Finally sat down and and finished the Kingston tonight that I have been rehabbing off and on between parts deliveries and other projects (namely the van).
I started with the neck, as I usually do. The original frets on this one were between 17 and 24 thousandths depending on where they were. They were a bear to get out as well with so little to work with. Eventually got them pulled, radius sanded the fretboard to a nice even 9.5 inches and replaced them with fender medium jumbo frets. Now they are averaging 50 thousandths (MUCH better).
This one originally had the typical 6 inline tuners of the time. I replaced them with Wilkinson Deluxe split shaft tuners. The original tuners had slightly more space between the shafts, so I had to find bigger screws to fill the 1mm gap between each of the Wilkinsons. Cheated a bit on the nut and used a Graph Tech TUSQ XL pre-slotted nut. Dropped right in and took a very small amount of fine tuning to get the slot height just right. Also took 400 grit sandpaper and a scotchbrite pad to the back of the neck to smooth out the lacquer finish from shiny to matte.
Replaced the electronics with better pots, switch, and output jack. I really like the original pickups and saw no need to change them out. They would be considered low power these days at 4.6 and 4.7K respectively. Nice clean tones at mid volume and they start to break up nicely when you roll the volume up.
I started with the neck, as I usually do. The original frets on this one were between 17 and 24 thousandths depending on where they were. They were a bear to get out as well with so little to work with. Eventually got them pulled, radius sanded the fretboard to a nice even 9.5 inches and replaced them with fender medium jumbo frets. Now they are averaging 50 thousandths (MUCH better).
This one originally had the typical 6 inline tuners of the time. I replaced them with Wilkinson Deluxe split shaft tuners. The original tuners had slightly more space between the shafts, so I had to find bigger screws to fill the 1mm gap between each of the Wilkinsons. Cheated a bit on the nut and used a Graph Tech TUSQ XL pre-slotted nut. Dropped right in and took a very small amount of fine tuning to get the slot height just right. Also took 400 grit sandpaper and a scotchbrite pad to the back of the neck to smooth out the lacquer finish from shiny to matte.
Replaced the electronics with better pots, switch, and output jack. I really like the original pickups and saw no need to change them out. They would be considered low power these days at 4.6 and 4.7K respectively. Nice clean tones at mid volume and they start to break up nicely when you roll the volume up.
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