#dot studio

Epiphone: Dot Studio (Custom/Refurbished)

Circa: 2002

The saving of an Epiphone Dot Studio guitar.

I picked up an Epiphone Dot Studio the other night for $100 cash. And I probably overpaid for it, at that. Dusty, rusty, and set up wrong, I bought it without being able to check to see if the electronics worked at all. Since owning a 1974 Gibson ES335 back in the 1970’s when I was playing in a college band, and then having to sell it when I was a very poor new father, I’ve wanted another hollow or semi-hollow body guitar. It just fits my style, and it fits with the way I like to play, and the songs that I want to play. I’ve always been a Stephen Stills and Mike Nesmith fan, and a huge fan of The Beatles, especially the sound they got from their hollow body guitars. So getting another hollow body was high on my list. Just not the cost of a Gibson ES335. Especially a 1970’s Gibson. So the Dot Studio it is. Plus, being a native Michigander, I’ve always had a soft spot for Gibsons and Epiphones. They were made in Kalamazoo, MI. This particular guitar’s serial number put it as one made in January of 2011 in Epiphone’s Qingdao, China plant.

Before I get any further, I would like to say that a stock Epiphone Dot Studio is a semi-hollow body guitar with two pickups, one volume, one tone control and a three way toggle to switch between the two. It has a rosewood fretboard, maple neck and mahogany top, back and sides. The scale length is 24 ¾”. The pickups are Vintage Alnico V Plus humbuckers. It is the bare-bones semi-hollow body guitar from Epiphone, and as such, they run about $270-$280 new on eBay plus shipping or about $320 in your local guitar store.

Giving it a good look over, I noticed that there was hope for this cheap guitar. The bones were solid. Neck was in good shape, and nothing about the body was damaged in any way, other than dust and dirt. Yes, the strings were rusty, but hey, you have to change the strings every once in a while anyway, so that never adds in to my equation. Noticeable were a couple of things that could be seen with no expertise whatsoever. First of all, things had been changed on the guitar. The volume and tone knobs had been changed from the stock Black Speed knobs to some knobby chrome things. Kind of reminded me of the teenager that puts a spoiler on the back of a Ford Focus to make it look hot. Doesn’t work that way. Putting chrome knobs on this guitar didn’t make it rad, or hot, or anything other than kind of silly. Next, I noticed that the humbuckers didn’t match. One looked to be the stock Epiphone humbucker that you can see in any picture of an Epiphone Dot, but there’s really no way of knowing for sure until you pull it apart. The other humbucker was definitely different. Didn’t have the chrome posts and wasn’t incased in the outer shell, just tape wound. Looked like it could be home made. Again, can’t be sure until you take everything apart.

Tuners looked stock, nut – stock, bridge – stock. All in pretty good shape. Jack port was loose, but that’s an easy fix.

Now for the part that takes a good eye. The neck.

The good part about looking for warp on a guitar neck is that you have a straight edge right on top – the strings. Hold down the strings at various frets and see if you have upward or downward bend in the neck (curable with the truss rod), and also if you have any warp left to right (not curable by anything). Also check to see if the strings are running closer to one edge or the other to see if the neck has been put on correctly. This neck looked pretty good. Slight upward bow that a slight turn of the truss rod could correct. It was put on straight, and the frets looked to be really good with no appreciable wear. Yes, I could see dirt on the frets that had built up, but that can be cleaned with a little elbow grease.

The body was free of defects. No dings, no chips, no belt buckle marks. The finish is Worn Cherry in a satin finish. Actually looks pretty sharp. I may take it to a glossy finish, but that’s a way down the road.

All this panned out really good on this cheapo, so I purchased it without caring about the electronics. The guy who sold it to me said he paid $250 for it last year. So why sell it for only $100 this year? Could be he needed the money. Could be that he knew something I didn’t yet.

Took it home and plugged it in. And guess what? One of the humbuckers didn’t play at all, and the other was getting horrible feedback. So much so, I would have guessed that I was maxed out on a distortion pedal. And this was the clean tone – so to speak. Anyway, it was a train wreck. Time to pull it apart and see what was going on inside.

Once the strings were off, it was time to start digging around the inside. Semi-hollow body guitars are not the easiest to work on. You don’t have a removable access panel like on some solid body guitars. Everything must be through either the pickup holes or the f holes on the guitar. So, unscrew, and carefully start pulling things out through the f hole. And that’s where I started to see things. Ugly things. First, and this is huge, not every wire was attached or terminated. It looked like someone had done a re-wiring job, and really didn’t know what they were doing. Bad soldering, wires barely hanging on, some had broken off, burned casings around the wire ends, wires cut too short. The works. The two humbuckers were not positioned correctly. They should be opposite directions, but they weren’t. And, to top it off, the wiring was wrong. I don’t know what they were trying to do, but they definitely put a short in the works with their wiring. This thing wasn’t going to work from the get-go. What is a get-go anyway?

Like I suspected, one of the humbuckers was a stock Epiphone humbucker. It looked in good condition. The only downside was that it was a bridge humbucker in the neck position. Not a major thing – and hey, he could have done that on purpose to get a certain tone. But based on the lack of care, technique or style, I’m guessing he just didn’t know what he was doing. The other turned out to be a DiMarzio DP151 PAF Pro humbucker. Also a bridge pickup, this one is a little more versatile for what position it’s in, and also a pretty good pickup on its own. They retail new for about $80, so this actually gave me some hope about turning this junker into a gem. The bad part was that they didn’t have four matching screws for the mounting rings. Mother puss-bucket that pisses me off. Take the time, spend an extra 25 cents, and get matching screws that fit the job. How lazy can you get? Arrrgggghhh!!! So, what to do now? Well, start from scratch. Cut all the parts apart. Take them out of the guitar and see what is salvageable. The pickups look pretty good, with the exception of the burned wires. So, I’m going to try to sell the DiMarzio for $40 to try and take down my expenses on the repair job on this guitar. This leaves me a humbucker short. So to the store I go to pick up a Seymour Duncan ‘59 Neck humbucker. That was an extra $75 in to the cost of the guitar. The stock Epi humbucker will move back to the bridge position. If the Epi humbucker doesn’t pan out with the ’59, I can always go back and pick up another bridge ’59 to match them. But let’s see if this goes as planned first. Why keep the stock Epi pickup and sell the DiMarzio? Why not use the better pickup in the guitar? Well, even though the DiMarzio would be considered a better pickup, it’s really not right for a semi-hollow body guitar. It is a bit too “hot” for this style of guitar. It’s much better suited for a solid body electric, especially one that you are going for a bit more “metal” sound. Use the right tools for the job, I always say. You can take a screw out of a wall with a hammer, or a saw, or a butter knife for that matter, but the best tool is a screwdriver. The best tool for a semi-hollow body isn’t the DiMarzio. It may be more expensive, but that doesn’t make it the right one to use.

Running total at this point is $175.

What else can be saved? Well the pots were better than expected. JS 500K pots that (besides the glob job on the soldering) looked to be ok. There was a .022uF ceramic cap soldered to one. I haven’t checked to see if it’s still good, or if they fried it, but it’s going anyway. An upgrade is in order. Since we’re using humbuckers in this guitar, the .0022uF is a good choice, but I’m going with the classic Orange Drop cap. I go and purchase a few of them (for this and other projects) so this purchase was a total of $11 for the caps.

Running total at this point is $186.

The three-way toggle is really gummed up. It’s going to take some work to remove all the solder from this and see if it is salvageable. But if I can save it, I want to. It’s a stock Epi switch, nothing fancy, but then again, the switch doesn’t need to be fancy, it just needs to work without interfering with the sound. If I can keep this closer to stock, without spending more money, that’s the point of this whole exercise.

The chrome knobs have to go. They look great on a Telecaster, when you have other chrome pieces to go with, but not on this guitar that has absolutely no chrome on it. All the metal pieces are black. The bridge, the tuners, the nut, the trim, all black. So the chrome is going. New Gibson speed knobs are $14 for four, but I only need two. So I’ll have two extra for some other project.

Running Total at this point is $200.

Whew! I’m getting close to the price of a new Dot Studio. What have I gotten myself in to?

Time to see if the jack still works. At this point, every dollar counts. I can’t afford to put more in to this guitar and I’m not counting my time spent at all. It will need to have the solder cleaned off and new wiring. The nut looks a little worn on the fourth string, but it’s serviceable. As long as it doesn’t mute the string, I’ll be leaving that on. I can change it out later with a Tusq nut (which I’ve put on other guitars before, and I like working with the material). But that is a $10 upgrade that I don’t need to do right now. The bridge is fine. It’s a stock tune-o-matic bridge and a stopbar tailpiece with no scrapes and looking pretty good. Now for the good part. I’ve got a lot of wire and solder from previous work. Also, I already have all the tools I need for this job. So there are no extra costs for those components.

The wiring is easy, as Seymour Duncan has a site with wiring schematics. Very handy. I highly recommend Seymour Duncan. Their pickups are great, and their site is really good. You can listen to sound clips of their huge line of pickups to choose what you want for your guitar. Really a great site. www.seymourduncan.com That’s a straight up plug. I’m getting no kickbacks for pumping their site at all. Maybe I should. Something to think about…. On to the cleaning. Time to start taking the solder off the parts that I’m trying to save. I also need to make a wiring board to put all the pieces in for the wiring/soldering.

Ugh.

After 5 hours of making a jig, de-soldering, re-soldering, and trying to fit everything back in the Dot, I have failed somewhere. Having skipped the step of testing everything before putting it back inside, and relying completely on my superior intellect and electrical skills, I now have a guitar that doesn’t work. Why? I don’t know. I’ll have to pull it all back out and start from the beginning again. Poopmeister.

New purchase – a pre-made NOS (stands for New Old Stock, or New Original Stock depending on who you believe) wiring harness for an Epiphone. This is direct from the Epi factory in China and is costing me an additional $13.00. With Alpha 500k pots, an Epi three-way toggle and a .0022uF cap, it’s like starting fresh from the factory.

Running total is now $213. Getting out of hand here.