Project or parts? Advice requested.

Picked up a T-40 in a trade lot the other day. It's kind of a little rough. A few small dings in the natural finish body. It's missing a tuner, and the phase switch lever (was a flat style) is broken off. Maple fretboard and neck in pretty good condition. Toaster pickups, all coils work. Pots work and two are slightly noisy but will probably clean up with some spray. Pickguard is not cracked and (surprisingly) the pickup rings are not badly damaged either. Has all the original knobs. Original case is in decent shape.

I already have a natural-finish T-40 in better condition than this one, so I'm going ask: WWT40MD? Would you...

A) Buy a Hipshot detuner for the E string, replace the switch with a Radio Shack part, clean it, restring it, and call it good?
B) Track down an original tuner and switch and return it to original condition, clean it, restring it, and call it good?
C) Take it apart, clean the bits, and part it out like a stolen Mercedes?

Lemme know what you think.

Thanks.

I'd got with option A. Get what parts you can, get it up and running and enjoy it. If you don't bond with it, put it up for sale.

I stared at the T40 for a while today, such as it is, and just for fun I put a little lemon oil on one of the dings. It disappeared. So did the rest of them when I put lemon oil on them, for the most part. Dangit. So I stopped by El Radio Shacko for a switch, and snagged a Hipshot HE6Y-1/2 for cheap on EvilBAY, and I'm gonna get it working again. Thanks for the sage advice, Frank. It was what I probably wanted to do anyway.

Glad to be of help. Even if you don't bond with it, you'll have fun putting it back together.

Put in a Radio Shack switch to replace the phase switch and a Hipshot EB-4 detuner to replace the missing tuner. I was going to post a pic, but aside from the Hipshot it looks like any other natural-finish rosewood fingerboard T40. See yours? Look like that. One interesting thing I found when messing with it was the pickguard was signed and dated in pencil. Appears to be "JB" and "6-16". Any ideas who this might be?

Still getting used to the Hipshot. PITA to tune with new strings, but gets easier when they've stretched a bit. We'll see if the bass stays in the collection or moves on.

No idea who JB would be, but I bet Chip would know.

I've gotten it set up, dialed in, tuned, and I've played it for nigh on 40 hours. It's been to a couple jam sessions where it was played by a couple decent bass players, and the general consensus is that it's a fine example of a T-40 while the Hipshot Detuner makes it a bit more versatile. From my personal experience, it sounds close enough to my maple-fretboard T-40 that I don't see keeping both. It's not collectible at this point; it's just a nice player. So, I'm taking it to the musician's swap meet in Mt. Dora, FL on Sunday to see what I can trade/sell it for, and if I don't get bites there I'll go to CL or eBay.

Nothing wrong with that. I've had several guitars that I never bonded with and ended up trading for something else that I really liked.