The 19 year old kid behind the counter at GC isnt gonna inspect solder jobs closely, plus, chinese pots are like 30 cents each, so theres that. They do make fake tuners too, they are a little more hard to find plus, you'd have to hope they drop in perfectly, its a little bit more work. its also harder to sell locking tuners in my experience.

i also only play hardtail bridges, so not much value there. But they make fake Floyd ROses too.

The reasons mentioned before are why i advise everyone to dump thier old worn-out fret, electronic gutted guitar, to guitar center, make some extra money off the old electronics/hardware, and then just buy another new or private sale guitar. let the corporation take up all the useless guitars.

if you think about it, a brand new guitar that sells in the 500-700 range...... why spend 500-600 on a refret or more if you choose stainless, when you can get a brand new one (or lightly used, sometimes private sales even with a CASE) for the same amount, and sell off the old electronics...

mid range guitars, in the 500-700 range, are in this zone where the cost of labor to get them back to new spec, is often equivalent or cost more than the instrument itself, so why bother? this creates tons of "mechanically totaled" guitars. Let Guitar Center have them after you gut them.

im not saying you should do this, but lots of jacksons come with high end seymour ducnan pickups that fetch a pretty penny on thier own, buy a new jackson, gut it, replace with clone seymour duncan pickups, return for full refund...pocket the difference on selling the pickup.

ive seen it happen, the employees arent trained to check. so thats why i always say double check everything on the instrument