2006 Lindo Minimal Project

Watched this get relisted on a eBay for a few weeks running so I thought I’d take a punt on it. The simple design looked appealing to strip back to basics and rework.

First impressions were ok, the neck was straight with zero fret wear, the body had a reasonable carve to the top and although all the hardware is understandably very poor quality I couldn’t help the feeling I’d stumbled on a potential little winner.

  
Further impressions were not so good; the finishing work was to be frank fucking awful. The control cavity appeared to have been hacked out with the finesse of an axe, and the top nut was shimmed to compensate for someone overcooking the end of the rosewood finger board, for just two examples.
However, the body was a nice weight and the neck pocket suggested I’d stumbled upon a solid body!

  
  
Let it burn..

Heat gun and wallpaper scraper in hand, I tentatively started behind the neck plate on the back. Experience teaches you to restrain your anticipation to see what kind of grain you have on the top, and rather gauge how the old finish reacts to gentle patient heat. 
Halfway through the back it was pretty clear I’d got a solid wood body with some nice natural grain markings starting to show through. 

Ok so it’s not all great – it’s cut from a cross section of different timbers, so the grains are all pretty different, but that just adds to fun of the project.

After all sanding it looked like this:

It was a shame the centre piece of timber wasn’t across the whole body, and the main reason I opted for a dark finish.

I sanded up to 320 grit and applied the first coat of neat black water based wood stain.

Various coats of black with a single coat of blue, sanding up between each coat:

The finished guitar, complete with Grover 18:1 tuners, Iron Gear P90 Alchemist pick up, roller bridge saddles and a single volume control.