1960s Tempo (Matsumoku) Electric Guitar

My friend Kevin gave me this one -- thanks Kevin! -- in its original (sort-of gross) case and "as-found." Both original pickups (shocker!) had bad coils and the wiring harness needed to be replaced, too, but the "guts" of the instrument -- neck, body, hardware -- were not bad. This thing has a sort-of "fat Fender" neck feel to it and a long, 25 1/2" scale length, so it's a bit different from your average Japanese-made catalog guitars from the time. It had potential!

It wound-up getting a level/dress of the frets, side dots, fresh new Gotoh Kluson-style repro tuners at the headstock (the originals were... bad), added compensation to the original bridge (for 3-wound, 3-plain stringing), some "routing" to fit the new pickups, blocking of the whammy tailpiece (these are also terrible, but if you remove the springs and arm you can simply tighten-up the bolts to make it a stop-tail), wiring, and setup work. I also removed the original (narrow) neck plate and cruddy, love-to-break-on-you screws and replaced them with a Fender-style, aged-finish, proper neck plate and screws.

It's hard to tell in the first pics but the pickguard is chrome and so this whole thing has a "hot rod" sort-of personality to it. I had to fill in the "window" where the pickup rocker switches used to sit and used some celluloid tortoise for that and then a normal 3-way switch fit into it.

The neck pickup is actually a cheap Strat-style pickup hidden under a P90 cover (to cover the old pickup footprint). The bridge pickup is some sort of old Duncan humbucker. Between the two, as you might expect, you can get a whole ton of different sounds.