Was planning to list it for sale somewhere, but no idea what to price it at. Any idea? Is it even worth someone’s time fixing it up?
Was planning to list it for sale somewhere, but no idea what to price it at. Any idea? Is it even worth someone’s time fixing it up?
Have you ever worked on antique electronics? I’m assuming not, but I have. The pickup coils are likely just as corroded and probably shorted from the back side with that much corrosion, which I assume from experience is from many years of age in a humid closet or basement.
I know what I’m talking about, that guitar shouldn’t be plugged up until an experienced tech opens it up and at least does a basic inspection and makes sure the pickup coils aren’t shorted out with a multimeter, at least to start with.
Hahahahaha this isn’t an antique guitar. Those aren’t even active pickups.
You are clueless about guitar electronics and how magnetic pickups work and are made.
Yo the dude is able to recognise a warped neck just from that picture, you better listen to him!
Also you definitely can die from corroded pickups, but only if you play High Voltage by AC/DC.
Ah shit, no wonder I just busted out of that TV…
I’m using the word antique a bit loosely here, as I don’t know what year it was made. But obvious context clues tell me that the guitar definitely has some years behind it. There’s the obvious corrosion, plus OP said they inherited it, meaning almost certainly the original owner has passed away.
I actually spent about 6 years as a guitar technician for a band that amongst other equipment rocked a Fender Stratocaster and dual 1000W Peavey stacks.
They’d never allow such a corroded guitar to hook up to their equipment willy-nilly without a full professional teardown, inspection, cleanup, any necessary parts and repairs, new strings, set the intonations, etc.
Maybe just maybe I’ve got a more professional attitude about it, from experience.
Hell, at bare minimum at least clean the old strings and spray some WD-40 into the tuner knobs and tune the thing up, can’t tell much of anything about how an old guitar is supposed to sound if you don’t at least try tuning it.
But I still wouldn’t go plugging it into an amplifier without checking the internals first, for all I know it could end up shorting out and blowing a perfectly good amplifier.
This is an Epiphone Les Paul Pro in alpine white. Judging off the tuners and truss rod cover this guitar is from around the early 2000’s. This doesn’t have “years” behind it.
Back to the oxidation on the gold pickup covers. That is super common with any style of gold pickup covers. Oxidation doesn’t cause any issues with sound from a pickup.
It is okay to be wrong even with experience because you are misinformed about the basics of guitar electronics and how they function.
This guitar won’t short anything out. A guitar with passive or active pickups for that matter will never short out an amplifier or pedals. If there is a short in the guitar’s wiring, no sound will be produced. It won’t cause any damage to whatever device it is plugged into.
I would suggest learning about how guitar pickups and wiring work before helping anyone else out with their rigs.
This is a weird flex.
You can literally short the input to the amp and be fine. In fact, cheap cables do this all the time. There would have to be a major issue with the amps isolation between the preamp and power amp to have an issue. This is possible, but a rusty pickup is not really the issue. You’re simply ill-informed. It happens to the best of us.
Have you ever studied Samuel Goldwasser’s PhotoFacts?
I have. I’ve actually studied it so many times that I know the typical failure mode of electronic components in almost any situation.
Amplifiers are powered by transistors (or tubes back in the day, not much difference). When they happen to be stressed to the point of failure, they practically always fail as a short circuit.
Short circuits aren’t fun, that’s why they invented the Variac to properly test suspicious devices.
Edit: I hate to repeat myself, but would you plug in a rusted toaster? Do you not value your life, or would you rather test the components and clean things up first?
If you don’t understand the difference between a toaster and the front end of an amplifier, then you’ve outed yourself.
Also, no. Nobody tests their toaster when they plug it in.
No, everyone tests their toasters when they plug them in. Only the dead don’t report results, so the results are biased towards the living.
Please tell me WTF is your problem with maintaining a guitar?
Lol. If someone plugged in a shorted toaster, it would trip a breaker at worst. But survivorship bias is an awesome mental gymnastic. 8/10.
And nobody is arguing against maintaining a guitar. Just that you are being dumb. And maybe are a troll.
You mean you have no respect for electrical safety? None whatsoever? So you’d be okay if someone threw a live toaster in your bathtub?.. 🤔
Bruh, get real, you have no respect for electrical safety. Go screw an outlet if you’re so confident…
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Gee, the bathtub isn’t the same as plugging it into the wall. Is it?
No, it’s not. And you know it’s not. But you probably don’t know why it’s not.
Or you are a troll.
Or perhaps there are already videos about such risks?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xS_5K5YEYv8
I’ve built multiple amplifiers from scratch, both tube and transistor based. But go off.
Good for you, awesome! Have you stress tested your circuits with corrosion to see what may or may not fail first?
http://repairfaq.org/
Nobody asked you what you could build from fresh scratch, I’m asking you what you’d do with electronics that have 15+ years of salt water vapor damage…?
Yes, I have experience with old electronics as well, and guitars, repair work, the whole lot. And I have an bs in EE.
But none of that matters because what is really happening here is that you are wrong, and instead of learning and moving on with a better understanding, you are tripling down and pulling the wool over your own eyes.
And you and all of your friends are dismissing safety. Fuck all that, I respect safety and always have. You’ve got mains going into the amp, the cable going into the guitar, and metal wires on the fingers. Oh, don’t forget about the metal whammy bar…
Although the risk of electrocution is minimal, it still exists. My folks had a rule to not fuck around with sketchy equipment. What the fuck is your deal with cleaning and maintaining a goddamn guitar?
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Lol. Nobody is saying to not maintain a guitar, wtf. What a wild stretch. You must be defensive.
They are just saying that you are wrong that a rusty/shorted pickup is some serious safety risk. Because it is not, and you are acting self-righteous, ill-informed, and paranoid.
Yeah, and the guitar only has 5 of 6 strings, and some nitwit asked how it sounds…
Get real, lemme ask you how a 6 cylinder engine would sound with a dead cylinder. Lemme ask you how a motorcycle would drive with a broken spoke or two…
Nothing that relies on timing is gonna sound right without proper maintenance. I mean goddamn, at least WD-40 the existing strings and tune them first, how TF anyone gonna judge the sound of a corroded guitar without a basic checkup and cleanup?
Holy shit you are going to die on this hill.
You won’t even explain how in the fuck this could actually happen. Give it up already, your amplifier is not sending all the power through your guitar, if it was, it still wouldn’t matter if your coils are corroded or not.
My buddy John Fields, legendary electrical engineer for Peavey Electronics (he has done work on the 5150/6505), has told many people who have spread this myth that they are full of shit. If you are getting shocked while playing, it is not your guitar, it is the fucking thing giving it power.
Yes, the thing giving it power is the amplifier and the electrical circuit it’s plugged into. And unless the guitar itself is wireless, the guitar is plugged into the amp…
It’s entirely possible to plug a messed up guitar into a perfectly good amplifier, and then the next thing you know you’ve got a shorted amplifier. It’s called a cascading failure. No it’s not all that common, but it can and does happen.
Is it so much of a stretch of the imagination to be better safe than sorry, not take any chances, and treat the equipment with a little respect and at least inspect the internals before plugging it in?
It’s not going to happen with corroded coils.