Claescaster

About a month ago I stumbled upon a Korean made Hondo D-18 acoustic guitar in a Cash converter. It only had 1 string and looked like shit but I was intrigued by the challenge to see if it I could get it to sing. I took it home, cleaned it up and restrung it and the first thing that hit was the tone. It has a really warm and nice tone, way deeper than any of my other acoustics. I’m not sure how old it is, I guess the 1981 on the label is referring to the company name and not the year it was made but it must be from the early to mid 1980’s.

I changed the machine heads for a set of fake tulip Grovers that I bought on eBay about a year ago. Then I fitted a strap button and my old 1970’s Shadow pickup that I used to have on a 12 year old Cort I kept in the rehearsal room. It was the normal procedure, drill a pilot hole and then put some wax on the screw and fit the button. I had to widen the hole quite a lot to get the end pin jack in, but that was pretty straight forward as well with a round file. I do hate to fit end pin jacks since my underarm is to wide to fit in the sound hole so it’s quite pain full experience. If you have a girlfriend with slender arms nearby that is to recommend but mine was out of the house when I did this. I have to say that I’m pretty pleased with both the sound and the look of this guitar, the grain is amazing.

I had a cheap Artec MSP-50 pickup at home so I fitted that in my old Cort and then installed the Shadow pickup in the Hondo.

Update 2013-09-14
The Hondo D-18 is sold now. This is how happy Iñaki was when he bough it.