This one was so bad that it's hard to know where to begin. Anyway... This Duo Sonic MIM reissue came to me a couple years ago and for one reason or another I took forever to restore it. Okay... I said it was bad:
Body: The body of this guitar was structurally sound although it was riddled with sticker residue, deep scratches, worn paint, bare wood, sealer in places, stripped and wallowed-out strap button screw-holes, other stripped-out holes, etc, etc. Visually, this body was pretty awful looking.
Neck, fret-board, and head-stock: The frets were gouged and not level, head-stock was gouged and had been sanded bare, wood was dry, nut slots were wallowed out, and neck was warped. The true gem here was the neck-plate... a rusty chunk of solid steel that weighed about as much as an M1 Abrams Tank.... but seriously, it was about 5.5mm thick!
Electronics: Just Holy S#1T!: The control cavity was a hodgepodge of electrical tape, rusted parts, frayed wires, dirty globs of solder, sticky residue, etc, etc.. Basically it looked like an an angered Ray Charles had simply stabbed at it with a hot iron and called it "good". Plugged in, the sound was a weak hum that varied in intensity depending on what metal parts were being touched lol.
Bridge, tuners, hardware, etc: Some of the tuners were seized-up and all were coated with years worth of sticky dusty residue. All were fairly dry, squeaky, and gritty. The hardware was so badly stripped that I had to re-slot the tiny screws to get them all out. Bridge-plate was in salvageable condition but all saddles, springs, and screw-threads were completely rusted and ready for the garbage. Knobs were too far "relic'd" to save although the gouged and grimy pup-covers were able to be cleaned, sanded smooth, and repainted.
Pick-guard: The original had been "replaced" at some point with a crudely-hacked mirror that by the time had gotten into my hands, was broken, jagged, scratched, etc. It obviously had to go.
I know that there's a ton of small details that I'm omitting but onto the show:
Body: After removing everything including the neck, I completely stripped, filled, sanded, etc everything. I drilled out the mangled remains of the wallowed-out strap button screw holes, then tapped in dowels slathered with wood glue. I had to also plug several other holes [with smaller dowels] that had been stripped ( a bridge-plate screw hole, couple pick-guard screw holes, etc). After all of this, I cleaned everything up and started taking everything back to solid/ bare/ clean wood. I used multiple layers of sealer, paint, and nitro to restore the finish... with a ton of sanding and steel wool in between. Started around 400grit and finished with 2,500grit. At that point I was able to drill all new holes including the strap-button screw-hole plugs.
Neck, fret-board, and head-stock: I utilized the same process on the neck as I did on the body except that I used tung-oil for the final finish after some meticulous sanding. It feels fantastic now and I was fortunate that there were no deep gouges anywhere along it's length. I added a true "Fender Duo Sonic" water-slide decal to the head-stock and finished that with nitro. I wasn't able to find MIM reissue decals so I had to use what I could find... "Duo Sonic II". I didn't want to do that but it looks better than it did naked. I also replaced the damaged string-tree with a new one, for what it's worth. The fret-board was luckily salvageable with a thorough cleaning although the frets required complete leveling and crowning. A lot of time and patience was utilized here, along with a good deal of 0000 steel-wool and painters tape. Topped off with a thorough polish and truss rod adjustment and she was done. The original finish on the fret-board was worn through in places but I actually like that aesthetic since I wanted to keep some of the mojo in tact anyway.
Electronics: I wired in a new input jack, CTS pots, capacitor, 3-way switch, all wiring, nuts, washers, etc, etc. I reused the original single-coils since there was no damage to the wraps, pole-pieces, etc but I potted them first with bees-wax. They seemed like they were operational so in keeping with the mojo, I decided to keep them. The electronics took a long time to complete due to me being unsure of the correct schematic but after a good deal of frustrating trial-and-error, I was able to finally get that all finished up cleanly. Whoever worked on this thing before me, had royally screwed it all up so I basically had to start from scratch.
Bridge, tuners, hardware, etc: I'm glad that I was able to salvage the original tuners since I was hoping to re-use as many original parts as possible... again... mojo! I completely lubricated, cleaned, and polished them and used new hardware to mount them up. They function quite smoothly and precisely now. I replaced the original nut with another Fender plastic nut but had to do some sanding and shaping in order to get it snugly conformed to the radius of the board. I replaced the "Mad Max Meets White Trash" neck-plate and screws with a new Fender blank chrome plate and screws. I replaced the [completely non-functioning] strap buttons with new Fender originals. Almost every screw on this thing was stripped, broken, damaged, missing, etc... so all were replaced.
Pick-guard: I replaced the beat-up disco-era mirrored scratch-plate with a WD Music Duo-Sonic pick-guard although I had to modify it at the neck-heel in order to have access to the truss-rod.
Final notes: This thing now plays like a new instrument which feels like a great accomplishment since this guitar was not even playable when I received it. I don't care for the pickups too much but they work as they should and sound decent for what they are. I had wanted to complete this project for less money than I did, but I was able to salvage a lot of the parts and I'd say that with the budget-oriented restoration approach, it came out pretty good for minimal cost. The majority of the money spent was associated with the finishing... nitro, paint, oil, sealer, sanding sheets, etc... as well as ridiculous shipping costs on small parts. I'm sure that there's a lot more little details that I'm leaving out but I've covered all the meat-n-potatoes so... onto the pictures: