Mending a Mory
Posted: Tue May 28, 2019 6:47 pm
Inspired by the stellar guitarchaeology chronicled in sleepkid's OSG thread and Mory Madness blog post, as well as MatthewK's stunning Mory Jazzmaster resto, a few years ago I set out to rectify the conspicuous absence of a Jazzmaster in my guitar quiver by finding my own Mory. I was captivated by the story of Moridaira Toshio's handmade JM copies, and being too broke/cheap to buy an old Fender, I figured a Mory could be my ticket to vintage JM ownership while coming in comfortably short of the $4k pricetag a vintage Fender JM commands.
Not having the energy to try to arrange a purchase through Japanese Yahoo auctions (where these seem to pop up with the most regularity), I stalked eBay and Reverb listings for about a year until back in 2017 I found a Mory JM body, complete with many of its most essential original parts (trem with arm, pickups, pickguard with most of the original wiring), but missing a neck, knobs, rhythm circuit bracket, bridge, and a few other bits and pieces. Not bad! The body, however, was covered in a thick, nasty (latex?) refin, was clearly pretty substantially oversanded, and had a large crack in the treble cutaway. Given the later, more Fenderish tailpiece (rather than the doorhinge style on the earlier Morys), my best guess is that this one dates back to sometime between late '65 and '67.
For the past two years, I've been working at a snail's pace to breathe some new life into this thing, and after much stripping, sanding, filling, clamping, soldering, and neck finishing, at long last I'm finally about ready for paint and assembly. Over the next couple weeks, I'll slowly post my documentation of the restoration process, with all its ups and downs, with a focus on some of the unique quirks and features of these guitars sprinkled in along the way.
To get things started, here are a few photos of the body as I received it:
Not looking so bad here...
Original shielding foil, covered in paint and peeling off:
Pretty hefty crack; with more lurking below thick globs of paint:
Regarding the final finish, I originally wanted to paint the guitar in a color it would have come in from Mr. Toshio's workshop: it seems these originally came in a Dakota-ish red, sunburst, pearl white, and perhaps black.
I already have a few cans of Reranch Dakota Red kicking around the garage and was planning on just falling into that direction, but the Olympic White-ish refin the guitar had when I received it had really been growing on me lately. I also have half a mind to go in a more vintage incorrect direction and go for Firemist Gold (inspired in part by MatthewK's awesome refin work in his own Mory resto thread) or perhaps Rosewood Metallic, a Porsche color I had slated for a Jaguar project a while back.
I'm at an impasse on color choice, so curious to hear what the good folks of OSG's thoughts are, hence the poll above!
Not having the energy to try to arrange a purchase through Japanese Yahoo auctions (where these seem to pop up with the most regularity), I stalked eBay and Reverb listings for about a year until back in 2017 I found a Mory JM body, complete with many of its most essential original parts (trem with arm, pickups, pickguard with most of the original wiring), but missing a neck, knobs, rhythm circuit bracket, bridge, and a few other bits and pieces. Not bad! The body, however, was covered in a thick, nasty (latex?) refin, was clearly pretty substantially oversanded, and had a large crack in the treble cutaway. Given the later, more Fenderish tailpiece (rather than the doorhinge style on the earlier Morys), my best guess is that this one dates back to sometime between late '65 and '67.
For the past two years, I've been working at a snail's pace to breathe some new life into this thing, and after much stripping, sanding, filling, clamping, soldering, and neck finishing, at long last I'm finally about ready for paint and assembly. Over the next couple weeks, I'll slowly post my documentation of the restoration process, with all its ups and downs, with a focus on some of the unique quirks and features of these guitars sprinkled in along the way.
To get things started, here are a few photos of the body as I received it:
Not looking so bad here...
Original shielding foil, covered in paint and peeling off:
Pretty hefty crack; with more lurking below thick globs of paint:
Regarding the final finish, I originally wanted to paint the guitar in a color it would have come in from Mr. Toshio's workshop: it seems these originally came in a Dakota-ish red, sunburst, pearl white, and perhaps black.
I already have a few cans of Reranch Dakota Red kicking around the garage and was planning on just falling into that direction, but the Olympic White-ish refin the guitar had when I received it had really been growing on me lately. I also have half a mind to go in a more vintage incorrect direction and go for Firemist Gold (inspired in part by MatthewK's awesome refin work in his own Mory resto thread) or perhaps Rosewood Metallic, a Porsche color I had slated for a Jaguar project a while back.
I'm at an impasse on color choice, so curious to hear what the good folks of OSG's thoughts are, hence the poll above!
