After finishing up a couple of project guitars over the past 12 months I was on the hunt for a new one, and I'm always on the lookout for another UV. So, as you can imagine when a Universe "project" gets advertised for sale, it's sure to grab my attention.
However, the seller was giving the impression the guitar only needed a refinish, new set of pickups along with fit out and set up, and it would be good to go...............
yeah.......... didn't really pan out that way....
The guitar has had a refret at one point, possibly preformed by a gorilla. A few chunks out of the fretboard around the frets, noticeable marks where the old frets were removed, a .... load of glue around the frets. The whole guitar was at one point refinished and fitted out to look like a green dot, badly. And that possibly wasn't its only ever refinish due to some of the interesting paint colours evident in amongst the various sanded areas. Black, grey (assuming undercoat), maroon?, and some of the original white is still under there in places. After being sanded back a couple of times it has also had the very square edge of the body rounded off in some spots, they were also nice enough to sand off the shelf the nut sits on at the end of the fretboard, which has now been replaced with some really dodgey looking shims. Headstock has one of those cheap Ibanez Universe decals just stuck on over the top of the black paint that looks like I could just peel it of right now. To add insult to injury, it looks like there is a possibility, however it will be difficult to ever confirm, that the scarf join has been reglued at some stage. Though it looks like this was done well if it did happen.
After asking the seller about this he says he never noticed any of it, and the guy he got it off never mentioned it either............
But anyway, the neck is stamped as a UV7 PWH usually is and it looks nearly identical to my other one, in amongst all the various parts there is also an original Universe neck plate that dates this to a 91 model, and the trem is a little pitted and in need of a clean however looks like a new set of saddles will have it up to pretty decent condition again.
This is going to be quite a long project for me, and i have a couple of good tech i know that I can bounce ideas off and also out source the work to, to make sure everything is done in the best way to get this poor thing back to the condition it deserves after whatever horrible things it has been through in the last 25 years.
Biggest upside to all this, this guitar has been molested to hell and back, so that kind of makes me feel like I'm not doing anything morally wrong by making some pretty big changes to what the stock PWH's where like.
First ideas for this are a HXH pickguard, a new paint job in a colour other than white or black (I'm bouncing a few different ideas of a tech friend at the moment to make this something a little bit special), and it is definitely getting a stainless steel refret. The rest of the details I will look into along the way or haven't decided yet.
Disclaimer: This project may take quite some time to finish as I have alot of stuff on this year and will have to fit in with the schedules of some other techs and luthiers to get this done.
I'm sure there are a few other things i have missed here too, but I'll try to mention them as I go along.
Also, these pics show the condition I received it in, all sanding and whatever else was done by the prior owners...
However, the seller was giving the impression the guitar only needed a refinish, new set of pickups along with fit out and set up, and it would be good to go...............
yeah.......... didn't really pan out that way....
The guitar has had a refret at one point, possibly preformed by a gorilla. A few chunks out of the fretboard around the frets, noticeable marks where the old frets were removed, a .... load of glue around the frets. The whole guitar was at one point refinished and fitted out to look like a green dot, badly. And that possibly wasn't its only ever refinish due to some of the interesting paint colours evident in amongst the various sanded areas. Black, grey (assuming undercoat), maroon?, and some of the original white is still under there in places. After being sanded back a couple of times it has also had the very square edge of the body rounded off in some spots, they were also nice enough to sand off the shelf the nut sits on at the end of the fretboard, which has now been replaced with some really dodgey looking shims. Headstock has one of those cheap Ibanez Universe decals just stuck on over the top of the black paint that looks like I could just peel it of right now. To add insult to injury, it looks like there is a possibility, however it will be difficult to ever confirm, that the scarf join has been reglued at some stage. Though it looks like this was done well if it did happen.
After asking the seller about this he says he never noticed any of it, and the guy he got it off never mentioned it either............
But anyway, the neck is stamped as a UV7 PWH usually is and it looks nearly identical to my other one, in amongst all the various parts there is also an original Universe neck plate that dates this to a 91 model, and the trem is a little pitted and in need of a clean however looks like a new set of saddles will have it up to pretty decent condition again.
This is going to be quite a long project for me, and i have a couple of good tech i know that I can bounce ideas off and also out source the work to, to make sure everything is done in the best way to get this poor thing back to the condition it deserves after whatever horrible things it has been through in the last 25 years.
Biggest upside to all this, this guitar has been molested to hell and back, so that kind of makes me feel like I'm not doing anything morally wrong by making some pretty big changes to what the stock PWH's where like.
First ideas for this are a HXH pickguard, a new paint job in a colour other than white or black (I'm bouncing a few different ideas of a tech friend at the moment to make this something a little bit special), and it is definitely getting a stainless steel refret. The rest of the details I will look into along the way or haven't decided yet.
Disclaimer: This project may take quite some time to finish as I have alot of stuff on this year and will have to fit in with the schedules of some other techs and luthiers to get this done.
I'm sure there are a few other things i have missed here too, but I'll try to mention them as I go along.
Also, these pics show the condition I received it in, all sanding and whatever else was done by the prior owners...
