Author Archives: Justin Fox

I bought this left-handed Dillion USA Phoenix back in 2016 off an American guy who brought it to Sydney from the States. Check out the blog post from when I bought it here.

The frets were feeling pretty gritty so I taped up the neck and gave the frets a polish.

Came out real nice.

Turns out the guitar has Grover tuners. Quality stuff that suggests it was worth much more new than what I paid for it in 2016.

At first I thought it was corrosion, but then I picked at it and holy crap! The original plastic protecting the chrome pickup covers was never taken off!

So shiny. As good as new!

These guitars were made in Korea.

As much as I don’t like painted necks this sculpted set neck is beautiful.

So unique. I love it.

Babes.

Having just sold off 2 guitars I considered selling more. I thought about selling my Westone Thunder IA Bass guitar, which I never play, but as soon as I picked it up and glanced “Made in Japan” stamped into the neck plate I just put it back down again. Nope! Not selling it! I then thought about selling my Dillion USA Phoenix. I dug up the blog post which I made when I first bought the guitar and realised there wasn’t much info there on the guitar so I did a bit of research on it and wow, it turns out it’s actually quite a decent guitar. I updated the old blog post with specs. I’ve also sent an email to Dillion USA with the serial number in hope that they’ll reply with the date of manufacture.

In doing some research I found out that it could be as old as 2010, and back then I found a whole lot of Americans on guitar forums fighting over Dillion guitars. Those who owned and played them praised them, but those who owned Gibsons seemed to discount these guitars for being overpriced and made in Korea not the USA. At some stage Dillion went through ownership issues and the company split in 2. Dillion Canada and Dillion USA. Dillion USA made their guitars in Korea but have accused Dillion Canada of making their guitars in China. The Dillion USA owner seems to have changed his actual name to Dillion at some point too. Very interesting right?! Seems like there was a war and might still be a war today between the 2 companies.

I found one video of a very unsatisfied Dillion USA customer who returned his Dillion guitar. In one part of the video he read out an email he received from Dillion USA suggesting that they were unhappy that he had removed protective plastics off the returned guitar, but the guy in the video then suggested that Dillion USA made a big deal about making sure he remove the plastic from the humbuckers before using the guitar. To my surprise this thick plastic protection over the chrome humbucker covers was still on my guitar!

I thought I’d service it and put some new strings on it and now I can’t bring myself to sell it! I’ve instead put the Artist TC59 Telecaster I bought 2 weeks ago up for sale. It was only $289 new and I’ve got it up at $200. I’ve had a couple of offers at $180 but I’ll hold out at $200 for now and see how I go as I’m not too fussed if it sells, or not (it’s damn heavy but still a really solid practise guitar in that it has heavier strings, never goes out of tune and it’s got a thicker fatter neck too).

EDIT! John Dillion got back to me via email and let me know my guitar was made in June 2009! Good to know!

Really looking forward to recording some guitar stuff over these backing tracks I wrote a few years ago.

In an attempt to keep the guitar in tune as much as possible I spent up and got some GraphTech Ratio locking tuners.

They went on without any modifications at all, so awesome!

Each tuner is numbered 1-6. The tuned heads incorporate different string gauges into the tuning equation, a half turn is a semi-tone which should make tuning really pleasurable.

DeoxIT and Dr. Duck’s Ax Wax Guitar polish And string lube. Hoping the DeoxIT will magically fix my noisy volume and tone pots.

100 watts to piss the neighbours off!

This amazingly sturdy and minimalist GA-FC foot controller to control effects on the amp only works with the 100 watt Katana so buying the much cheaper 50 watt was no longer an option.

My pedal setup (a pedalboard to attach them all to would be nice).

Gear acquisition syndrome. I’ve got it!

Gear acquisition syndrome is a real thing so to counter the disease I’ve sold off these 2 guitars which I’ve never played much, or loved at all. The Schecter sold for $300 on Facebook Marketplace and the ESP LTD sold for $250 on eBay. Would have loved more for both of them, but happy both buyers (both lefties whoo!) seemed like good dudes who were stoked with their new acquisitions!

Removing the nut without breaking it was the most nerve-racking part, and I had pretty jurassic tools; a blunt metal chisel, a jewellers screwdriver and a rusty razor blade, but I did have my Dad’s old hammer and with all the luck bestowed upon it I got the nut out without any issues.

The back of the neck was pretty sticky so I hand sanded it with 1200 grit sandpaper. I’m leaving all the scratches and dings for now, the main goal was to cure the stickiness.

Such an amazing improvement. So much smoother and faster! I doubt I could ever go back to a painted guitar neck ever again.

These new school clip on tuners are so amazing! I flipped the nut and for now I’ve put it back in place without any wood glue. I got some new strings on and took my good time setting up the guitar right. I didn’t have to touch the truss rod, the action is on the low side too (which I like) and the saddles only needed minor adjustment to stop some slight string buzzing. I spent the most time adjusting the intonation which came out great.

I referenced a whole lot of shots of Jimi’s guitar at Woodstock and set up my pickup height as close as I could to his set-up.

Bass heavy!

I really didn’t like how much the guitar lead stuck out whilst playing the guitar so I flipped the “boat” jack plate upside down so I could easily plug a 90 degree jack into it. You can see the routing for the jack plate is a tiny bit bigger on one edge but it’s not something that bothers me.

It’s such a simple mod that works so well to keep the lead at a much lower profile and completely out of the way.

Now all that’s left is to buy a super retro coil guitar lead to complete the Hendrix Experience.

And we have a winner! The angled jack is super flat too.

Upside down, so wrong but so right! I used a small spacer to lift up the string tree for the heavy strings. The string tree is rusty top side but polished smooth underside to avoid string snappage.

I drilled a hole on the small horn and relocated the strap pin from the big horn over.

Dunlop has recreated the strap Jimi used on Izabella at Woodstock. I’ve got it on order from the US and it should get here early May.

Izabella was given to Jimi’s drummer Mitch Mitchell who sold it in 1991 through auction. The guitar was sold once again after only two years to Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder for an undisclosed amount (rumours are it was somewhere in the neighbourhood upwards of $2 Million). Izabella the Woodstock Strat is now kept safe at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle.

All done. I’m really happy with how it all turned out! Just waiting for the strap and coil lead.

One last thing. I’ve down tuned her to Eb just like Jimi did and I’m really tempted to take it a step further and also use the unique string gauge setup that Jimi used being: .010, .013, .015, .026, .032 and .038.