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So I have this Hofner Shorty I bought a few years ago as a travel guitar. My intention was to take it on Hawaii trips but I ended up using it a lot more than fly vacations because of its convenient size - that's about the only thing this guitar has going on, besides it's lovely Chunky Boi neck. I take it to work every now and then, to parks, road trips, etc. It isn't a joy to play but it's nice to be able to have a guitar to take places, so why not try and make it more playable?
Pic of when it was new:
I had to wipe layers and layers of dye off the fretboard when it arrived. It has neck dive, the tuners aren't consistent as you twist them, the pickup is bright and thin, the bridge and other hardware look a step up from plastic, intonation is horrible, and there's nowhere to anchor your hand except on the bridge.
After finding a pretty cool blog about somebody upgrading their own Shorty, I decide to give it my own shot.
I had already moved the bridge further back away from the nut by using the long screws on either side of the bridge to help get this guitar to Gibson scale and help intonation.
Today I pulled the tuners apart and added Teflon tape to make them more sturdy. They were pretty loose, same as blog dude and he said Teflon tape around the tuning shafts helped tuning stability.
After that I swapped out the pickup for the G&B Bridge pickup that came stock in my PRS S2 Standard. Blog dude said there wasn't a hole drilled for a ground wire to the bridge but there is one in mine.
For grins I decided to set some aluminum foil in the cavity of the guitar and rest the pickup and electronics inside while plugged into an amp. Blog dude did this to his and I was in the fence about it until I tried a little experiment. I had plugged my Spark Go into the guitar to verify that I had wired it up correctly (first try, yay!) but was getting a high pitched hum from my helping hands/LED magnifying viewer so I decided to grab the foil and I'll be damned if it didn't dull the noise considerably.
I used tacky glue to adhere the foil to the wood.
Pic of when it was new:
I had to wipe layers and layers of dye off the fretboard when it arrived. It has neck dive, the tuners aren't consistent as you twist them, the pickup is bright and thin, the bridge and other hardware look a step up from plastic, intonation is horrible, and there's nowhere to anchor your hand except on the bridge.
After finding a pretty cool blog about somebody upgrading their own Shorty, I decide to give it my own shot.
I had already moved the bridge further back away from the nut by using the long screws on either side of the bridge to help get this guitar to Gibson scale and help intonation.
Today I pulled the tuners apart and added Teflon tape to make them more sturdy. They were pretty loose, same as blog dude and he said Teflon tape around the tuning shafts helped tuning stability.
After that I swapped out the pickup for the G&B Bridge pickup that came stock in my PRS S2 Standard. Blog dude said there wasn't a hole drilled for a ground wire to the bridge but there is one in mine.
For grins I decided to set some aluminum foil in the cavity of the guitar and rest the pickup and electronics inside while plugged into an amp. Blog dude did this to his and I was in the fence about it until I tried a little experiment. I had plugged my Spark Go into the guitar to verify that I had wired it up correctly (first try, yay!) but was getting a high pitched hum from my helping hands/LED magnifying viewer so I decided to grab the foil and I'll be damned if it didn't dull the noise considerably.
I used tacky glue to adhere the foil to the wood.
