The Electra Forums

Yeah, I can corroborate that neck construction. My X120 has the finish mostly removed on the back of the neck. I've not counted the layers, but I will and see if I can get a couple pictures that illustrate this.

Congrats again on the new score, Mike.

Here she is after cleanup, the metal parts came out better than I could have ever hoped:



Here is my attempt at recreating the SLM Leslie West Ad:



Sepia Tone anybody?



This shot of the back almost captures the correct color:



Just a really nice piece, the bridge, tailpiece and posts cleaned up nicely with some CLR, the corrosion kind of flaked off after a soaking, although it ended up discoloring the brass saddles a bit. The thin Chrome plating on the Tuner Buttons totally flaked off, leaving the original dull Nickel finish with some noticeable pitting, but I'm happy with the outcome. Haven't really addressed the frets or the neck relief yet, but it plays really well even before a comprehensive setup, lively and loud. Still pinching myself, one of those guitars that you feel guilty playing its in such nice shape! Cheers, Mike.

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Electra Guitar Videos ===> http://www.youtube.com/user/mjm33mjm?feature=watch

It DID clean up well!!!

Congratulations Mike.

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RCSBlues

Super nice clean up and a great looking example. The photos look cool Congrats on the score and enjoy

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Always give thanks for everyday, It may be your last so Rock On Semper Fi!!

That looks fantastic - great job! And what a score even though I know you put a lot of work into it already to clean it up to get it to this level. You did a really good job cleaning up the metal parts from the pictures. Have you done the frets yet? If so, what did you wind up doing on those?

Great job!

Oh yeah, what model are those pickups? Do they have MMK stamps on them? 45? 53? or made by someone else? Mine has replacements in it. While they sound great, if I ever stumble across some correct pickups maybe someday I will try the right ones in there. I do have a X950 that had similar looking pickups, but I don't think they had any markings on the back. No biggie - jut next time you (or anyone else) does any work on one let me know. Thanks.

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Thorny

I only wiped down the fretboard and frets so far, there is still some discoloration in the fret wire but no huge divots or anything.

The pickups have a matched six digit code on the back of them (didn't take any pictures, sorry) and are not MMK's that I can tell. I know that most of the later Electra Literature says 'Super Magnaflux' was installed in virtually every guitar, however I find that the MPC's almost always had these 'serialized' pickups in them. One possible exception is I think the X960 Ultima had MMK's in them, not certain. I only played it through an amp for a little bit to test my soldering job on the MPC connector (pin 2 is so fun to get at in there!), but I thought they sounded a bit microphonic (most likely unwaxed, which is typical), and a bit dark sounding. I checked the control cavity, and it is late enough to have the 'Super Charger' Resistors and six digit pots in it, probably from the factory that way.

Thorny, I got your PM about reseating the frets, and I will proceed with caution, if at all... as I may leave it to my tech, I'd hate to mess up an example that still looks this good. I've been looking at both my LW's and it seems that despite the wide neck, the string spacing is about the same as other Electra's I own, meaning that the 'E' strings are further away from the edge of the neck... any other X120 owners agree? It makes sense that they'd use the same bridge (string spacing) as their other models, even if the neck was wider.

In any event, I'm real happy about this one, although I won't get to play it too much this weekend as I'm helping a buddy grade his driveway (man I love operating agricultural sized Tractors! No Sarcasm) Thanks for the kind words all, Mike.

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Electra Guitar Videos ===> http://www.youtube.com/user/mjm33mjm?feature=watch

Great. Sounds like you are almost there on the guitar - just a little bit of fret work and polishing will probably get you 100% there. You know, As much as you do this maybe you should do this because many guitars need this. You really don't need too many tools and now some of the few tools you need are not as expensive as they used to be. Sorry if that message was a little too involved. The Guitar Player repair guide is FANTASTIC, and stewmac has a fret book too -- all great info.

I had an ultima I just sold to a friend - really rather cheaply too - but now I have him hooked on Electras too! I bet they are the same as on my vulcan X950 then.

Have fun with the Tractor!

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Thorny

What value is the volume pot?

My 950 had 50Ks in it, and I swapped them out. My ultima had 500Ks in it as I recall (if not, i swapped those out too). The 50K thing happened across the whole line of MPC guitars, not just a few models. I don't know how long the problem lasted before they discovered it. I know one of the guys has a rick derringer model with 50Ks in it. Also, I have seen plenty of x300 series with this problem. And just about any guitar that has the "Super Charger" stickers on the first two pots had them swapped out - likely before they were sold. A lot of guys have guitars with those stickers on them. Now we know why. No real difference in the wiring other than extra resistors on the switches that we figured are to eliminate pops when switching FX on and off. That was done from the factory from that point forward I am pretty sure, many guitars come with those resistors installed, and many do not. The resistors do not seem to make a huge difference.

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Thorny

PICS!PICS!PICS!PICS!PICS!PICS!PICS!PICS!PICS!

My MPCs I have left now are just my 950 and 330 - they are fairly typical. Neither are anything to brag condition wise. My 950 is:


Lets see, I don't know if I have one of the 330, so I just took one quickly. I have had this since the 90s. It was the first Electra MPC I had actually owned. When I got it the bridge pickup was bad, some of the saddles had adjustment screws busted off, and not a single knob would turn. I replaced the bridge pickup, the bridge, and got it all working again (with the help of the original Electra site). This one started it all for me. It has a 90s Harmonic Designs Humbucker in it (with the Electra partial cover on it) - and I believe the bridge is a Gotoh from Stewmac.



This Leslie West model is a recent addition - if you search you can read how it was fixed. It had quite a serious break (wasn't in two pieces, but it wasn't too far from it). I added a lot of parts and a luthier friend glued it together for me (and I fixed his amp in exchange). Pickups came from a PRS SE model, and bridge is a gotoh clone and non-original. This thing is rough, but it feels and plays great. You can see the super charger stickers on the knobs, so this probably originally had 50K pots in it (was changed out before I got it). One of the module sockets quit working so I will have to dig into that to find out why (one I replaced), but other that that is really is good. This picture really shows the repaired areas and damage because the sunlight brings out the repairs a lot (cracked into the pickup switch cavity and also surrounding the controls cavity). The guitar was crushed at one point. But it was rare, I wanted one, and didn't want to see it be parted out any further. It seems that most of these aren't in terrific shape like the wonderful examples above, you see these beat to heck all the time. This one will never be more than a player, but it is one of my favorites. Even the non-original stuff worked out great in this guitar. I have considered pickup changes, but the PRS SE pickups I tossed in there only because I had them sitting in a box available sound fantastic in this guitar. Way better than they did in the PRS in fact (isn't that funny?). The guitar is light weight. I love the chunky neck too. Just an excellent player. FANTASTIC guitar.



Right now that is it for the MPCs for me right now. I used to own a LOT of them, but some expenses relieved me of many of these. I am just now slowly rebuilding a collection. But my collection is not as MPC-based this time. The one picture on the website tiles with all the x300 series LP shaped MPCs in front of the brick house - those were mine at that time. Now it isn't just MPCs. I now have a nice Endorser and a 2 phoenix models and a Westone Spectrum ST and an Elvin Bishop on the way. I am not doing without others as well. I have a lot of other nice stuff. Most of it isn't too expensive, but really good stuff. I guess I am a politically correct/practice diversity in my guitar buying, my investment seems to be well spread out US, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Indonesia, and China.

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Thorny

Ill take the Leslie West model just send it to my address and send you the money!

You stick around here and these guys will help you find one. I had 3 models I was looking for, and thanks to the guys here I have them.
- Leslie West (check)
- Endorser - a really nice sunburst one (check)
- And a Maple Pro or an Elvin Bishop (one on its way).

So this Elvin will be my next project. It has lots of issues but won't know how serious until I get it. Along with that I have a mexi fender tele thinline with the Wide Range Humbuckers in it. I am going to put new pickups in that one and can't decide on which ones. Pickups on the reissue only look like the originals, and new replacements are much closer - but they are terribly expensive (almost as much as I paid for the used guitar).

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Thorny