This Washburn WR120 was rescued from a shed in a very sorry state after ages of abandonment.

The fretboard, frets and pickups were sprayed with silver paint and the stunning original metallic blue body finish was also sprayed on. 

Beyond the aesthetic nightmare, the hardware was heavily oxidized and at that stage it was completely unknown if the electronics or factory pickups were salvageable, and the entire instrument was very dirty. 

The neck presented a mix of cosmetic damage and delicate structural challenges:

• The Fretboard: The entire rosewood surface and nickel frets were buried under a thick layer of silver aerosol spray paint. 

• Structural Damage: A previous, messy attempt had been made to fix a bass-side neck crack. An excess of epoxy or CA glue was used, leaving a rough ridge right where a player's thumb rests. A second, smaller crack was discovered on the treble side, thankfully left untouched.

• Scarf Joint & Stability: Over the decades, the finish had naturally shrunk back along the scarf joint line.

The Good News 

Despite the brutal storage conditions, a thorough engineering assessment revealed the maple neck hadn't twisted or warped. It was perfectly straight, and the internal truss rod was fully functional, meaning this neck was absolutely worth saving.

Stripping down the body required a meticulous approach to ensure we didn't damage the factory blue finish underneath the rogue silver paint. The bridge assembly, control knobs, and pickups were entirely unmounted so we could evaluate the body and plan the paint removal. The bridge screws, saddle springs, and pickup pole pieces were rusty and covered in dirt, requiring an intensive cleaning and polishing process to restore them.

With a lot of patience and a lot of rubbing, the body was cleaned and polished. The finish was an amazing blue metallic colour in a really good state for an early 2000's guitar.

Similarly, all the hardware was meticulously cleaned and polished, including the bridge, saddles, screws, springs and tuners.

Cleaning the fretboard was not an easy feat. However, as the beautiful rosewood started showing, my motivation kept growing exponentially. 

The pickups were tested before any attempt was made on them. The bridge humbucker was tested and working, measuring 8.64 kOhm. The middle pickup was dead and the neck pickup was functional measuring 5.3 kOhms. 

The bridge humbucker was thoroughly cleaned and it seems that the silver paint had protected the pole pieces from rust. That was a nice surprise. I decided to swap the single coils out for Alnico 5 rail humbuckers measuring ~7 kOhms.

The pots (Alpha pots, A500k tone, B500k volume) were functional and a very generous amount of contact cleaner made them really very smooth too. However, the original 5-way selector switch was so rusty that I didn't bother, I just replaced it with a new one. The controls cavity was shielded with copper tape and the wiring was redone from scratch. I also added a Kinman-type treble bleed, 1 nF capacitor and 150 kOhm.

To begin with, the neck was set dead-straight before starting levelling the frets. Once the frets were levelled, the ends were dressed and the frets were crowned. The real tedious part was the polishing, going through all the micromesh grades and finishing with metal polish compound. 

Having done all this, installing a pre-cut nut would be taking a shortcut where it mattered the most. So a blank black Tusq XL was ordered, fit and cut to ensure longevity, tuning stability and good visuals. 

Finally, I decided to setup the bridge as floating giving the player to dive as well as tone-and-a-half pitch up (on the G) when pulling up.

A new lease of life for this classic Washburn WR120! After hours of careful and precise work the transformation is complete. 

The original deep metallic blue paint now pops, the rosewood fretboard has come back to life, the frets have a lot of life in them and the instrument plays beautifully along and across the neck and across the genres!

This isn't just a display piece; it's a fully restored, high-performing instrument ready for years of playing at home, in the studio or on stage!