Salvation: S521

When I saw this listed for sale, I know I had to get it. This particular model dated back to its first issue (S521, ocean fade metallic, 2017) so it's not a fresh piece. In fact, it had quite a substantial layer of gunk on the fretboard, saddle intonation springs were corroded, oxidized saddles & virtually all hardware looked dead & the 5-way selector was ultra dodgy; I initially thought it was the input jack. Plot twist - when I was ready to purchase it, it was marked as SOLD. Darn.

The initial owner played the heck out of this guitar & it became unwanted when the instrument suffered a hit & this much paint job came off. It was quite severe as the wood was visible. The subsequent owner bought it with the intention to re-finish the entire body & getting this part fixed in the process. He was taken aback by the cost of it (much more than the instrument itself) so letting it go was a more sensible discourse. It was re-listed & I managed to convince him to sell it away for as much as he bought it for. So the guitar ended up in my possession. If something was meant for you, regardless of the occurrences, it would eventually make its way to you. 

As you can see above, I used wood putty (have it for craft work, not for guitar maintenance) to fill up the substantial gap, oblivious to the colour clash but this was not meant to be an immaculate restoration adventure. Just a get by fix to revisit its former glory. I'm gonna keep it anyway (third owner) because I have a soft spot for the S-Series. 

Someone told me to use real wood to fix this up but as you can see there. it's a curved surface so getting a definite surface conformity is gonna be extra work for me & I don't have the tools for that to happen. The putty took three days to fully dry up. I sanded the surface off & applied super glue to keep things in tact then manually buffed it up for that glossy look. I got a little overboard during sanding & you can see the blue finish coming off the unaffected part there. More importantly, it's fixed. 

These Schaller pickups were first mentioned here: CLICK That same friend helped purchase another set for this guitar & I couldn't be happier with the tone (not meant for clean activists). By the way, this guitar was cheaper than a BOSS Super Chorus.