ME301: Crappy First Act to Punk Rock Machine

Its time for another guitar project! Another First Act! This time the guitar is a First Act ME301, basically a stratocaster copy, but with some neat twists. It has a different shaped smaller pick guard, and the headstock is slanted back with a normal nut instead of a Fender style nut in a slot. I got both the guitars in the picture on the same day. I found the Spectrum strat on craigslist for $40 with a Cube 15 amp, that’ll be a project for another day. While I was still messing around with that, my wife came home from her job at a local thrift store and told me they had put out a guitar for $25, so I immediately went out and grabbed what turned out to be this First Act ME301. It was clearly played, but not heavily, and the previous owner was probably a child beginner based on the fret # stickers on the side of the neck. 

For the incredibly cheap price, this guitar seemed perfect for experimenting with some more in depth modification than my previous ME501 project, which was just a repair job. I decided to attempt a re-finish, put a hum-bucker slanted in the bridge position, and create a punk rock guitar for Eb tuning. My vision was inspired largely by Billie Joe Armstrong’s “Blue” strat, and partly by Van Halen’s frankenstrat. I’m afraid I did not take as detailed pictures of the process, which took over a month, but I’ll work with what I got. 

I detached the neck and stripped the body without incident. Although the body is routed HSH, the bridge rout was not going to fit a slanted humbucker. 

Lacking a router, I resorted to an old school method, a chisel and hammer. At this point I did not have a humbucker to size out the hole, so it actually wound up a little too small, and I had to remove a little more wood later on after the re-finish. Luckily I was able to do that without harming the new finish. 

My previous re-finish attempt on my favorite junior ended up a disaster, in large part because in trying to strip the old paint, I chipped the body all up. So this time I simply sanded down the old paint, and sprayed over it. 

I chose a dark red Rust-Oleum 2X paint. About three coats in, I accidentally knocked my hanger loose from the soffet where I had it hooked, and dropped the wet body into a bunch of leaves and junk. I was pretty upset. This is part of the reason why there aren’t a lot of pictures of the paint process, because this accident added a lot of time and frustration. I had to sand back almost all of the first coats of paint. Then I had to fill a dent where the body had hit the ground using plastic wood filler. Then I was able to start painting again. In the end I used the full can of 2X dark red paint over about 4-5 days. I waited three days, then started with Rust-Oleum specialty Laquer. I sprayed a few coats of that each day for another 4-5 days till the can was empty. Then let it hang for a day before taking the body down and bringing it inside. I laid it on a cloth and intended to wait another day or two before starting on the finish. Thats when I learned why people don’t recommend the Rust-Oleum specialty laquer. Although the can says 24 hours to dry, when I checked the next day, the back of the body had the pattern of the cloth fibers imprinted in it, and the laquer was still soft enough to dent with a fingernail. I wound up hanging the body in the storage room closet for another week, until I no longer smelled a paint smell every time I walked in. Even then, the finish was still soft enough dent and scratch easily. I won’t be using the Rust-Oleum laquer as a clear coat again. 

Luckily, all the dents and marks were on the back, and I was able to remove them almost entirely during the finishing process. I wet sanded with 1000 grit, then 2000 grit. I learned my lesson with the ukulele about starting with a heavier grit. I sanded through that finish in a lot of places on that project. This time I erred to the other side, a little bit of lemon peel texture unevenness remained around some of the cavities and edges. But nothing noticeable that I was concerned about. I used a Turtle wax scratch and swirl remover first, then Meguiar’s 205 Ultra Finishing Polish, doing everything by hand with microfiber cloths. The results are pretty good. I am more than satisfied for the purposes of my punk guitar concept. 

Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pictures of widening the hole in the pick-guard to fit the humbucker. That was a total hackjob, I partly used a file, and partly a jigsaw. Its pretty messy, but it gets the job done and again, suits the purposes of my punk guitar just fine. The Humbucker was the cheapest one I could find on ebay, with free three week shipping from china. It cost me less than $9. I got a 52mm pickup, the same width as the single coil I took out, and re used the same holes for the pickup screws. Also off camera I leveled, crowned and polished the frets. Like the ME501, the frets were comfortable on the edges, but horribly uneven, and badly needed leveling. Thankfully, this neck had no warping issues, it is nice and straight. 

The last step was re-assembly and setup. Again, like the ME501, the nut action was insanely high, and I had to remove quite a bit of material from the nut to lower it to be playable. I have three First Act guitars at the moment, and these things have been consistent about their flaws. Uneven frets, horrible nut action and setup, and two out of three have neck warp issues. However, if you can fix those issues, they make fun guitars. I set this one up with Ernie Ball 10’s, tuned to Eb. It holds a tune well enough for a cheap guitar, and that cheap Chinese humbucker sounds great. Its no $100 boutique pickup, but it easily matches an Epiphone or other decent budget humbucker. 

So, end result, I achieved all my goals. I managed a half decent re-finish, I was able to get my slanted bridge humbucker in, and now I have a guitar for Eb tuning. Guitar- $25, Paint- $11, Pickup- $9, total cost $45. Result- fun punk guitar. I left the full functioning of the middle and neck pickups, so I can still use them if I want, although they aren’t the greatest sounding, so it’s unlikely I’ll use them much. The screaming bridge humbucker sound is really what I built this guitar for, and it excels at that. I like it because it has the S type look, but just different enough to have its own character, with the different pickguard and headstock style. Although I am happy with my re-finish job, to complete the look I’ll likely add a A Marine Corps emblem and a bunch of other law enforcement and fire-arms related stickers I have. I like the idea of punking up the guitar with stickers that match my life and personality. 

So to wrap up, once again an incredibly cheap guitar in poor condition can be a lot of fun to fix up, customize, and play. I would never dream of cutting up and re-painting a Fender like this. First Act guitars make great candidates because they have so little street value, and can thus be obtained for insanely cheap prices, but they have solid enough bones to make a fun axe if you put the effort in. This one is definitely a keeper for me. 

My Guitars so Far: How I Got Started

Just for fun, I thought I would share how I ended up getting into repairing and modifying guitars.
The first guitar I ever bought or played was an Alpine acoustic. I make no bones about the fact that I am a huge Green Day fan. Yes their songs are simple, but they are fun, and often filled with emotion. When they released their latest album, Revolution Radio, the last song was an acoustic piece called Ordinary World. The song quickly came to mean a lot to me, and I wanted to be able to play it. I knew there was a little used guitar and instrument store in the local flea market, so I walked in one weekend, and for $50 got the acoustic, some picks, and a strap. Within six months I could play my basic chords pretty well, and learned a bunch of songs, I was pretty hooked. Then I started wanting to play electric guitar. As luck would have it, a close friend of mine gifted me a beautiful Washburn acoustic. Its still by far the nicest guitar I own. It was such a great improvement on the cheap Alpine that I went straight back to that little guitar store, and traded my first guitar in. For my trade in and another $40 I got the cheapest electric he had, a used New York Pro Stratocaster copy, and a Squire 10w practice amp.

Pretty quick I was even more hooked on electric guitar than acoustic. I honestly kind of lucked out on this strat, it's solidly built, and it wasn't terrible to begin with. But as I learned new techniques at a rapid pace, I became interested in making it feel nicer to play. I did some research, and learned about setups. Lowering the action a bit and setting the intonation kept me happy for awhile, but soon I wanted more. I discovered a you tube channel where a guy talked about how to do a fret level using DIY tools. I took a chance and I followed his tutorial. My work wasn't perfect, but it did yield an even lower action. I had so much fun improving my guitar I decided I wanted to try more. Enter electric guitar #2. 

I found this Epiphone LP Junior in a pawnshop. I got it for $40. It was in rough shape, dirty, terrible plastic nut, uneven frets. Unlike my strat, it really wasn't playable when I got it. I attacked its issues with enthusiasm, researching each problem and solution online. I did another DIY fret level, cleaned all the hardware, and replaced the nut with a better pre-slotted plastic nut from a local guitar store. 

Once it was repaired I completely fell in love with the Junior. I already was interested in juniors because Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong plays them. After I got one, I could see some reasons why. Its just a fun, workhorse kind of guitar, and very comfortable to play. This one has a fat baseball bat neck, which I love. 

Around this time I also repaired a violin. On a visit to my Wife's grandmother, we found my wife's first violin in the attic. She owns a very nice handmade violin, the one we discovered had been her childhood student instrument. The tailpiece was broken off, it looked ruined. But with the confidence from fixing up the Junior, I did some research, and learned what was needed to fix the violin. It was only a $6 part, a gutstring that attaches the tailpiece to the body. After that all that was needed was new strings and properly placing the bridge, which I was able to do. 

My next project was an Ibanez acoustic. I spotted it in facebook marketplace for $20. It was a teenager's first guitar, which he had played till it fell apart. The nut had broken in half and was gone, one tuner had stripped out its setscrew, and was useless, and some of the string begs had broken off inside the tailpiece and were stuck down inside the holes. I grabbed it primarily because I was curious if I could fix it, and for $20 I didn't feel like I would be out much if I couldn't. 

I had some trouble finding a nut for this guitar at the local stores. I obtained a couple different plastic nuts, which were the correct width but too low. In the end I shimmed a nut up by gluing card to the bottom. I was able to get the broken string pegs out, and fill the stripped screw hole for the tuner. In the end I got a nice playing acoustic for $30 total. This project is the one that really awakened my passion for finding cheap guitars in poor condition, and fixing them up. 

The last thing I did before obtaining the ME501 was my attempt to re-finish my Junior. I always hated the orange burst finish on it. I had watched a few videos on re-finishing, and decided to go for it. I am not afraid to say that I failed miserably. I tried to strip the old paint with a hairdryer and scraper. I don't think the hairdryer was hot enough, because the paint chipped off rather than peeling, and left gouges and dings in the wood that ranged from minor, to pretty deep. Its a plywood body, which probably didn't help. I sanded back some of it, but not enough. So when I started spraying, it was already uneven. Then I got in a hurry, and over-sprayed pretty badly. I didn't mask well enough which resulted in some bleed, and then lastly I over-sprayed the clear coat, which in addition to making some ugly runs and bubbling, actually caused the paint underneath to run. I didn't even bother trying to wet sand and buff at the end. I basically messed up every single step. It looks like a spray painted piece of wood, rather than a guitar finish. With that said, my love for this guitar is not diminished at all. I still prefer its current look to that orange burst I hated. Its my main punk rock guitar anyway, and the crappy paintjob is ok for that. I learned a lot of valuable lessons that will help in the future. 

That pretty much sums up how I got started. I am hardly an expert at this, I am sharing what I do in large part to create a record for myself. But also because I hope if any other budget guitarists stumble across my ramblings they'll be inspired to try some DIY work themselves. There's plenty of bargain basement guitars out there that just need a little love to become a fun axe.