, but I've been watching your videos since I assumed upon you a few weeks ago and enjoying your approach a lot, but what just got me to subscribe was your kiddo yelling "It's beautiful!" 😄

i’m so glad you’re documenting these strange vintage instruments, i love them so much and hav always been afraid about any thing going wrong and if anyone could fix them

Another oldie gets to live again, nice work sir!

Some years ago I bought a guitar from a brand called Dixon, and repaired it. It's a strat shaped body, but slightly smaller (unnoticeable unless comparing side to side) but without pickguard, with two slanted single coils, and painted in a beautiful satin dark blue. I couldn't get to repair the neck in a satisfactory way, so I ended up buying a replacement neck, all maple, very similar looking with the original. I screwed up the neck pocket while rerouting for the new neck, but fixed it with some styrene resin mass. Also replaced the pickups, that didn't really sound good (ceramic with low output, very dull and thin sounding). I put a rot rails that I dumped in epoxi to make it look just like the original pickups. Looking and sounding great now.

Fab job! I have a vintage Fujgen electric that I partially rewired and got working after 50+ years. Such a rewarding feeling.

11:02 -- Whoa, now that's shredding!

Yay! Part 2!!! You just made my morning Tim. 😊

Looks good and sounds even better! Thanks for taking us through the restoration on this one.

Nice work Tim.

hearing this guitar play, makes me think some of my favorite songs were played on similar setup as I had an immediate smile. Great job and great video.

Great job Tim,always good too see the young man,,checking out what dad's up to!

I've been simply adoring these repair videos, Tim! Hats off to you and your craft.

Great job... & this video was very interesting. Thanks

Just found your channel. Love your work man 👍

Great video nice sounding guitar good work on it .

Great work. Aesthetically beautiful guitar and. You have a lot of work into. I found watching this to be very peaceful.

luv those old hollow bodies , a real "jem" now Robert

Dude, your videos inspire me a lot. Right now I'm buying some handtools to start working as guitar tech and, hopefully, to soon build my own guitars. Love from Brazil.

Nice video and build. Lots of fine work needed in guitar rebuild. Great job, sounds awesome. Mahalo for sharing! : ) 🐒

Great stuff- thanks!

I made a neck shim out of three pieces of maple veneer by staggering and stacking them. If you have a 3" neck pocket, basically glue a 1", 2" and 3" piece together and sand the edges flush. Worked great and tapered from .050 to .010 and was the total length of the pocket. I used maple because I was shimming a maple neck.

Enjoy your guitar repair videos especially the vintage guitars 💯💯💯💯

Regarding the side to side movement of the neck, I have used standard 1/32" wood veneer, sanded appropriately thin, to wrap the inside walls of the neck pocket. It is labor intensive, but it works great. Getting it glued in is rather stressful.

That's a really charming and fun guitar from what seemed really hard to get playable! Great work!

IT'S BEAUTIFUL!

i love fujigen !!! i have 4 of them and it s absolutly great !!!!

you got it sounding better than it was ..

In a pinch I've used a steel fret rocker to flatten out a neck pocket that wasn't level. The totally flat reference on the bottom and sharp little point let me use it like a chisel with no angle of attack which helped tidy things up in a few minutes.

Tim, the next time you use epoxy like 4:16. Wrap the sanding block in cellophane wrap, only one layer or two required and then clamp it in place over the epoxy. You might have to re-drill the screw holes but it will give you a perfect flat epoxy fill. I also use 2" packing tape directly on the neck and if you have a large area you can tape across the fill, sticky side down. Epoxy doesn't shrink so even pressure makes a flat surface.

Monoprice amp, perfect! Sweet budget restoration!

You really did a great job on that. I was surprised to see how well that boat soap work. I normally use Windex to do my cleaning before waxing. I hope your friend was happy with the finished product. Not only did you make it look good you made it sound good.

I was putting a guitar together recently and I 3D printed some angled shims. Worked great.

Great rebuild man! I dig those old Japanese copies! Thought for sure you would cut a coil of that Bigsby spring, but still looks great and sounds good too!

You seem to have gotten past the challenges she had presented to you and your buddy should be happier with it nice work Tim

When I was 17 I bought the bass version of this for 50 bucks,had neck issues.paid a hundred for repairs and it was a great bass. I'm 40 now and I can't remember for the life of me what happened to it😂!!

It look great and you make it sound good !!♡!!

rad!

Nice work Tim! Not sure why I didn't see this when you posted it, but better late than never... I actually have a very similar body sitting in my garage I need to do pretty much the same thing to. This is really good to see, especially that angled shim! 😃 Definitely not the original bridge, the original is kinda funky.

Damn Tim, great job! I just love those old vintage semi and hollow body guitars. My favorite in my collection is my Casino, full hollow with two P90 dog ears! They're actually becoming more and more popular as more players discover how versatile these sweet ladies are! I also love LPs although I don't own a Gibson as I'm not a big fan, but price is also a factor, it's rediculous these days to lay out at least $2,000 for a label, when you can get similar, if not better quality for 60% less! One of my favorite solid bodies in my collection is an Epiphone LP Jr my sons bought me for Christmas three years ago. That guitar has an awesome neck, sounds great and is piles of fun to play!! I also have an Oscar Schmidt Washburn gold top LP serpentine with two humbuckers and it is a really, really nice guitar all round! I've loved Epiphone for years and they're really coming into their own recently with a huge number of new issues in any number of really cool colors and configurations. Epiphone was good enough for the Beatles, so they're good enough for me bro!! You always do great work Tim, and your designs are always freaking awesome!! Can I have your autograph?? ") Who's the handsome young ladies man there Tim? Good looking young man will have the chicks crying and lying all over town soon enough, if the horror show hasn't already begun! ") Great stuff bro! Jack ~'()'~ Canada Manly!

Good job. Some times things just don't line up! 👍

Awesome work on getting that girl to play so well. She looks great! Those Monoprice amps have a great reputation for the price! Hard to get in Europe though...

Oh too my amp I got sounds great Tim.Been sick have not plugged it yet.

Nice work Tim! I agree with you about not wanting to do a refret but I also think that that's what it needs. Also, the bottom of the neck needs to be widened so that it fits tightly. As you noted, other work needs to be done for proper alignment. If you want, I have a Luthier friend of mine who owes me a favor and I'd be happy to have him work on that guitar. He is very good. In fact, when he worked for a Luthier in Guilford, he got to work on a few of Clapton's guitars! Anyway, hope that you are doing well.... 👍👍😉😉

Mate, how good did that turn out! 👌🏽 Sounds a whole lot more decent than it did before you worked your magic on it. 👍🏽 Your mate, Dan has got to be chuffed with what you've achieved. 😉

Overkill idea: Put the guitar on a CNC router and rout the pocket. Test on a scrap of wood first. If needed, oversize the pocket, glue in a custom-fitted piece of wood, then rerout to the correct dimensions.

Try the bridges with roller saddles. Might help on spring spacing (going thru same thing myself bro, feel your pain).

You do nice work, man. We should totally jam sometime.

Nice tones on old hunk of wood.

You asked "What is that?" - it was a child. I've seen them before - they're usually harmless, but it's a good idea to be careful.

The last bit you played was cool

Because of you i have planes on making a intrument by myself Love you

Excellent Tim. Did you mention that it had an adjustable truss rod ?

Nice job! I've had to make a shim for a build before. Honestly it was a pain in the rear. From trash to very playable. Good deal!

Subbed!

I'd route it for 3 humbuckers and bring everything alot closer in to the body

Hey, it's probably still better than it was new.

Can you tilt the floating bridge around the longitudinal axis of the guitar to narrow its overall profile and therefore avoid re-notching the saddles, or does this mess up intonation/not follow archtop's contours? Been loving this series on 'oddball' guitars.

It's real hard to say from a screen, but at first I thought "Oh, with how he's pushing the bridge, he should have just put the shim on the other side of the neck pocket" but then I saw how far out of alignment that would have made the pickups. Def going to be a move the tailpeice to get it all aligned dealio. Probably a wise move on the frets, in my experience, the old frets on these had a really wide tang, modern wire is waaay to narrow to fit. It would have turned into a nightmare.

..I'd lose that pointy arrow thingy on the headstock and bend the whammy bar closer in to the body

How do zi get over to that place Tim??

I'll swear that's a Teisco. Someone gave me a broken unbranded guitar early 70s, only 2 pickups but identical body and switch, sunburst body but clear finish neck all the same. The vibrato is pressed, not cast. I learned everything I know about guitar setup just trying to make that sucker playable, but only a couple of years ago thought to check the internet. Teisco was my conclusion. (They were marketed under numerous brand names.)

Nice orange tools.

Actually sounds pretty good plus it's a really cool guitar from the 70s😜🎸

Tim do I get to see the extended footage?

Why not try a Gretch style space control bridge? You can get them on ebay pretty cheap

Looks like a Harmony guitar Clapton started off on

Those low frets are my least favorite thing about the old department store guitars--I've got three of them and two may as well have been fretted with model railroad tracks. I said a few videos back I would look for some form of ID for this guitar in the book by Frank Myers (who runs the channel and website Drowning In Guitars--give it a look if inclined). Sadly and regrettably, neither this guitar nor its two-pickup counterparts are present in the book, although models with Florentine cutaways are. The most I can find is about as much as anyone else can and already has--it was manufactured by Fujigen Gakki between 1966 and 1970. If we are to find and properly ID this instrument we may have to contact either Mr. Myers, who took several trips to these Japanese factories, or see if Fujigen themselves has any archived print materials. In any case, very well done getting this specimen into playing condition. It's always a treat to see what you have next in store.

fooZEEghen ;-) Nice work!

Do you know of crimson guitars? They're having another guitar build off I think you'd do well with an entry

Could you give some more info on the model of the guitar? I have the exact same guitar but I haven't been able to find model name or year. Thanks!

Aloha Tim! My name is Sean and I work with Aixdsp. What is the best way to send you our plug-ins?

Sounds great. I'm confused. Why not move the tremolo over to better align the strings?

I was hoping you would plug the whole pocket up with a piece of hardwood and re-route the pocket so it fit the neck better. I know it's a lot more work than it's worth probably but seeing that gap on the sides of the neck in the pocket makes me worry that it's going to go out of playability with one good bump to the neck.

Wow! I happened on this video by accident and I went wow! This as close as I've ever come to identifying a no name guitar I bought 30 years ago in a pawn shop almost solely because it had a whammy bar, the same kind of whammy bar as that Fujigen... mine is a true hollow body (central post inside to support the floating bridge), the only difference is mine has two humbuckers, a 3 way switch and a volume and a tone pot, ...So, I may have a model of Fujigen? I recently bought a cheap Chinese made Bigsby whammy knockoff to replace that original whammy bar, but I see the Bigsby depends on a solid neck through construction for the corners to be screwed in and mine has none, just the body top to screw into (and I know that's not a good idea). I thought about using a nut and bolt to fasten the Bigsby but I'm not sure... what do you think? Every Bigsby conversion video I've seen relies on the solid neckthrough construction..

Looks like a cool guitar and an interesting job. I would clean it up just a little with a router like you talked about then shim it up to a snugg fit with playing cards from a fresh deck of cards. They are made out of paper = wood and they are hard/stiff so it works pretty ok.

I have a 1959 magnatone mkVII and it's incredibly hard to set it up and idk what to do

Good piece of work! Those old Japanese guitars were never great even brand new so this one probably plays better than it ever has. Over here in the U.K. many mid 70s punk bands liked to be seen playing cheap old Japanese guitars, ( sort of a street credibility thing ). Those players that could afford it spent good money getting them properly sorted out in order to make them a playable proposition, I remember seeing several of them in the workshops of top London guitar tech’s. One of my favourite Stratocaster type guitars comes from this era. Like you I had to do work on the neck pocket, ( I used a hand held router and a homemade jig ) , the pickups were actually quite good but somebody had used house wiring to connect them up, that was a problem easily fixed along with the replacement of the cracked scratchplate. As I worked on the guitar for myself time wasn’t a factor I had to take into account otherwise it would never have been a profitable project. Lots of fun though.

Fugijen? Ok, Tiw Smay.

Tim I know you know but that bridge should never have been used or even manipulated...if the neck and the tail piece line up , just saying mate , fine tuning happens at the fulcrum. I thought the pups sounded good.

Possibly sand the bottom of the bridge????

Why couldn't you sand the bridge down some instead of adding shims, just asking

YOU RULE. Just sayin'.

What did Dan say? Think?

Tidy

You could always pin the bridge it it's too shifty.

Your son is so cute, guy! ❤

Why don’t you just pin the bridge in the correct spot ?

Yeah that guitar desperately needs a re-fret. No way around it

Why did you clean and polish just to get it filthy again ?

drop that shit in the bin...what a waste of time