Maude

Up the Danos! ✊ 😁

Mine arrived after a couple of days. Everything looks legit, Players Circle numbers entered on the D'addario site and accepted so I can't see that they're fake.

Tin Soldier - The Small Faces

Crash - The Primitives

We Are The League - Anti-Nowhere League

The Dickies from memory.

Knickerbocker Glory Box - Portishead

Stab Your Back - The Damned

I spent a long time trying to locate a buzzing on an electro acoustic guitar. Turned out to be the wire between the pre amp and the piezo element. It had a plastic square clipped to the wire that was supposed to be double side taped to the inside of the body, it was floating and vibrating against the body on certain frequencies. Worth a look?

Youth Gone Wild - Skid Row

I'm not sure with wood. 240 is probably enough as the oil wants to penetrate a bit and you sand the first couple of coats in and wipe off the excess. As opposed to the paint which just sits on the top and shows every little scratch.

Don't apologise, the best part of these little project threads is that they have plot twists. You start off with a rough idea of how things are going to go and then once work starts it throws up obstacles and inspirations. I always poetically say that the instrument talks to you and tells you what it wants. I'll quite often leave it leant against the chair opposite the sofa so I keep glancing at it, ideas slowly percolate that are sometimes quite different to the original plan, or it just reinforces the plan.

The deko thing was crazy. I bought, and still own, four acoustics for £120, and none of them needed anything drastic doing. I think a lot of the problems with their acoustics was uneven output from the piezo elements. A little fine tuning with some slips of paper/card and all mine are fine. The fretted acoustic had a high 17th fret but I just tapped it down and gave it little filing to level. I nabbed a fretted and fretless uke bass, and 34" fretless and a 32" fretted bass. The 32" is particularly nice and a jump up from the basic acoustic that most of the dekos were.

Driving in my Car - Madness

Lucky Number (6) - Lene Lovich

There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards - ID&TB

The Only Way Is Up - Otis Clay Hands up who didn't know Yazz's version was a cover?

Tower of Strength - The Mission

I can't work it out, the Standard and the 75M had dot fret markers but also had Yamaha and the three tuning fork logo on the headstock. The body doesn't seem to match any layout I've seen. The neck attachment looks right for a 75M but then the control cavity is wrong, plus the control knobs and jack look wrong to any PJ that I've seen. Could it be possibly be an early prototype? Maybe a homemade one but it looks very good quality, too good for homemade. It like it though.

@The Attic Man I dug out the tort pickguard but unfortunately it doesn't fit the Encore very well at. Wider neck pocket and the curved tail where the knobs sit is totally wrong. It's actually from an SX bass not an Aria, (the Aria was white) but that's the problem with a lot of these budget P basses, the pickguards are different shapes. I put a generic ebay black PG on my Aria and it fits so if I can work out which one came off the Aria I can lay that over the Encore and see if it fits, if it does the you'll be fine ordering an ebay one.

Mine are arriving tomorrow. It looks like me not having the £12 option bizarrely worked in my favour.

Yes, just go up through the grades, although there is probably a very real risk of rubbing through. It all depends on how thick the original clear is and how much you've taken off with 120. Theres no real method of which grades you should use. The more grades you can use, the less work you need to do with each grade. Ideally you want to remove all the scratches made by the previous, coarser grade, so if you jump too far between grades then you'll just have to work harder. Maybe move to 240 now, then 320, 500, 800, 1000. As you get to the higher grades you won't have to rub much at all. You will probably be able to polish it from 1000 but if you have it I'd go to 1500 and 2000 just to make life easier. Maybe when you see the black begin to thin move to the next grade to give yourself a better chance of not breaking through. It looks like it's had a neck pickup at some point in it's life.

Lipstick, Powder & Paint - Shakey A studio we used to use was covered in various rock related graffiti, my favourite piece was a drawing of Shakey with the writing, "Shakin' Stevens is pure denim toughness". 👌

Hofner Ignition - Beatle Bass - SunBurst? Maybe?

Hi @The Blade, welcome to the forum. If you ever feel like moving the Takamine on give me a message. 👍