Yesterday I tried a screw extractor (easy out), it could not budge the truss rod nut and I don't want to break anything. Put on a bridge using 2 screws into existing holes in the body. Strung up the bird and tuned it to pitch and it had ZERO relief and buzzing at the first fret no matter how high I raised the bridge saddles. So I tuned it up a whole step. Not bad. This morning after futzing around, I strung it E to G .105,.105,.080,.045. That provided enough tension to get some relief, calm the bees and play OK. Close enough. The next step was to install 2 passive EMG 35HZ that I bought on the Bay in separate auctions. Pots, jack and knobs came from the donor LH SX that supplied StratoBaster's neck. Tuners are from an ebay fiver (3+2) set so one of them is a lefty but no problem if used for E and you remember it's a reverse and the rest aren't. Guard is from my '89 Orville for the photo op.
The bridge is a little off center, it's close enough for me to think the original might have been off. Anyway, it intonates, plays, and sounds good. There was a brief moment of panic before I realized the pots were wired backwards because they came off a Lefty. Weighs around 9.5 lbs.
I'm going to leave everything as is for a while and then probably remove the board, change out the trussrod and normalize all the weirdness...
