Why is your guitar missing?

You know when you blow a dog whistle and the pooch tilts his head to the side and gives you that quizzical "what the hell?" look? That must have been what I looked like when someone asked me if I had found my guitar. I replied that I wasn't missing a guitar, or at least I thought I wasn't, and why did they think that?

"Because it said so on your blog. Peavey something-or-another MIA!"

Oooooohhhhhhhh......... NOW I see what you're saying. Let me 'splain. A brand of guitar can have many, many different instruments made by more than one factory. Some are in the US and others aren't. Their location of manufacture can be a big clue as to how skillfully the instrument *may* have been made and appropriately affect the value. Next to each project I put the make, model, year of manufacture (if known) as well as the manufacture location (if known). Sometimes it takes a bit of digging to find out where a guitar was made. Often those labels are removed if the country or origin isn't known for producing high-quality instruments or the instrument can just be old and the sticker gone (if there ever was one). Of the (currently) 9 instruments in my house only 3 of them have stickers declaring the country of manufacture. The rest have been identified by research.

The code is thus:

MIA- made in America, specifically the USA. I know some people will balk because Canada and Mexico are also part of (North) America but I'm an old grumpy man set in my ways.



MIC- made in Canada, eh? I don't have any MIC guitars, I just wanted to make the "eh" joke.

OR

MIC- made in China

MII- made in Indonesia

MIJ- made in Japan

MIK- made in Korea

MIM- made in Mexico

MIT- made in Taiwan


So if you see another MIA pop up, I haven't lost a guitar. If I do, it will be painfully obvious.

What the heck is a rattlecan restoration?!?!?!?!

You don't know what a rattlecan is? You know, spray cans. Aerosol cans. A term used to describe low-budget operations i.e. dude can't afford an OSHA spray booth so he uses rattlecans.

After many years of playing guitars and basses and handing over lots of money to the mysterious guitar technician behind the curtain I decided to learn exactly what they did back there. Through this ongoing process I decided to consolidate and post my efforts here at the Rattlecan Guitar Restorations blog (which, by the way, is NOT a business). If I want to learn about Floyd Rose whammy bars, I prowl the second-hand shops around my area until I find a guitar with one at a decent price that allows me to delve into the mysterious workings of the dual-locking tremolo system and if I totally gooch it up, I'm not out a tremendous amount of money. I do find some neat projects as I currently live on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan and come across some rather eclectic brands and styles.

Now there's a downside to living in Japan, too. Parts take time to get here or are expensive when sourced locally. Getting to a well-stocked music store can be an adventure in and of itself. I don't read Japanese so trying to find certain supplies can be a goat rope.

What I did was to make a page for each project (look to the right) and I will add images and developments to each one as they happen since I usually have 1-3 things going on at a time. Subscribe to the blog to get notified of when I post an update.

A word of warning: this is an educational process for me for the most part. I'm totally open to hearing opinions on how to do things. I have a passion for the minutiae of a process. I'll mess things up and make statements that sound crazy, mostly because I simply haven't experienced a situation before. For example, I don't know why there's a special tool for a Telecaster jack because I've never owned one. Yet. Be patient with me. And gentle. I cry easily.

James