Stripping with Nitromors revealed a three piece maple body and neck - looking better already!

Frets came out OK with negligible chipping, using a soldering iron and a pair of ground down nippers to ease them out.

Thanks to the following sources for much good "how to" material:

Frank Ford's www.frets.com - mine of info. If you want to know about setting up a guitar, look here. Not an electric chap, but strings are strings....

Also very useful are SK Guitar Specialities and
Fret Not Guitar Repairs
Real problem area appeared around the tremelo routing.

Who knows what had been screwed on here in the past. There should only have been three small peg holes to hold the tremelo cover, but we had nasty holes, with bits of broken screws inside.