The Steel Guitar Forum

I recently acquired a Fender 2000 which has been badly flood-damaged. Those of you who followed my restoration of the Stringmaster may be interested in the restoration of this instrument. It's a much longer proposition, and I won't be starting it until I've finished the other project.

Here's what it looks like right now....

...more photos.

Wow, you've got some polishing to do there! Looks like a fun project. I get a little jealous since I'm all dried out on projects right now.

Oh,no!! Water rot?

"...and here we have, ladies and gentelmen, recently returned from the deep--the pedal steel guitar played by the Titanic's famous band...."

You have to post all restoration photos on this one! Please! It will be a lesson to all us weekend builders out here!

Alan, I borrowed your style of headline in a new thread with pictures of my MSA-restoration. I hope it is OK!

Alan, I can be of some help with various aspects, the first problem you'll encounter in the disassembly will be the removal of the roller nut unit.

Push out the axle the rollers are on (I use the blunt end of a 3/32 drill bit) and underneath where they were you'll find the screws that hold it in place..I don't think the rollers are 'Gauged' the slots are all the same.

Better get two gallons of Bondo!

John beat me to it. My company does a lot of restoration work, and even before I saw John's post I was planning on posting about Bondo.

The guitar looks like a disaster, but the mechanics can be easily claned up, the frame repainted (or stripped) and the wood, which cause most players to reject such a guitar, is esily fixed and reformed with Bondo. Then I'd get finish from Guitar Reranch, who makes aerosols with a special tip just for painting guitars, in all the Fender custom colors.

You did mean to say "D-10", right?

Feel free to email if you want advice on the Bondo work. It's really not tough to do, just bit time-consuming to get the shapes precise.

Wow, is that painful to look at...

WOW another blue monster! How much for one of the tuner pans?

You got your work cut out for you on that one

No doubt it will be sweet when its done though

Yes, I was planning on using Bondo or something similar. First I'll cut away the rotted parts and make sure there are no woodworm or such still living in there. Cutting the wood away square will allow me to graft in some new wood, too. The frame is the easiest part. That oxidation powder will come off easily, then a wire brush, a clean up and plenty of undercoat.

I don't see this as being a difficult task, just a time-consuming one. One of the tasks, of course, is building a pedal frame from scratch. The work I was going to do on converting a Harlin MultiKord to regular pedals just got pushed back a few months !

Alan, I assume you got a good deal. Can you tell us what you had to pay for the guitar in this condition?........Thanks, JH in Va.

Do you have any "before" photos?

Chris Lucker wrote:Do you have any "before" photos?

Now C'mon.....That was funny !

JC

Jerry Hayes wrote:Alan, I assume you got a good deal. Can you tell us what you had to pay for the guitar in this condition?........Thanks, JH in Va.

It was a package deal. A luthier in Delaware who restored and built pedal steels passed away. His son was just going to throw everything out, as water had seeped into his workshop. I bought his entire workshop of parts and part-completed projects, which included some lap steels in various stages of repair plus two Sho-Buds with parts missing. I don't like to see parts thrown out, so the deal I struck satisfied the son, and I'm going to be stuck with a lot of parts I might never use, but we luthiers gang together in such circumstances. I may well give a lot of the parts away to other luthiers. I think it's something that was drilled into me at an early age. I was brought up in post-war England, where everything was in short supply and food was rationed. My Grandfather used to take old radios to pieces and catalogue the parts, so if neighbors wanted vacuum tubes he was the man to come to. He would never waste anything. I couldn't leave the table until I had eaten everything before me, after all, it was all rationed. When I see someone throwing out old furniture, I look at the wood. I've built many instruments out of wood from furniture picked up at Goodwill. In particular, changing tables are almost always made of maple, which is in short supply. An old changing table can usually be picked up for less than $5 and contains enough wood for several projects. Old doors are another useful source. There's some great walnut and oak in old doors, and the wood has been aged. My first lap steel (1963) I built out of the wood from an old door, and it sounded great.


...as the prophet said, "Waste not, want not..."

I'm not trying to avoid the question. We went through an inventory of the deceased's stock, and the price I put on the Fender in the condition it's now in was $400. I figure I'm going to have to put in six months of weekends. My intention is not to sell it, but to play it. I couldn't afford a 2000 in good condition, but I can afford to buy one that needs work and restore it.

Right now I'm 62, and I'm the Chief Financial Officer of a multi-national multi-million-dollar corporation. Like many baby-boomers I'm sitting on an expensive property which is loaded down with student loans for my (now grown-up) kids,etc. Like most baby-boomers I always wanted to rock and roll with the best, but could never economically give up my day job. I reckon I have about four years of working life before they kick me out for someone younger, at which stage I shall sell the house and move somewhere cheaper. Then I shall have plenty of time on my hands and no income. So I'm accumulating projects !

Chris Lucker wrote:Do you have any "before" photos?

These are the "before" photos ! If you're thinking of before the flood, no, he didn't figure he was going to die and his kids would let his workshop become flooded. I never got to talk to him....

The pickups are not fender and by the looks of the switches underneath, maybe twin coil..
What's the length of the guitar, BECAUSE, I can donate a Fender pedalboard with 10 pedals on it, and a pedal rod and attachment as a pattern for the other 9.





I've just acquired an experimental loafer fender 2000, so here it is, just for reference of the colours etc..

"When I see someone throwing out old furniture, I look at the wood. "
There used to be an "Antique Barn" out in the sticks. The owner bought from "pickers" who scoured Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania for antiques. Mostly furniture. There were always, ALWAYS, orphan drawers, and dresser chest tops.
A Pa. Mennonite-made chest from the 19th century, would usually have highly-figured curly, or tiger maple drawer fronts and tops. Some of my best woods came from orphan furniture parts. I once bought a top that was the most gorgeous maple for $7.50. It was 2' X 4', and an 1 1/2" thick. Keep your eyes open!

Alan,
Good luck with this latest project, it should keep you busy! What year is this 2000, can you read any date codes off of the pots?

Are you on the Fender PSG site yet, that might be another good resource for you:

http://scaryoak.com/forum/index.php

Be careful you don't crush that lap steel that's laying under the 2000.

basilh wrote:The pickups are not fender and by the looks of the switches underneath, maybe twin coil.. ...Yes, I noticed that. What's the length of the guitar, because I can donate a Fender pedalboard with 10 pedals on it, and a pedal rod and attachment as a pattern for the other 9? Wow, what a guy ! The frame is 36 3/4" x 15 1/4" I hope the frame you have is spare, and you're not taking it off another instrument.
I've just acquired an experimental loafer fender 2000, so here it is, just for reference of the colours etc..

That looks great. I have quite a while before I need to decide on the colour. But I can say that it's not going to be blue. Seeing your Stringmaster in blue, and now my 2000, has put me off the colour for good...

Craig Stenseth wrote:Alan,
Good luck with this latest project, it should keep you busy! What year is this 2000, can you read any date codes off of the pots?

Are you on the Fender PSG site yet, that might be another good resource for you:

http://scaryoak.com/forum/index.php

Be careful you don't crush that lap steel that's laying under the 2000.

I haven't got to the stage of dismantling it yet, but the date is one of the first things I'll look for. I expect when I strip off all that paint I'll also find the date under the tuner pans.

Thanks for directing me to the Fender PSG site. I hadn't heard of it before.

The lap steel underneath was part of the package deal. It's an Electromuse which also needs restoration....

Alan, sorry I didn't direct you to our other little home (the Fender steel site) earlier! Please let me know if you need any advice r odd parts - I have a lot of miscellaneous stuff in my workshop.

When you get around to the painting, I suggest using products from Guitar Reranch (www.reranch.com). They have all the Fender custom colors in aerosol form; acrylic lacquer with a special spray tip that does an amazing job. I have ben in the paint business for 35+ years, know my way around conventional spray equipment blindfolded...and have put it all away. I use nothing but Reranch aerosols because they're convenient - and because the spray tip works. Most aerosol tips are terrible, but these allow you to do a perfectly professional job.

They sell the primrs, clear coats and accesories (extremely fine wet-or-dry sandpaper etc) plus have absolutely outstanding instructions on the site.

I've done a half-dozen or so 6-strings this way and they have all been stunning. My favorite (and most surprisign, because it is almost impossible to duplicate with normal spray equipment) is a Shoreline Gold Tele - the gold pigment has to "stand" at a certain angle to achieve the visually-deceptive "depth", and somehow they make it work.

Thanks for the tips, Jim. I'll probably be contacting you as the work progresses.

This afternoon I cleaned out the underside. Surprisingly, there was very little damage to the mechanism. They made these old Fenders tough ! The damage seems to be almost exclusively to the woodwork and metal frame.



So I took a chisel and wire brush to the frame....


Next to clean up the chrome and top to assess the level of the damage...





The damage seems to be entirely confined to the metal and wood on one side of the guitar. With luck it may be possible to restore this instrument without having to remove the mechanism....

basilh wrote:Alan, I can be of some help with various aspects, the first problem you'll encounter in the disassembly will be the removal of the roller nut unit.

Push out the axle the rollers are on (I use the blunt end of a 3/32 drill bit) and underneath where they were you'll find the screws that hold it in place..I don't think the rollers are 'Gauged' the slots are all the same.

Exactly right.

By the way, it's essential not to lose anything, so I always keep old potato salad containers around to put the parts in. Electrical snippers are very useful for removing the pins holding the fingerboards.

Actually, the roller and tuner pan on one side just lifted out, as there was no wood to hold onto. The other tuner had one screw which wouldn't budge, and I had to drill it out and then remove the screw with pliers.


Since then I've been removing decayed wood. It's rather like being a dentist removing decayed tooth material ! More tomorrow....