Another Rehab Story

I recently had a chance to clean up a 1970s Gibson SG Custom.

This guitar had apparently been used by someone who played in Hong Kong nightclubs in the 80s.

Back when people could smoke indoors.

And smoke they did…

When this SG left the factory, its color was approximately like this:

It’s called TV yellow, a color developed in the 50s because white guitars didn’t look good on black & white TV.

Well, after being played by The Marlboro Man for probably a good decade, the guitar ended up covered in sticky tar from cigarette smoke.

I used Scratch-X, a very soft abrasive made to take swirl marks out of automobile paint, to get it off of the guitar.

The idea here was just to clean this thing up, not try to return it to anything resembling a pristine condition.

The salt and acidity of sweat tends to have a negative effect on gold plating. Most of the gold plate on the pickups is gone.

The tar has built up so much that the guitar has no shine.

The smoke even gets underneath the pickguard. You can see here just how much tar there is, and how much it changed the color of the guitar.

I removed the Bigsby-style vibrato assembly to be able to clean this area thoroughly.

I removed the knobs and, since the pots were already loose, dropped them into the cavity to aid in cleaning. Here again you see how much tar is on the guitar.

To be thorough, I even unscrewed the pickup rings, to be able to clean the funky brown stuff that holds the outline of the ring on the body.

Basic before and after of the headstock.

The back of the guitar was even more tarry than the front. Note the buildup near the place where the body joins the neck.

Also note it where the neck meets the headstock.

Pull off the tuners for ease and thoroughness of cleaning…

And we’ve got something worth seeing.

This before and after of the side of the headstock is pretty noticeable.

Sweat, as I mentioned, helped a lot of tar stick to the back of the neck.

All of the neck.

The stripe in the middle is where I’ve started cleaning.

It shines again!!!

This before and after of the back is not so impressive at first, but take a minute and really look at the two photos.

Here she is, all cleaned and reassembled.

This is how the rag started.

This is the rag on its way to chemotherapy.

That last photo is a pretty good argument against smoking.

This guitar will probably leach tar for at least another year, assuming it stays in the open air.

But it’s clean, and a lot better off than it was.

It has a lot of other problems, but it should string up and play okay.