No immediately obvious problems with the tuning machines. I might eat these words when it comes to finally stringing this thing up. The neck is in pretty good nick.

The heel and neck joint need careful examination. Often on newer budget guitars you’ll see a big gap opening up here where the joint has failed. There don’t appear to be any obvious problems here other than the big gobs of varnish.

Next up, I’ll show you some problems I found on the outside of the guitar and we’ll finish this first repair blog with some photos of the inside.

Classic crack area #1 is near the pickguard and here is a good example. It appears to the run the length of pickguard and then some. This is an area with a lot of stresses and is also most prone to getting whacked. Once that pickguard’s off, we’ll take a closer look at this.