Korean Thunder II rebuild.(Another project, another mistake!)

Over the last week I have become the less than proud owner of a late model version 4 Thunder II (Korean, bolt neck, H/S/S p-up's). At the moment it's another ugly looking rebuild project to add to the ever growing graveyard that is my guitar collection! I've spent the last few days sorting out what parts are still there and what I need to get and have a few questions that I'd like answered if possible.

The Bendmaster Deluxe trem has cleaned up great and seems to be complete. I have ordered a new trem arm collet because some monkey armed with a pair of pliers has tried to tighten the original one and chewed it to pieces. The original collet has a metal washer and a nylon washer on it, I was wondering if anyone could tell me in what order these are supposed to go together and also, which way the bottom half of the collet that screws up under the plate is fitted. Is it with the slot nearer the underside of the plate or not?

The proper Bendmaster locking nut that should be on this guitar has long gone and it looks like I'm going to have to fit a Floyd Rose type locknut instead. I just wanted to know if anybody has had any trouble fitting or using these? I can't see a problem with this personally but I wanted to check and see if anybody has tips about using them on Westones with BD trems.

Another area that needs attention is the trem posts and their bushes. I have the original ones but the posts are rough and chewed up (pliers again!) and the chrome has started to flake off them. One of the posts is currently locked solid in it's bush and If I can't save them I might have to go with the Floyd ones. I've read through some of the info elsewhere on the forum and wanted to know if using the Floyd type posts is going to give as many problems as it sounds?

The bushes have been chipped where they have been levered out of the body, and the holes in the body are worn and slack. I'm going to try and use the Floyd type bushes instead, I believe they have the same M5 thread. The original bushes are about 8mm OD where as the Floyd's I've seen are quoted as 9mm OD, hopefully this might tighten up some of the play in the holes. If all else fails could use one of those trem post re-enforcement plate's to hold it all together.

It's fair to say the rest of the guitar is a bit of a turd at the moment, and it's going to need a hell of alot of polish to put it right! It was originally red then primer, then black and now it has a horrible sticky brown toffee like gunk all over it. Better still, at some point the fingerboard has been painted black and then removed with very coarse glass-paper rubbed across the board! The good news is that it still had it's original knobs! They are the plastic type reverse taper one's and they haven't been painted, which made a nice surprise! I haven't even got onto the electrics yet, that looks like a whole new world of pain!

DAN. (EBAY PRAYS ON THE WEAK AND FEEBLE!)

(EBAY PRAYS ON THE WEAK AND FEEBLE!)

Yes, it does, Dan and I've just gone and bought an APII RS Inazuma I, from the US when I said I wouldn't - I have the willpower of an eggplant!! Anyway, to Bendmasters...

There are posts in here that deal with exactly every point you've raised, so have a hunt about and see if you cannot find 'em - I'll see if I can find 'em as well!

The FR stuff is not a bolt on fit; everything is different so make sure that you wanna go that way before you start; I think Colt may have something to say about that as he's been down that road.

Kahler do a behind-the-nut stringlock which is as good as anything out there atm; one of the lads in here has grafted on a FR nutlock and it worked very well; it did, however, require a fair amount of fiddly woodwork.

The bridge post inserts are probably the nastiest things to do if you wanna do it properly; I mean, you could just glue 'em in and job done but what you will have to do to tighten the holes is plug them and re-drill. That will only work if the knurling on the inserts is still in OK condition, if not you can have a machinist re-do them, if you want. The other problem with plugging the holes is getting the right bit of wood for the job - you should really use a piece of real wood - preferably in what the rest of the top is made of! - and with the grain running in the same direction which means you've got to cut quite a decent size hole as you want your insert to be well seated into it's woody hole, eh... ! It goes without saying that your measurements have to be millimetre precise.... One of my Clippers had dodgy posts which I agonised about for ages before finally doing the above fix and the job, while a bit fiddly, is well worth having a crack at; take it slowly and you'll be right!

Best you show us what you're dealing with here, eh!!

The old photo plea again!......I'm on it.

If I'm being honest I can't see the diameter of the FR bushes making much difference, the holes in the body are tapered. In fact when I got one of the bushes out of the body, some genius had managed to coat the outside of it in solder to fatten it up!

I have found another problem. The tremolo spring claw that was in the parts bag that came with the guitar has it's mounting screw holes at 30mm apart. The screw holes in the cavity are 35mm apart? Does the BD trem have a unique spring claw just to upset me?

DAN.

DuoFuzz wrote:... Does the BD trem have a unique spring claw just to upset me?

Yes.
It's the price we pay for the love of old Japanese wood n wire.
Good luck with passing your, um, turd.

You didn't pay good money for this one did you Dan?

I paid £47 all in, £35 for the guitar and £12 for p+p.

DAN.

Ah, that's OK then.

Small price to pay for the hours.... and hours.... and hours of fun you're going to have putting this one right

As promised here is some photo's of one fugly Thunder! Sick buckets at the ready.








Under that toffee like finish seems to be whats left of a ply veneer front and back, notice the cross grain?
As for them long thin area's of damage, I think its probably wood filler covered cracks, but it could be a wood fault of some sort but nothing I've ever seen before.


The neck has a surprising amount of flame maple up one side on it.




I don't think the neck is the original, it doesn't match the one pictured over on Westone.info. That one has two broad walnut stringers separating the maple sections, this one looks to be an all maple construction and there is no serial number anywhere. This hasn't been re-drilled so it may have came from similar model? You might just make out the remains of paint under the frets, it was all black at some point.




The BD trem is now sporting the new collet I got from Spares today (cheers David!), notice the old chewed up one. Using lots of heat I managed to remove the bush that was locked onto the trem post, apart from the chrome flaking the posts are in good shape.
I'm looking out for a wider spring claw with it's screws 35mm apart to match the holes in the body, this one is only 30mm.

Quick question - is the BD trem supposed to have a spring tension plate under the back of the saddles like a Floyd Rose? I ain't got one!


The electrics might need some re-wiring! Don't know why I have four switches, it only uses three.
(I reckon two of them got it together and gave birth to the baby one on the right!)


The pickups are plain nasty. The humbucker and it's surround have been melted by something, looks like paint stripper? The single coils don't match. The top one is encapsulated with red epoxy and has threaded brass inserts for the height adjustment. Strange thing is the guitar has body mounted single coils that wouldn't use these inserts, they should have a clearance hole? not original then. That neck plate looks wrong without the Matsumoku name on it, don't you think. Do you reckon Westone Spares would have spare white dots available for the control knobs, I appear to have lost one (Only joking!).

OK there you go, let the piss taking commence!

DAN.

Seems like you have a project on your hands, man, but not an altogether lost cause, eh!! The white dot fix will be just a drop of white enamel in the wee hole; job's a good 'un!

AFAIK, there's nothing under the BD saddles like what you're describing; I've never used a FR so I don't really know.

I hope that the h/b is a true h/b and not the rubbish things that the Koreans threw into the likes of my Clippers; they are actually 2 s/c bolted together and you activate the p'ups by those mini-switches which are on/off, or in the case of the "h/b" switch on/off/on (s/c/off/2 x s/c)... an utterly horrid arrangement, imo!! I whacked MMK45's into the Clippers; still undecided as to what to do with the s/cs....

Still, it'll be interesting to watch it come together and I look forward to progress reports!! What colour are you thinking?

FWIW.
As i see the big picture....

Grab the yellow pages and look for someone performing furniture blasting in your area.
These guys blast with what i believe is walnut crush,and it´s all aimed at getting woods clean.
Ie,cupboards that need refinishing and what have you not.

Read up on the post i made about refretin...

Yank the frets out of there taking care not to damage the fretboard.

Leave both the neck and body to the blasting guys.Cost for this,at least around here,is pretty negligable and beats sanding it down any day of the week.
What you should get back is one clean pup,and that makes the whole project about a ton easier to assess.

Inspect any and all cracks in the body.Decide on what needs to be pressure filled with resin and what will suffice with mere wood bondo.
Work from there.
As you finalize the bondo/resin part start sanding to what should resemble some sort of finish.

I for one would stand back at that point and make a decision as far as colouring at that point.

Don´t be misled though.
That right there is one massive project to become a guitar with any standard again.

At the moment I'm think of re-painting it red, it looks like that was the original colour but then again my plans could change.

And as for the H/B switch I think you might be right John, that red toggle is an on/off/on type. The pickup itself has fallen to pieces, the base plate is loose but the coils are stuck to the inside of the cover.

Hi Racing, I've been following your re-fretting post, good stuff.
If you think the neck above is bad then check out this fine specimen from my 1982 Thunder 1 project that still needs sorting out!.



Wish me luck....

DAN.

Yikes Dan, yer going to be a busy young fella!
(Kinda like that toffee look, but it makes me hanker for a box of Macintosh Toffee)

I was thinking pretty much the same as Jesper, i.e., a commercial approach to stripping her. The walnut shell blast is a good idea. I'm not sure I've heard of it around these parts though. I don't think I'd want to be spending the days of my life trying to take her down by hand, Lord knows you have enough else to do on the restoration front!

I was curious though about the plywood veneer construction. This comes as a surprise to me. I know the Aria Stray Cat line sported some ply construction but I thought Mats used a solid wood construction in the Thunders?! Those cracks are nasty looking too. Stress fractures of some kind? Hope they don't turn out to be a major problem for you.

If it is indeed plywood I presume you'll be painting as opposed to staining. Red would work but average methinks. How about sumptin' in a green range for a change, or really go crazy and go Gretsch orange!!

Looks exactly like my Thunder II project did. Thin veneer top and bottom covering a solid wood body, cracks in the body - not too deep, just a few milimeters, all maple neck.

Very best of luck to you!!

Hi Barry. Yeah it looks like a lot work up ahead for me.

Until I remove the finish the body construction is making no sense at all to my eyes. It is made from 4-5 planks of solid wood with veneers over the front and back.

I may have an explanation for this. I have a Hondo II guitar (don't laugh!) I'm re-building, It's a copy of a Fender Lead II model and when I got it the original colour was black. When I stripped it down the body was the same, made with 5 planks covered in a couple of veneers. This model was available in a sunburst finish and the veneer was there to give the illusion of a solid ash body, I guess they used the same bodies for all colours to keep the costs down. I wonder if these Korean Thunders were to be painted in sunburst finishes?

The cracks are odd. They are more like filled gouges 1/4" wide by about 1/4" deep in places. They don't start from any screw holes or the usual stress points in the corners of the neck joint. Some of them are really short, starting and stopping away from any possible stress points. Some of them are even diagonal across the body. Maybe the veneer was there to hide these marks from the factory?

I'm not set on a colour yet but it will be a solid or metallic colour, there is no way this body will ever take a stain or a clear coat.

Hi Admin, I saw your project after I had put my bid on this one. Yours looked very tempting!

DAN.

Quick update, I got the varnish stripped off the body.


The front veneer was already pretty much gone so abusing it with some 60 grit on a palm sander cleaned up the rest of it. The dark patches are whats left of the glue used for the veneer. Turns out the body is made from four planks of wood.


The veneer on the back seems to have survived better so I went easy on it. The yellow patches visible on the veneer is what remains of the original factory underseal, it's still present on the sides of the body and rib contour aswell.




As for this damage, my latest theory now is the repairer has opened up the cracks in the wood then filled them with a mixture of wood dust and glue. All of these repairs were cut through the veneer, so I doubt that they are factory repairs. I still can't see how the body cracked in the first place, the cracks on mine don't seem to follow the grain or body joints? Admin has a picture of his T-II HERE, it's a Korean model the same as mine and it to had a cracked up body. I'm thinking that either the wood wasn't dried out properly before it was used, or the wood has some kind of inherent structural weakness. Any ideas?

Next step is to try and clean out the routs and get rid of that horrible varnish.

DAN.

DuoFuzz wrote:Quick update, I got the varnish stripped off the body...
As for this damage, my latest theory now is the repairer has opened up the cracks in the wood then filled them with a mixture of wood dust and glue. All of these repairs were cut through the veneer, so I doubt that they are factory repairs....

I think you're right Dan. Those do not look like "natural" fissures. Right repair intentions perhaps, but obviously the wrong repair material was used which just highlighted the flaw rather than concealing it.

...I still can't see how the body cracked in the first place, the cracks on mine don't seem to follow the grain or body joints?...I'm thinking that either the wood wasn't dried out properly before it was used, or the wood has some kind of inherent structural weakness. Any ideas?

Ahh, again I think you may be correct Grasshopper.
My guess is that there were significant differences in moisture content between the main body wood and the veneer when it was applied. One or the other suffered as a result of the difference in coefficient of expansion of the mis-match. The veneer being the less structural of the two took a hell of a beating as a result methinks.
The irregular fracture lines are following the inherent weakness in the veneer rather than the substrate wood.

All said 'n' done Dan, the body design is still beautiful. Whatever you do is gonna make her a wonderful machine again!
Fill 'er in, sand 'er down, paint 'er up, and rock on my son!

If you put it back together as is, you would have one hell of a "road-worn" or "reliced" or whatever-you-want-to-call-it guitar.

There is that!
Fender, Vintage, et al, charge a pretty penny to make their new stuff look old. You got yours for free--more or less.

Hey Dan,

I noticed this on fleabay and my first reaction when I saw it was... AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Reading through your post made me realise something though; When I bought my Clipper Six and stripped all the horrid glue, gunk and other nasties off it, I discovered that it was made up of five seperate lumps of wood with veneer on the front and back, the same as yours! This makes me wonder if Uncle Mat did sometimes cut corners now and again and used up all the odd lumps of wood that were left lying around????

Good luck with it mate, you've got a mammoth task on yer hands with that one!

Polly

Polly wrote,

I noticed this on fleabay and my first reaction when I saw it was... AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

That's my reaction every time I look at it!

Does anyone know who was building these guitars in Korea? I don't have a serial number on this but the Matsumoku name has been erased from the neck plate so it's not Japanese made Uncle Mat guitar. The quality is nowhere near that of the earlier stuff but then again, it's maybe a sign that the company was starting to cut costs by the late 80's.

DAN.

Pollyanna wrote:...When I bought my Clipper Six and stripped all the horrid glue, gunk and other nasties off it, I discovered that it was made up of five seperate lumps of wood with veneer on the front and back....

I am currently "rescuing" a 1981 Vantage Avenger AV310 which was unmercifully rattle can painted and stickered, and after stripping away the mess, I discovered that it too was built using 5 separate pieces of wood (no veneer though).
LINK

Similarly my beautiful 1981 Avenger AV325, finished in trans red, is made up of several solid pieces, again no veneer.
LINK
The only difference between them seems to be the aesthetics of the wood grain. The 310 was meant to be solid coloured, the 325's was meant to be seen. So, it's pretty clear that Uncle Mats did make up some guitars out of bits and pieces, albeit still using a decent grade of wood, right from the start.

What we're seeing here with the MIK's is likely as you say, left over 'sub-standard' (for a Mats) woods covered with a more even grained veneer.

I don't see how the grain on the blue one was any less nice, Barry. And I love the denim look it has now!

Warrn wrote:I don't see how the grain on the blue one was any less nice, Barry.

Thanks Warrn. The wood on the 310 is still good quality, but there is a difference in the graining. A couple of sections are quite dramatic and "swirly", as on the 325, but other sections are very tight grained and unremarkable looking. Overall it's not as evenly matched, as the 325's.

And I love the denim look it has now!

Yeah, a completely accidental outcome! I was trying, vainly, to come close to the spectacular trans blue finish on Kees' Cardinal Skylark.

Couldn't do it...
But my "denim baby" still looks pretty nice. Certainly an improvement over the rattle can paint job! Next major step is a bridge replacement.

Perfect opportunity to fill it with 2 pack car filler and glue a nice figured veneer(maple) smashin'n paint job and stick it on ebay. Probably want to keep it after all that.