I love how brand new knobs and Mby some pickup rings can make that old guitar feel new.
Me too. It helps keep the GAS at bay at times.
I think it's awesome that you actually know how to do all this stuff. Every time I tried to mod one of my guitars in the past, I screwed it up.
Believe me, I've flat out ruined guitars before on my journey to "kinda knowing what I'm doing".
Like my very first guitar, a Kawai Silvertone. I wanted a Les Paul, so I took it apart and tried to build a body for it outta scrap wood from the garage. I was 13 yrs old.
My first amp wasn't loud enough for band practice... So I took apart my bitchin' Gorilla amp and built a new cabinet for it and added two speakers from my parents Fisher home stereo. I had no clue about wattage or anything and thought that two speakers would be, you know, louder.
Then there was the time in high school where my freshly divorced mother bought me a Charvel Fusion with three single coils (two of 'em ganged together at the bridge) that I wanted based purely on looks. I took it to band practice, decided it needed a humbucker, came home hours later, and started carving it out with a flathead screwdriver. The look of terror on that poor woman face... I successfully completed the mod only to destroy the guitar a couple years later when I tried scalloping the fretboard (freehand) with a dremel and the sanding wheel attachment.
A couple of months ago I was drunkenly perusing Craigslist and saw an ESP M1 "Custom Build" for sale... My heart sank when I immediately recognized it as one of my old guitars that I had stripped, stained, and modded when I was like, 17 years old. Dude was asking $700 for a guitar I had essentially ruined with all the skill and materials of one of those 1980's A-Team montages.
It's not completely my fault though.. I wasn't raised poor, but I was left alone a lot and my parents didn't buy me everything I wanted. My first bike was my sisters hand-me-down girls bike with a piece of electrical conduit to turn it into a "boys" bike. Summers with my depression-era grandparents were spent alone in the basement with power tools and bandaids, and my mom refinished every piece of furniture and wood flooring in the house herself. Come to think of it, I never once saw a repairman come over to our house growing up either. I suppose it's a learned trait.