Elgava twins

The neck
610 mm scale, 20 brass frets on a totally flat dyed-beech fingerboard, a 5-piece laminated neck (no truss rod of course), typical crappy Soviet tuners, and remnants of the original adjustable nut mechanism. The neck's shape is similar to that of a classical guitar, with a fairly flat back and square "shoulders": not particularly comfortable. The heel of the neck is a stout 3.5 cm thick where it joins the body, and sits in a neck pocket that it only 2 cm deep, so the fingerboard surface ends up a whopping 1.5 cm above the surface of the body. Again, not very comfortable to play.

The body
Typical Soviet laminated beech construction with a VERY thick black urethane finish (virtually bulletproof), and the Elgava logo is silkscreened on with some sort of 2-part white ink, but not clear-coated for some reason. The mahogany-colored pearloid used for the pickguard is a classic Soviet material. These same square-polepiece single coil pickups (about 6K ohms) are found on several Soviet guitars, and are nothing special sonically. Elgavas have remarkably simple controls for a Soviet guitar:  master volume and tone controls, and an on/off rocker switch for each pickup. The vibrato unit is best left completely alone unless you LIKE playing out of tune. I'm using the RIckenbacker-style TOM bridge until I can fabricate a more authentic plastic one.

The top guitar in the picture has been extensively hot-rodded, as its originality was badly compromised by the time it came to me. In a crude but effective effort to lower the neck into the body, someone hacked about 2 cm of thickness off the heel of the neck ... apparently using a hammer and a big chisel. After evening out all the hacking, the fingerboard surface now sits about 0.5 cm off the surface of the body: much more comfortable. From the top down (as it were), it has new Gotoh tuners, a Soviet Army hammer & sickle cap badge filling the cavity for the adjustable nut mechanism, a trussrod installed, a new 24.75"-scale x 21-fret rosewood fingerboard with a 12" radius and Dunlop 6105 fretwire, a pair of generic HBs with chrome rings and mounted in a reproduction pickguard laminated with some vintage red pearloid drum wrap. Using the slightly longer scale length allowed me to move the bridge off of the pickguard, so I could anchor the studs into solid wood; I also blocked off the cheesy vibrato unit with a piece of alder. I kept the controls as simple as the original with only a master volume & tone control and a 3-way rotary switch I robbed out of an old Kay in place of the two on/off switches. Finally, I moved the jack to the side of the body. Now this Elgava plays and sounds great ... even if it has been "Westernized."