Global SG Jr. Style
This guitar is an SG Jr. style guitar that graced the Sears, Montgomery Ward, and other retail
outlets catalogs in the mid to late 70's. From what I've been able to discover,
it was made in Taiwan and is a good example of "cheap 70's guitar". I know
it's not a straight-up SG Jr. clone but that's about the best way I've found to
describe it.
It had spent the last 10-15 years in a storage garage in coastal Georgia and had acquired a lot of rust and grime over the years. The original tuning keys (open gear tuners in an odd six-on-a-plate configuration) had completely rusted and fused. I cleaned it up and replaced the tuners with modern sealed tuners. I was concerned about the electronics, but, aside from some static when a knob was turned, it worked.
I put new strings on the guitar (my favorite GHS Boomer 11's) and did a little initial setup work on it. It actually played pretty well for such a cheap guitar that had been ignored in a storage garage for years.
The body is quite thin and light and made of an obvious plywood
The frets reminded me more of narrow vintage Fender style frets than Gibson style frets. There was some unevenness in some of the frets that I spent a little time smoothing out. And, oddly, there were no side dot markers. I may paint some on at some point.
The action is a bit high, but not too terrible. Perhaps some further adjustments can bring it lower if I want although at this point I've made
mostly a dedicated slide guitar tuned
to open G.
Its original tone from its super cheap bar magnet pickups was trashy, but not bad ...except... when I stopped playing sometimes I've noticed that I could hear a local AM radio station through the amp! I could also talk directly into the pickup for an interesting vocal effect. The overall sound has sort of a Hound Dog Taylor flavor to it, particularly when I use a metal slide.
I rewired this guitar in 2006. I replaced the pots with newer 250k pots salvaged from my SX STL-50 project. I also replaced the bar magnet pickup with the Agile P90 from my Agile LP Jr. Since the metal housing was a bit small for the P90 I had to shave down the bobbin a little to get it to fit. Now it looks stock although it has upgraded electronics that produce a much better sound. The external music links feature this new pickup configuration while the media player has a clip from the original pickup.
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