1980s Japan-made Explorer Copy Electric Guitar (Quite Modded)

This guitar is alarmingly good. My buddy Steve bought it as a complete husk (no tuners, no pickups, no hardware, a big Kahler-style trem/bridge rout in the middle of the body, etc.) and had me put it all back together to turn it into a rawk machine. His smaller band, Wah Together, sometimes makes use of the first Explorer-copy I rebuilt into a rawk machine for him (click here to see and hear that -- this one sounds very close to it) and so he decided he wanted a second one as a backup...? Or a fashion statement? Or simply for pure joy?

At its heart it's a Japanese-made Explorer copy but done-up metal style when it was made. It had a goofy divebomb whammy installed originally and probably had black hardware and open-faced buckers. You know the type!

To make it better in this incarnation it got a set of Duncan Antiquity pickups, an "aged" Bigsby, and "aged" Gotoh hardware throughout -- bridge and Kluson-style tuners. I gave it a fret level/dress, filled the Kahler-style trem rout, and then made the bridge work. Because the old trem/bridge was designed for a sort-of Strat-height saddle configuration, the neck angle wasn't as steep as a "traditional" Explorer-style guitar. Because of that, I actually recessed the ABR-style bridge a little bit into its own rout/cut slot so that action adjustments would be easy-peasy. I was really happy with how that turned out. I also cleaned it up a bunch, gave it a fresh wiring harness with 500k pots, made a new nut and control cavity backplate, and smiled a heckuva lot when I got it into an amp for the first time.

Rawk machine! That's what it is.