the Fly Clone Project

Hello, i'm Dave, living in the Lake of the Ozarks area in Missouri. Long time guitar player, (more of a rhythm player than anything) and used to sing lead in a classic to current cover rock band with friends back in Kansas City years ago, doing Beatles to Eagles to Smashmouth, Tom Petty, REM, Weezer, Elvis, etc. Just added a P36 back in to the mix of guitars I have after stupidly selling the one I had years ago. It's in great shape with no body damage at all save for one very tiny ding at the bottom I had to search to find, but does have a couple of little nicks on the back of the neck and the first few frets have scrapes I need to see if I can repair that look like they may have come from a capo, I'm not sure. I'm sure I'll be digging through the resources here to see if I can find info on ways to fix it and maybe the dings on the back of the neck, and I welcome any input anyone has of ways they know of that would help. Thanks!

Spleenless Dave wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 1:01 pm I'm sure I'll be digging through the resources here to see if I can find info on ways to fix it and maybe the dings on the back of the neck, and I welcome any input anyone has of ways they know of that would help.

Happy to make your acquaintance, Dave - Sorry about the spleen! Being as the P-36 is a essentially a Fly-shaped Tele with a piezo preamp, it should be straightforward to repair your issues by steaming out any dents in the wood with a damp rag and a hot soldering iron pressed into it, and touching up the frets with some 0000 steel wool or other polishing product. If the body ding is more of a scratch, any polyurethane scratch fill/removal product used with other guitars should do the trick. How are you liking the sounds you get out of that thing?

mmmguitar wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 4:14 pm

Spleenless Dave wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 1:01 pm I'm sure I'll be digging through the resources here to see if I can find info on ways to fix it and maybe the dings on the back of the neck, and I welcome any input anyone has of ways they know of that would help.

Happy to make your acquaintance, Dave - Sorry about the spleen! Being as the P-36 is a essentially a Fly-shaped Tele with a piezo preamp, it should be straightforward to repair your issues by steaming out any dents in the wood with a damp rag and a hot soldering iron pressed into it, and touching up the frets with some 0000 steel wool or other polishing product. If the body ding is more of a scratch, any polyurethane scratch fill/removal product used with other guitars should do the trick. How are you liking the sounds you get out of that thing?

Thanks, nice to meet you too! I had seen things online about the iron and damp rag and may try that. I actually should have said the first 3 frets wood, not the frets themselves, have scrapes in the finish. Up near the top of the neck and have lines going across the wood, which is why I thought maybe a capo might have done it. I'll have to see if I can get a pic of it to show the damage. I wondered how difficult it might be to try to sand it down to try and smooth it out, but thought I might have to mask the frets and put some satin lacquer on them after they were sanded down.

I wondered at first when I signed on here, with the name "Fly Clone" and seeing pretty much all info about the Fly guitars, if I would be told "Begone, P36 owner. Only Fly players are allowed here."

Hi Dave! I'm also a new user here on the forum!

That's a beautiful guitar!
Personally I advocate a minimalistic approach to fixing dents and dings and scratches. Unless they affect the functionality or are too unsightly, they're part of the story of the instrument.

And let's not forget there's people out there paying absurd amounts of money to have their guitars pre-scratched and dinged and roughed up from factory!
(I'm not a fan of relicing guitars)

If you use steel wool, always protect the pickups, they can get pretty nasty with the tiny bits of metal that come off from using steel wool to polish frets. I personally prefer and recommend micro-mesh sandpaper.

Fox wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 7:00 pm Hi Dave! I'm also a new user here on the forum!

That's a beautiful guitar!
Personally I advocate a minimalistic approach to fixing dents and dings and scratches. Unless they affect the functionality or are too unsightly, they're part of the story of the instrument.

And let's not forget there's people out there paying absurd amounts of money to have their guitars pre-scratched and dinged and roughed up from factory!
(I'm not a fan of relicing guitars)

If you use steel wool, always protect the pickups, they can get pretty nasty with the tiny bits of metal that come off from using steel wool to polish frets. I personally prefer and recommend micro-mesh sandpaper.

Thanks! Yeah, I don't want to go overboard on the dents, and may leave them alone, they really aren't bad at all. The sellers pics made me think there were a few more on the neck, but I think it was reflections in their pics, as I've only found a couple.

And it is ridiculous what a reliced guitar can go for these days. I see ones that look like it was drug down a driveway and they have a super high price on it. I've got a 1999 Fender hard tail Strat that I bought new in 2000 and it still looks new. I guess I need to play more while wearing a sandpaper shirt and wear the finish down.

I'll post a few pics of the fretboard scrapes here in a minute that I took. I'm hoping I can do something to lessen them or remove them.

Here are the scratches in the fret finish. Looking at them after I took the pics, I wonder if it's from fingernails. I had to Photoshop several pics together to get the light on each fret so I could show it in one pic. The second fret has some light ones, not quite as bad as the others. I definitely am going to restring it and clean the fretboard well.

I need to see if I can find out the manufacturing date on this from the serial number.

It almost looks like someone with claws played on that!

Uuhmm...
Sorry, that was a shameless excuse to post a picture of my cat. He likes to participate when I play.


I'm not familiar with the finish on those particular fingerboards, but they look coated. If the scratches don't go too deep into the finish, you should be able to buff them out.

If you feel like sharing the serial number, someone here can work it out for you, or you can look it up on ...how do I quote topics? This is the link:
viewtopic.php?t=63

@Spleenless Dave, if you feel like taking on the project, you could probably buff those scratches out with strips of sandpaper rubbed in the direction of the grain from 600 grit up (dry, wet, or both) - But it may take some trial and error to end up with a touched up fret space that doesn't visibly stand out from the rest of the frets. I'd be surprised if the P-36 fretboards were finished in anything but satin polyurethane.

Nice cat, @Fox. If you mean hyperlinking topics, you can paste the link, highlight it, then click the "insert url" box in the upper left to put the url embed code around the highlighted text. so it's If not, just pasting the url works, too.

Fox wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 9:26 pm It almost looks like someone with claws played on that!

Uuhmm...

20240324_072808_1024.jpg

Sorry, that was a shameless excuse to post a picture of my cat. He likes to participate when I play.


I'm not familiar with the finish on those particular fingerboards, but they look coated. If the scratches don't go too deep into the finish, you should be able to buff them out.

If you feel like sharing the serial number, someone here can work it out for you, or you can look it up on ...how do I quote topics? This is the link:
viewtopic.php?t=63

Damned cats and their desire to play guitar with those claws! That's a good looking cat, too. Does he constantly want you to play Stray Cat songs?

I took a look at the serial number info link you gave me and according to that mine is 2004, December I assume. 04120523.

I can drag a nail across some of the bigger scratches and feel them, so I hope they didn't go in too deep. If someone's nails did this while playing, they must have played a lot of songs on the first 4 frets. The rest of the neck is fine. And they must have been a werewolf to dig nails in like that.

mmmguitar wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 9:33 pm @Spleenless Dave, if you feel like taking on the project, you could probably buff those scratches out with strips of sandpaper rubbed in the direction of the grain from 600 grit up (dry, wet, or both) - But it may take some trial and error to end up with a touched up fret space that doesn't visibly stand out from the rest of the frets. I'd be surprised if the P-36 fretboards were finished in anything but satin polyurethane.

Nice cat, @Fox. If you mean hyperlinking topics, you can paste the link, highlight it, then click the "insert url" box in the upper left to put the url embed code around the highlighted text. so it's

Code: Select all

[url="pasted link"]"whatever text you want"[/url]

If not, just pasting the url works, too.

I may see if I can take a shot at slowly sanding on it and see how it does. I could start on the least scratched one to see how it does. Might hit Lowes tomorrow for some various grits of sandpaper, plus I need to see if they have any contact cleaner I could pick up to clean the volume/tone pots.

I would like to find out the finish on the neck in case I do need to mask off and spray those areas if I have to sand a lot to get the deepest scratches out.

Fox wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 9:26 pm Sorry, that was a shameless excuse to post a picture of my cat. He likes to participate when I play.

My dog insists on sitting on my lap while I play:

vjmanzo wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 10:36 pm My dog insists on sitting on my lap while I play:

IMG_7887.jpeg

That's adorable!

We're gonna turn this thread into a "pets and guitars" thread!

vjmanzo wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 10:36 pm

Fox wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 9:26 pm Sorry, that was a shameless excuse to post a picture of my cat. He likes to participate when I play.

My dog insists on sitting on my lap while I play:

IMG_7887.jpeg

Is that a Chihuahua? They're cool little dogs, and think they are bigger than what they are.

mmmguitar wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 4:14 pmHow are you liking the sounds you get out of that thing?

I'm liking it, though I had to play with it to refresh myself with what all the various knobs did, especially the piezo switch. The last time I had one of these was quite a few years back, and was playing it through either my little Fender G Dec amp or during a gig, clean through one of my bandmates Fender amps. Now I've got a Marshall DSL15C tube amp I picked up last year, and it definitely has a different sound than my Epiphone LP custom. It sounds more like my Strat and Tele single coils, though I forgot how cool the piezo sounds to play with by itself or mixed with the pickups. I used to do a couple of acoustic sounding songs with the previous P36, and liked how it sounded.

Spleenless Dave wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 10:12 pm I may see if I can take a shot at slowly sanding on it and see how it does. I could start on the least scratched one to see how it does. Might hit Lowes tomorrow for some various grits of sandpaper, plus I need to see if they have any contact cleaner I could pick up to clean the volume/tone pots.

I would like to find out the finish on the neck in case I do need to mask off and spray those areas if I have to sand a lot to get the deepest scratches out.

Start with a relatively high grit like 600, maybe as low as 400 but not lower. Sand a bit with 600(400), then 800, 1000, 1200, and you might be able to then get away with steel wool or just keep going up the grits but you're gonna spend a fortune on sandpaper.

There's a ton of guitar polish stuff out there but I find that Meguiar's Ultimate Compound works wonders if you want a glossy polish.
And DeoxIT for the pots and stuff if you feel yours need to be cleaned.

Oh, very important, sand with the grain! (up and down the length of the neck)
Cross-grain sanding marks are a pain to get rid of!

Fox wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 11:04 pm

Spleenless Dave wrote: ↑Sat Jul 20, 2024 10:12 pm I may see if I can take a shot at slowly sanding on it and see how it does. I could start on the least scratched one to see how it does. Might hit Lowes tomorrow for some various grits of sandpaper, plus I need to see if they have any contact cleaner I could pick up to clean the volume/tone pots.

I would like to find out the finish on the neck in case I do need to mask off and spray those areas if I have to sand a lot to get the deepest scratches out.

Start with a relatively high grit like 600, maybe as low as 400 but not lower. Sand a bit with 600(400), then 800, 1000, 1200, and you might be able to then get away with steel wool or just keep going up the grits but you're gonna spend a fortune on sandpaper.

There's a ton of guitar polish stuff out there but I find that Meguiar's Ultimate Compound works wonders if you want a glossy polish.
And DeoxIT for the pots and stuff if you feel yours need to be cleaned.

Oh, very important, sand with the grain! (up and down the length of the neck)
Cross-grain sanding marks are a pain to get rid of!

Thanks, I appreciate the info!