Been working on the TV Silver Epiphone TBird.
Was getting intermittent dropouts when playing. First I thought it was the wireless, then a cable. Opened up the control cavity and found a loose washer floating around. Mystery solved!
I mentioned previously that the truss rod was stuck and would not turn in either direction. It took some work, but I got it to turn. I sprayed PB Blaster in the truss rod hole and let it sit for a while. The put the hex wrench in it and tapped it with a hammer. Two rounds of this and I was able to get it to turn. It was still really stiff, but I managed to get it where I wanted it.
Then there was the matter of strings and intonation. I have some experience with Gibson basses and have dealt with this before. I use flat wounds and remove the silk on the ball end so it doesn't go over the saddle. But you often still end up with the larger part of the string where its unevenly wound (about the last 10mm of the string) going over the saddle. Sometimes this is no problem. Other times it messes with the intonation. It depends on how the string is shaped at the point it lays on the saddle. On this case all was good except for the E string was not intonating very well. I was about to buy a mod-bar on eBay then decided to try the cheap method instead. I cut the balls off an old set of strings and threaded them on the TBird strings to move them further back. Now the smooth and even part of the strings are on the saddles and it intonates perfectly. Here's a pic of it. The flat wounds have gold ball ends, but if you look close you can see silver balls in front of them engaging bridge. Works great, costs nothing, and doesn't look bad.
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