Related Posts
Cleaning and Servicing
The time is upon us to take this RGX121Z apart completely, right down to the nuts and bolts. A great deal of cleaning, scraping, scrubbing, lubing and polishing is on the cards, of that I am sure. After completing these tasks, I'll carefully re-examine each and every item, and make the final decision on what can safely be reused; and what needs to be replaced.
Fretboard
The rosewood fretboard is in poor shape after years of playing and I suspect; zero maintenance. However, it should look and feel much nicer after a light scraping, cleaning and conditioning. As for the 22 frets themselves, they are as grimy and tarnished as can be, but still level along the whole length of the fretboard. The main issue here concerns the fret ends. They're all sticking out, and dangerously sharp. Truth be told, I've never seen fret ends like these before. On any fret, it starts to feel gritty about 1mm from both ends, and then uncomfortably sharp along the edges of the bevels. I'll have to do some "extended" fret end dressing to address this problem, and file a little beyond the edges of each bevel.
 |
| Frets are Level |
 |
| Fret End Dressing in Progress |
 |
| Fret Ends Dressed and Frets Polished |
 |
| Fretboard Conditioned With Lemon Oil |
Hardware
The tremolo bridge, tuners, pickups, and back covers have been disassembled, and are now ready to be serviced. We have quite an assortment of metal and plastic components here, I do say. Among these are the pickup rings, screws and springs, tuner bushings and washers, neck screws, the tremolo base plate, block and mounting screws, saddles, intonation screws and springs, and 12 tiny saddle height adjustment hex screws. Smaller items will be soaked in MultiLube before servicing, while larger ones such as the base plate and tremolo block shall be cleaned and polished right away. The main implements to be employed, besides my two hands, are a mini rotary tool, nylon brush attachments, felt polishing wheels; and metal-bristled "toothbrushes." As for compounds, the ones I'll be using include naphtha, Autosol metal polish, Waxco plastic polish, jeweler's rouge; and beeswax.
 |
| Tuners Disassembled for Servicing |
 |
| Various Screws Before Servicing |
 |
| Bridge Disassembled for Servicing |
 |
| Hardware Servicing in Progress |
 |
| Tuners and Screws After Servicing |
 |
| Bridge Reassembled After Servicing |
 |
| Pickups and Back Cover After Cleaning |
Candidates for Replacement
I've finally been able to identify all the components that will have to be replaced. They've been put into a bowl and set aside. This is to prevent them from getting mixed up with the components that will be reused. Seen in the image below are the tremolo claw, three tremolo springs, two set screw dome knobs, the volume and tone pots, pickup selector switch and output jack; as well as all six pickup springs.
 |
| These Components Will Be Replaced |
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for dropping by. All comments are highly appreciated.