OffsetGuitars.com

[see the post with big pictures below for how this project went !]

I finally found someone willing to trade an interesting (to me) guitar for my unused and very crappy Harley Benton 12-string acoustic, bought on a whim 2 years ago.

So here it is, an Alba PRS-style hollowbody. A friend told me this was a chinese brand sold mostly on ebay, around 100€, and I kinda remember really tacky pictures with scantily clad models holding guitars.

It looks kinda nice in person and plays well, but the action is a bit too high and the bridge is already as low as it can go. I'll give it some days to to gradual trussrod adjustments, but the neck joint seems to have been repaired in a diy-way, so low action might be a lost cause.. I'lll set it up for slide or pass it on then !

The electronics work fine, the humbuckers are way too hot but clean up nicely with the volume pot.

I already have some ideas for mods, but I don't know if I'll be able to refinish it. We'll see !

It looks nice, it would be a shame if it didn’t play or sound as good as it looks.
Hopefully you can improve that, because that would be a nice guitar for pretty cheap.

Well, the black paint was already flaking badly in some places because of a weird neck repair, and I already had 3 black guitars anyway...

I might have gone overboard with the sanding/scraping and the mishmash of parts :


I still need to find a way to keep this tabless/screwless chinese hofner pickup in place !

Its looking good as it is.

Hope it is sounding the same !

It's pretty much finished for now :


It's got a pair of cheap single-coils, which are to me often more inspiring than cheap humbuckers. It's pretty much the case with those, even though the neck pickup is a single bobin and the ceramic magnet from a broken Chinese humbucker

It's in open D with tapewound strings, they pair really well with those pickups and with this particular guitar, but as i've put this set of strings on two other guitars before they are starting to unravel, and I don't want to spend 20€ on a set of strings right now. We'll see !

It doesn't make much sense but this guitar was inspired by Blake Mills Coodercasters, even it has nothing in common with them. So... Let's dig out my slide and try to figure this out !

With the help of a pack of strings for 5-strings bass and some random parts laying around, I've succesfuly converted this into a bass VI - tuned guitar !

Some finished pictures :







And I even made a video explaining the process :

That is insane. Play it in good health!