I am new to this but decided try my hand at restoring my bronco. Its been sitting here for a while, getting beat up but the electronics dont work and the nut is broken.
I have already started working on it and the body will be black with a black pickguard.
those tuners and decal look fine. do you what you want but you should know that if you do more than change the nut, you'll be making it worth less.
the paint doesn't look original, so repainting it should be fine, but if it is the original paint then you're better off not repainting. I also wouldn't change the pick guard if it is the original as well. I think the guitar looks great as it is, I'm not totally sure what the appeal to "restoring" it would be but do what you want.
portugalwillie wrote:those tuners and decal look fine. do you what you want but you should know that if you do more than change the nut, you'll be making it worth less.
Just give it a clean. Then see where you want to go from there.
I would say leave it all apart from a giving it very good clean.... it's likely the price you spend in replacement parts will be thrown out of the window and you'll be devaluing the instrument at the same time.
I think you could easily bring that guitar to a more than presentable condition without sacrificing any of that.
I've seen people restore rusty parts like that with great success.... mainly bike parts. They use the old coca-cola and tin foil trick along with auto-sol and the like.
If it isn't the guitar you want then I would sell and buy something you'll appreciate more... to me this is the ideal project, you don't need to buy / change anything.
If you don't plan on selling it then do what you want with it. It sucks if it was the original finish, but if you weren't happy with it, and you want to get it to a place where you are happy with it so you can keep it, then go ahead. Broncos still aren't the most desirable fender guitars, except among people like us on this board. And yours wasn't exactly in "top dollar" shape as it was, so even if you did try to sell it in that condition with the original finish you probably wouldn't have fetched much more than you would for a properly refinished one.
