by Forum member Sgt. Vimes on October 04, 2014
Read full Forum discussion here: http://westone.netboarder.com/t5291-ngd-sort-of-prestige-250
I gone and bought me a bucket full of repairs! Cost peanuts though, so I’m prepared for what’s to come.
Body front not too bad. Two missing saddles were borrowed from my Westbury standard but I need longer screws.
Oh crap!
Bridge and tailpiece are in good order.
Hoping this is just finish cracking.
Oh Crap’#2
Scruffy.
Oh crap#3
Knew about the missing binding, didn’t know it was stepped!
And a HUGE thanks to boardmember Bru for responding to my pm and letting these go my way, cheers bud!
It currently has no output at all, whether this is due to bad wiring or dirty/failed hardware we’ll see.
It came with an original Mighty Mite MFG neck ‘bucker and Kent Armstrong junk at the bridge, obviously not gonna be employed here.
I’m gutted about the neck snap at the heel, but feels solid enough down there, less solid at the headstock end where the fretboard is coming away, this has had a hard, hard life.
First thoughts are to refinish the back and neck. The front is ok, scuffed and dented but it has a history so it’ll stay.
Heat gun for the back for a clean removal? Going carefully at the break obviously, mahogany stain and Tru Oil refin, though these thoughts may change yet.
I recently had a bloke make me a bridge for my Thunder 2A…although not 100% perfect it was his first effort and already looks better than what was in there previously. I think if I replaced all the screws and springs then it would look pretty much ok….I’m anal…but not that anal though so it will stay as it is now 
Decided to put the aesthetics aspect of this on the back burner for now, glued and clamped, cleaned and oiled the ebony board, polished the frets and fitted the original pups, rewired half of the internal gubbins and a good clean and string up should see it ok for a while, I just want to play on it some before I consider any refinishing.
I wasn’t expecting the pickups to be so responsive, the PEQ should be really useful to me, creamy lows and some nice sharp highs are just a switch flick away, loving it so far!
Some fretwear but nothing hampering play.
This was under the botched spray job, ugly but solid.
I found some saddles that will fit, 1mm shy in height but take into account there’s no string notch (I’ll put in a tiny guide notch) they should measure up fine, spent many hours searching for a suitable replacement and was almost at the point of conceding defeat!
Replacement saddles
The Stewmac saddles, almost a perfect fit.
Note how the 1mm height reduction makes the strings just touch the back of the bridge, not much but they do touch, other than this they are great.
Didn’t take pics of the re-binding job. Oops.
This was the thinnest binding I could find at the time @ 0.5mm, the original is around 0.3
I made crucial mistakes by not planning ahead, not dry fitting first and rushing the job in poor light, hence the awful ends, hindsight also says loud and clear that I should have replaced all the binding, cut at the nut
The wet bits are superglue over some dye I mixed up, decent colour match.
Roughly scraped back the glue and binding, a couple bits need a glue touchup, and I’ll melt some spare binding in acetone and fill the points.
Used a heat gun on low setting and a 2″ paint scraper to remove the majority of the finish here, in about 10 minutes. The neck was sanded.
Still rock solid here, not a bad repair at all, just needs a tiny touch of filler or pva/sawdust and smooth off.
The finish crack behind the nut was structural after all, but it’s only moving a tiny bit under high stress so I’ll squeeze some pva and pull it shut overnight.
A little touch up of the numbers then its colour time!
A couple coats of dye I mixed up from powders.
All done, in a couple of weeks I’ll flat off the back a little and re-buff. but for now it looks played, feels wonderful with the re-crowning and sounds fabulous with the mmk75’s .
Printed off a decal for the truss rod cover, will apply tomorrow after it dries overnight.
Apologies for the low light indoor pic.
Finished the TRC decal with a couple coats of acrylic clear, just waiting for a new nut to arrive and a couple tiny touch ups with the binding and I’m done.
