2010s Kit-Style Esquire 12-String Electric Guitar

This guitar is now excellent. It arrived here in its big old case in a bit of a funky state -- nonexistent setup, mostly, compounded with a little wonky wiring choices, no nut, and with the "cobbling" needing to be tidied-up. The bones were good, though, by way of a nice-quality body (in Candy Apple Red), a good-sounding bridge pickup, and heavy-duty import hardware. 

This came with a "dual rails" humbucker in the neck position and a poorly-fitting tortoise pickguard. The bucker was so muddy-sounding that I simply took it off and fit a spare Esquire-style pickguard from my parts-bins. While the fit isn't perfect, it looks much more "proper." In addition, removing the neck pickup allowed me to rewire this and so make it more of a "stand-out" instrument.

The new wiring is like the "Eldred" mod but slightly different -- each position of the 3-way allows for volume control, but the positions work like this:

Neck: a set, low-value tone cap is in the circuit for a faux-neck/slightly-wah-ish sound. It's very useful for chord strumming.

Middle: this allows control from the tone pot so you can "roll off" the middle position to sound as bright or as dark as you like. I like it just a hair rolled-off. The cap value on the tone pot is .022 so even rolled-off completely you still get a bit of tone out of it.

Bridge: pickup straight through to the jack but, still, with the volume pot engaged.

I used 500k Bourns pots and a mix of Orange Drop and Mallory caps and fit a Switchcraft jack as well.

The rest of the work was just dialing it in setup-wise and with the right set of strings so it would feel like a breeze to play. Now that it's all done, it does feel quick. The nut width is generous and the back profile is a medium-C shape, however, so if you're looking for a Rickenbacker skinny-neck feel, search elsewhere.

Repairs included: adjustments, rewiring, new pickguard, setup-side work.

Body wood: unsure, solid wood

Bridge: gold, heavy-duty, 12-string Tele-style

Fretboard: maple

Neck wood: maple

Pickups: 1x Tele-style

Action height at 12th fret: 1/16" overall (fast, spot-on)
String gauges: 20w/46w, 14/36w, 10/26w, 8/16, 12/12, 9/9 low to high

Neck shape: medium C

Board radius: 14"

Truss rod: adjustable

Neck relief: straight

Fret style: medium-bigger

Scale length: 25 1/2"

Nut width: 1 7/8"

Body width: 12 7/8"

Body depth: 1 3/4"

Weight: 8 lbs 9 oz

Condition notes: it's fairly clean but does show mild use when you're looking by way of tiny scratches and scuffs here and there on the body and a tiny nick or two. The pickguard and body hardware are not exactly fit perfectly but are fit well-enough to not be obvious. This is due to the neck pocket having been enlarged to accept the wider neck, I think. It was a little tricky to get things to fit nicely. There is a neck route large enough to fit a soapbar P90 but, honestly, I really do like the Esquire setup for this application -- you get that "Ricky" jangle at the "full on" position and almost an "acoustic 12 string with a magnetic pickup in the soundhole" sound in the middle and "neck" positions. One last note -- there is a replacement tuner button for the octave G-string tuner.

It comes with: a modified hard case.