The only damage is the usual light scratching from playing and chips at the outer corners of the headstock.
Its previous owner told me he used it as a slide guitar. When I tried it, I could see why. In all it's years, it had never had an action job. Fretting an Em chord bent the strings so much that they went way out of tune.
Also for some reason the pickup rings were on backwards, so that the pickups were angled greatly relative to the strings. Tuners were good, no need to fix anything there. All the controls work perfectly, no scratchiness or intermittent; well, okay, the jack is a little touchy, but that's normal on an older guitar. I'll change that later.
The neck was straight and all the frets were perfectly level, first time I've ever seen that in one of my guitars. This meant way low action was possible.
The relief was exactly .008" from first to twelfth fret. No truss adjustment needed.
The bone nut had the barest little grooves cut for the strings; just scratches really for the first and second strings. I filed the groove for each string until it was within .002" of fret height. Perfect.
I removed the strings and cleaned up all the nooks and crannies. I removed and mounted the pickups properly. Cheap plastic pickups, but they sound okay.
I set the action at the bridge down to 1mm on the first string and 1.2mm on the 6th. Amazingly, there is no fret buzz at all playing it finger style.
I put on a set of D'addario ECG 25's. They're light flatwounds, silky smooth and zero squeak.
I doubt any guitar could be more playable than Betty (She's old, she's black, she's Betty; Bam-a-lam).
I'll change the pickguard, trim rings, and neck pickup later, but for now I'm just playing it. Of course, I'm keeping all the original pieces; this is seriously a collector's item.
UPDATE Jan 18, '20: Removed all electronics to install a new chrome cover humbucker with a black ring. All eletronics are working good. soldered the new pickup to the switch and put everything back.
I swapped out the black knobs for chrome tele knobs. I do love chrome tele knobs.
The new pickup is an Alnico V humbucker. It sounds so much sweeter than the stock "Super 58" pickup.
I covered the bridge pickup cream ring and a big scuff that was under the pickguard with black electric tape just for kicks. Betty's looking and sounding good!
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