25.5         Scale Length

42 mm    Nut width

H.S.S.       Pickup Configuration

22            Frets

Flame      Maple Top

7.8 lbs.     Weight

1.5 mm     Action at 12th Fret

Right Handed

X   Deep Clean

X   Electronics Checked

X   Tuners Serviced

X   Fretboard Cleaned / Hydrated

X   Neck Adjusted

X   Setup Completed

X   Body Buffed / Polished 

Restoration and Modification Details

This Greg Bennett Malibu has undergone an extensive restoration and component upgrade intended to improve tonal versatility, tuning precision, hardware reliability, playing comfort, and overall performance while preserving the character of its original Samick-built neck and body.

Pickup and Electronics Upgrades

The factory pickups have been replaced with an Alnico 5 HSS pickup set, including a four-conductor bridge humbucker configured for coil splitting through the A500K push/push tone potentiometer. This allows the bridge pickup to operate in either full humbucker or split-coil mode, providing additional tonal flexibility.

The bridge humbucker has its own dedicated tone control with a 0.022 µF capacitor, while the neck and middle pickups share a separate tone control with a 0.047 µF capacitor. CTS potentiometers, a CRL-style five-way selector switch, a Switchcraft output jack, cloth pushback wiring, silver-bearing solder connections, and a treble bleed circuit complete the upgraded electronics.

A Gilmour-style switching modification provides two additional pickup combinations beyond the traditional five-way selector arrangements: neck and bridge together, or all three pickups simultaneously. Combined with the bridge humbucker's coil-splitting function, this provides a wider selection of pickup configurations and tonal characteristics.

The underside of the pickguard and the pickup and electronics cavities have been copper-foil shielded to help reduce unwanted electrical interference.

Tuning Machines and Tremolo Bridge

All six original factory tuning machines have been replaced with a new, matched set of Grover 102-18C Rotomatic chrome tuners featuring an 18:1 gear ratio. These provide finer tuning adjustments than the original 14:1 machines and complement the upgraded nut and bridge hardware.

The original tremolo bridge has been replaced with a Wilkinson Vintage M-Series WOV01-10 bridge, providing upgraded hardware and adjustment capability. The Wilkinson bridge has been installed and set up in a floating tremolo configuration, allowing both upward and downward pitch adjustment through tremolo-arm movement.

Together, the new Grover tuning machines, Wilkinson bridge, and individually fitted bone nut provide an improved foundation for tuning precision, setup consistency, and responsive tremolo operation.

Neck, Fretwork, and Playing Comfort

The neck was carefully refinished through progressively finer sanding, finishing at 2000 grit before installation of new Jescar medium-jumbo nickel-silver frets. The fretboard edges were also lightly rolled to provide a smoother, more comfortable playing feel.

A new bone nut was individually shaped, fitted, and slotted for the instrument. The upgraded fretwork, nut, and bridge were followed by a complete setup, including string height, neck relief, tremolo adjustment, and intonation.

The guitar is fitted with Ernie Ball Regular Slinky .010–.046 gauge strings and mushroom-style strap buttons.

Overall Result

The completed Resurrection Tier rebuild combines the original 2008 Samick-built Greg Bennett Malibu foundation with substantially upgraded pickups, electronics, switching, shielding, tuning machines, tremolo hardware, fretwork, and playing components.

The result is a professionally prepared, extensively modified instrument offering greater tonal flexibility, refined playing comfort, and improved hardware functionality while retaining the appearance and character of the original Vintage Sunburst Malibu.

The following story is fictional and simply reflects the thoughts this guitar inspired during its restoration.

He had only been out of college a short time when he moved to the Harrisburg area to begin his first real professional career. The apartment was small, the furniture was mostly inexpensive, and life still revolved around that strange period between being a student and becoming an adult.

Somewhere along the way, he mentioned to his girlfriend that he had always wanted to learn to play guitar. He had never seriously pursued it; it was simply one of those things he imagined he would eventually find time to do. She remembered.

The Greg Bennett Malibu arrived as a gift.

For a while, he genuinely tried. A few chords were learned, fingers became sore, and the guitar occasionally came out when friends gathered at the apartment on weekends. It never became the musical life he had imagined, but the guitar remained something he appreciated because of who had given it to him and what it represented at that point in his life.

Then life began moving faster. Work became more demanding. Weekend gatherings became less frequent. Friends moved, schedules changed, and eventually the relationship that had brought the guitar into his life ended as well.

Years later, another career opportunity appeared—this one several states away. Rather than move an apartment full of furniture accumulated during his first years on his own, he decided to start over. Clothing, photographs, and a handful of personal keepsakes went with him. Furniture was sold. Kitchenware, electronics, and the things that still had useful lives ahead of them were donated.

The guitar was one of those things.

It had never been played enough to become worn out and had never meant so little that it deserved to be thrown away. Donating it gave someone else the opportunity to do what he never quite managed to do—actually play it.

Eventually it found its way into a Goodwill charity auction in the Harrisburg area, where Back From The Dead Guitars found it waiting for another chance.

Perhaps this guitar was never meant to belong to the person who first received it forever. Maybe its first purpose was simply to represent an aspiration—a reminder of something he hoped to learn when life was still beginning.

Now, almost two decades after it was built, that opportunity belongs to someone else.

Initial Intake Assessment

This guitar arrived at the shop wrapped in bubble wrap inside an original Samick Greg Bennett gig bag. Once it was unwrapped, I discovered that what appeared in the auction photos to be finish damage on the front of the guitar was actually leftover adhesive residue.

A few other issues became apparent during the initial inspection. The output jack was sitting unusually far out from the body, something that had not been visible in the auction photos, and the high E string was broken at the nut. The protective film on the pickguard had also never been fully removed. The control knobs had apparently never been taken off, leaving portions of the plastic film trapped underneath and around them.

All of the original model and inspection stickers were still present on the neck and headstock. The original neck plate and serial number were also intact and appeared to have never been removed.

The Grover tuner mounting screws showed considerable damage from repeated use of an incorrect screwdriver bit, with most of the screw heads partially stripped. The high E tuner also had a broken locking nut, apparently from being overtightened, and would need to be replaced.

The pickups tested properly, and the selector switch operated with a crisp, positive feel. Once the remaining protective plastic was removed from around the controls, the volume and tone pots turned smoothly and held their positions normally.

The tremolo bridge had been locked down tightly, while the saddles were positioned unusually high and nearly straight across. This suggested that the guitar had received little, if any, meaningful setup work during its life.

I disassembled the guitar for a closer inspection and found that the body used a bathtub-style pickup route. The control cavity and tremolo block cavity had both been coated with conductive shielding paint. Internally, the guitar was fitted with ceramic pickups, Alpha A500K and B500K mini potentiometers, a shared .022 µF capacitor, and a circuit-board-style five-way selector switch.

All of the original solder joints appeared sound. After the guitar was reassembled, I tested it using the five remaining strings. Despite the relatively modest factory electronics, the guitar produced a surprisingly good, usable sound.

Overall, the guitar was in very good condition for its age. Aside from needing a thorough cleaning, proper setup, and replacement of the damaged Grover 14:1 tuner, it showed remarkably little evidence of actual playing time. The condition of the frets, hardware, finish, and remaining original components all suggested that it had spent far more of its life stored than played.

Condition and Honest Disclosure

The back of the guitar shows a significant amount of scratching and surface marring within the tummy-cut area. The finish was cleaned and polished during restoration, but these marks were too deep to remove safely without risking damage to the transparent finish. Because the back has a dark, high-gloss transparent finish, the scratching remains noticeable when viewed under strong or direct lighting.

This guitar has been extensively rebuilt and upgraded rather than preserved as an all-original instrument. The factory frets, nut, tuners, electronics, pickups, bridge components, and other replaced hardware are no longer installed. The replacement components were selected to improve playability, reliability, adjustment range, and overall sound quality. The new bone nut was individually shaped and fitted to the guitar, and the replacement frets and hardware are of substantially higher quality than the original factory components.

The quality of the original neck, fretboard, and finished body was one of the reasons this guitar was chosen for a more extensive rebuild. In my opinion, the underlying construction of these Samick-built Greg Bennett instruments was considerably better than what was commonly found on many entry-level guitars of the same period. The restoration was therefore approached with the goal of allowing that foundation to perform closer to the level of a much more expensive intermediate instrument.

The removed original components are not available with the guitar. However, photographs taken during the intake and disassembly process document the original hardware and electronics and are available upon request.