Welson Hollowbody

After building two Telecasters and a Strat/Tele for my daughter I noticed an old Welson Hollowbody for sale on Marktplaats. I placed a bid. I don't even know why. It seemed like a challenging project I guess.

The advert told it was only a body and a neck. There was absolutely no hardware present. On the neck a few frets and an inlay were missing.

A bit of googling learned that Welson is sixties Italian guitar brand, just like Eko. See this website.

It turned out that my bid was the highest, so a few days later I received the guitar (or better, the remains of it...).

To be honest, opening the box gave me a bit of a shock. A very old body. The finish all cracked. No hardware. And dirty.

The neck didn't look much better, but is seemed quite straight. A bit of cleaning of both parts already made me happier.

Getting over the first shock, I already began to see what could be possible.

The body is very light-weight. It is completely hollow.

The neck is a bolt on. No backplate or screws present.

Te remaining frets on the neck were quite worn out, especially in the lower positions. A complete re-fretting job? I had never done that before.

As I had a visit planned to Rob, my new guitar building friend, I took the Welson with me for some good advice.

He thought the neck was worth re-fretting, and he was also confident that with a few instructions I could manage that job. He already took all the frets out for me with a special pair of pliers and sold me a new set of Fender frets to work with.

I also read some instruction on the internet about refretting a guitar neck, and decided to give it a go.

First I cleaned and sanded the fretboard a bit. Then blew all the dust and dirt out of the old fret slots with a compressor. I had already bought a plastic hammer, because a metal one would damage the frets, and just started. Doing it is the best way of learning is my motto ;-)

Because this neck has bindings on the sides I had to carefully cut each fret to the right length before hammering it in the fretboard. My 'Dremel' tool helped me with that.

After the 21 th fret I was done. My first fret-job!

Now I had to check whether they were all lined up in the right height. I applied some color on each fret with a felt-pen and then used a large sanding stone to gently sand the frets. The remaining color gave me an indication of what the lowest parts were. I tried to gently sand everything to the same height but was very careful not to sand too much.

After that I used masking tape to cover the fretboard leaving the frets open. Now I could polish the frets with very fine sanding paper. I must say, I am proud of the result, but it will take some time to test if it is really a good job. Because that needs putting the guitar together and put a set of strings on it.

But..... to be able to finish this guitar I still had to find the necessary hardware parts.

Just by accident I found a pair of real cheap P90 pickups at www.conrad.nl I really wanted to try these so I ordered them. I have no guitar with P90's yet, so this is an opportunity to try this out. I can always replace them with more expensive ones if necessary.As the bridge has a different size than standard bridges (judging by the distance between the two stud holes) I places an advert on the internet to try and find an original Welson bridge. The next day I already had a reaction. This man told me he had the right bridge for me, but without the studs. The attached photos showed the right kind of bridge so I decided to buy it.What was still missing now was a tailpiece. The discoloration on the Welson body showed a certain type of tailpiece that had a tremolo system in it. Finding exactly the same one can  be quite hard, so I decided to order a 'standard' tailpiece first, which looks like this one.Not too expensive and easy to attach.

Using pictures of these parts, I have already made a raw design on my computer of what this guitar will look like when I am finished. Thanks to the (free) Photofiltre software program.Having all these parts it was time to try and fit some of it.The bridge still needed some studs to rest on which I made out of bronze bolts.In the body I place two staybolts in which I could fit the studs.

The first design was not the final design as later pictures will show you.

The Welson neck is originally attached to the body bij 4 screws. I did not have the screws nor the neck plate.

I Decided to glue the neck to the body. This is in my opinion a much more solid way to fit the neck and it will also improve the sustain.

I had ordered a piece of bone to make the topnut. This is a time consuming job that can only be done when the strings are fitted tot the guitar.

I order a piece of pickguard material for making custom made pickup rings that would fit round the black p90's.

Also this little job took some hours to do it properly, but the result was quite ok.

Then it was time to get to the electronics.

I already studied the scheme on the internet, but as there was an extra hole in the body I decided to use this for a master volume pot.

Fixing the electronics into a hollow body guitar is a real difficult job, that I had never done before. But hey..... nothing is impossible :-)

I used a piece of a metal box to simulate the placing of the pots on the guitar, giving me the possibility to solder all the wiring on the right length.

Doing all this properly, including testing the pickups and the electronics took me an entire evening. And t hen everything had to be fit into the guitar. That was something to try the next day with a clear head.

As you will see here, I had no hands left to make photographs of that process, so this will forever be a mystery.

Anyway, I managed to fit everything in its proper place and the final result is shown is the photo's below.

The electronics work fine and the P90's sound really great in this guitar.

And hey... hasn't this become a beauty?

The first time I ever restore a guitar like this and I am very happy with the result.

And now..... play the thing!!

Woken up after all these years.