You ever think you have gotten a really good deal? I mean too good to be true and then you find out that you actually got exactly what you paid for.

I recently saw a Squier Paranormal Cabronita
Telecaster Thinline Body Only for sale and thought a few things:

1) It looks like a pretty cool version of a guitar I love, the telecaster.
2) What could be cooler, but it has the pickups of the guitar that lately has become my second favorite guitar – the Fender Jazzmaster.
3) It looked good and the seller had it listed in Mint condition. I could not find anything wrong with it in the photos. He said it had a sticky knob but otherwise it worked great.

I made an offer and picked up the loaded body for $180. I had a Squier Telecaster neck that would work great on the body and give me a cool version of a telecaster to play around with.

I put the guitar on the bench and attached the neck. After putting a new set of strings on the guitar body I was ready to plug her into an amp.

Nothing. I got nothing at all when I plugged the guitar into the amp. I swapped out cables and even plugged into another amp to get the same results.

I took the guitar apart and all of the wires were attached properly. There were no obvious shorts or cold solders.

I pulled the pickups and noticed that it had ceramic magnets on the back of each of the two pickups. I looked online for the specifications of the guitar and found it should have alnico magnets on the pickups. These were not the original pickups that the guitar came with.

Next, when I was examining the pots there were two different manufacturers of 250k pots. I know it did not come from the factory that way and it should have at least 500k pots and even better 1 meg pots like a Jazzmaster.

I was kind of pissed at myself. I had already left the person good feedback and there was not a lot I was going to be able to do about the body I now had. Basically, I had an empty body and that is what I paid for. Nothing that came int the body was original or even worked.

Here is where the lemons to lemonade part comes in. After a few weeks of the body just sitting in my shop and me seeing it every day I finally got over myself and decided to make it a project.

I would order a good set of pickups. I ordered a set of Fender American Vintage '65 Jazzmaster Pickups.

Next, I found a wiring diagram for a Jazzmaster without a rhythm circuit. Basically, I would build out a Jazzmaster with only a lead circuit.

I ordered a few 1 meg solid shaft pots and a couple .033 uf Drop Capacitors.

The three-position switch in the guitar appeared to be the original and was in good working order.

I first pulled the old pickups and installed the new pickups. I found the black covers already on the guitar would not fit my new pickups so I would have to go with the white covers.

Next, I built out the new wiring harness outside of the guitar.

Then I installed the wiring into the guitar and attached the pickups and output jack.

I was excited and happy to install the neck again and restring the guitar.

Something I had not noticed before when I had first strung up the guitar when I found the body was not working was that the saddles were too large for the bridge and were skewed at angles. I would not be able to use them in this project. I luckily had the correct size on an old Squier Mustang body that I was able to pull and install on the Cabronita.

Now everything looked good, and the neck was properly aligned to the body.

I plugged the guitar in with some apprehension. It actually worked.

I tested the old pots with my multimeter, and they seem to be okay. I probably will never know why the wiring and pickups that came with the guitar did not work.

So, the original owner sent me a body with the wrong saddles on the bridge, non-functioning electronics, and pickups. Non-original pickups and wiring. All of this was not disclosed. I even told the person I was going to use this body in a video on the channel and either he just did not care or was totally ignorant of what he was selling me.

In the end though I had fun building out this guitar. I call it a build because when you have a body, a neck, pickups, and build the wiring all from scratch – it’s a build.

The guitar is light weight and fun to play. It also sounds really great – just nothing like a telecaster.

Be careful when you are buying things on eBay and Reverb. Sometimes you will find you have a completely different definition of what the term “Mint” means and end up with a big pitcher of lemonade.