Most of you regulars already knew, but I got me this Vantage VS696-12 for (in hind sight) too much money. Besides some grease, dust and rust, the guitar seemed to be in pretty good shape. On the outside. The cavities were hiding an awful mess though.
Took her apart, cleaned up the fingerboard and the other outer parts. I repaired the heavily molested bridge PU (which turned out to be a 1983 Seymour Duncan StagMag, wound by MJ herself) and put it in the neck position, and moved the other (an also 1983 Duncan Custom, also MJ) to the bridge. Drew up a wiring diagram that should resemble the original one and had it checked by a couple of experienced friends (thanks guys!
). Ordered new pots, switches and a few caps. The ones in there were either cheap replacements, badly fitted or burned beyond recognition, or not connected to anything at all. It's a miracle the guitar produced any signal! Went shopping for a multi-meter and some other tools and materials (had no experience whatsoever with this electrical micro surgery stuff) and went ahead with the reconstruction.Shielded everything with household aluminium foil (glued double) first, and heated up the soldering irons ...
I pulled it off. Well, almost ... I especially wanna thank John Cooper (http://www.planetz.com/) for his very useful basic instructions, and Jesper (Racing) for his expertise on wiring, volume mods and trebble bleeds.
Basically, I got everything working as it should, but from time to time the sound from my amp is dying out and coming back up again. There must be a bad solder joint somewhere, or a piece of the signal wiring that touches ground where it shouldn't ... This problem occurs in every setting, so I reckon the problem must be either in the output, or in the selector switch connections. To be continued ....
