Jay Turser JTA-Flag300 - An American Girl

She couldn't help thinkin'

That there was a little more to life somewhere else

It's usually easy to tell when a guitar arrives in the mail.  There's a certain set of proportions to the box, no matter what the color or style of the guitar.  When my Jay Turser JTA-Flag300 Acoustic Electric project guitar arrived, the proportions of the box looked more like I had bought a baritone saxophone.  This project is the equivalent of getting dropped off in the woods while blindfolded, and making it back to camp.  This is what you get when you buy a guitar with her neck already detached from her body, no questions asked.

To the seller's credit, the body and neck were well packed, and arrived just as pictured on eBay.  They were very clean and in good condition, but very separate and without the factory-installed piezoelectric pickup and on board preamplifier.  Her finish, bridge, fingerboard, frets and nut don't show much wear, and although her tuning pegs need some polish, they have a well-built, solid feel to them.

One pleasant surprise was finding that the cable that connects the preamp to the output jack was included, and that part of the circuit appears to be intact.  The electronics will be easy enough to replace; I have a piezoelectric pickup that might work with her bridge, and the toughest part there should be finding a preamp that will fit her long, skinny body opening.  Her neck joint damage is the real challenge, and appears to be the result of either an accident, a failed reset, or a combination of both.

First looks can be deceiving, and it's not clear to me if the truss rod is broken or some style I just haven't seen before now.  It appears to have some kind of split shaft connection at the heel end, and an adjustment nut on the heel end as well as a way to access an adjustment nut at the peg head end through a cover plate.  The neck heel also seems to be built up and has suffered a split along the grain at the end of the truss rod cavity, with the smallest portion of the neck heel still attached to the neck block.  Judging from the outside condition, her body seems to have been spared any damage.  So far, my research on the Internet has turned up nothing more than a pdf of a manufacturer's catalog that does not include this model, so I'll dig a little deeper before reaching any conclusions or taking anything apart.