Is it possible to turn a POS guitar into a good one?

[scorpionldr]

SO.
I have a Pignose strat that's taking up space. It's cool for being a pignose, but last I checked it didn't sound so hot, plus it's collecting some dirt. I really don't want to get a whole nother guitar, on top of that I am planning primarily for now to learn guitar as an "essential" instrument so i can say something other than "I play really fancy basslines". What do you think would probably be the best treatment for it? Plz don't say trashcan.
oh, and I'm a big metal guy, but I wanna do some clean soloing too.

[Joey3313]

Do the same thing everyone here (myself included) does with SX or other low end instruments: mod it.

New pickups, bridge, tuners, electronics, whatever you feel it needs, get a good setup...all that good stuff.


With enough work, almost any instrument can be good enough.

[Atoz]

What Joey said.

If the neck isn't hopelessly warped and the frets are more or less OK, you should be able to make it a respectable player. The question is if modding the electronics, etc. is worth the $$$ and time to you.

[Parabolic Box]

If the instrument sounds good acoustically, then you can go ahead and upgrade the electronics. If it's not, you know what they say, garbage in, garbage out.

[The Golden Boy]

Originally Posted by Parabolic Box

If the instrument sounds good acoustically, then you can go ahead and upgrade the electronics. If it's not, you know what they say, garbage in, garbage out.

That's the big thing.

You *can* polish a turd- but in the end it's still a turd. The best bet- if you're planning on dumping decent pickups and electronics and hardware into it- you might as well sell the one you've got and get a decent midline guitar.

[PilbaraBass]

step one...make sure it's a player...that means do a good setup and possibly a fret dress on it...

IF it passes that test...step two...make it sound good...this is two-fold (first, a decent set of strings), next possibly new electronics...

if you've done all this for about $150 - $300 (depending on how you go) you'll end up with a decent axe...