You’d have thought this job would be easy, but if you really want it done properly there’s a little more to it. One of the pickup rings took a knock and broke so needs to be replaced. The trouble is the classic Gibson rings have a flat bottom and aren’t flexible enough to bend around the […]
Squire Start’ – Custom Pickups
Here’s a great way to improve our guitar. Rather than trade it in for an upgrade how about changing the pickups? These should sound good. About the only bits that I’m going to keep are the volume pot and the pickup switch. That’s the new wiring. I’ve added push/push pots on each of the tone […]
A Grand Day Out
Had a bit of a busy weekend, culminating with a grand day out in Birmingham, at the Guitar Show. Some fantastic bargains to be had. I was looking for a small, portable, practice amp. Something simple with valves! I’m fed up with overly complicated amps with far too many effects. What I found isn’t quite that, […]
Epiphone Les-Paul – Custom re-wire, bone nut and setup
Here’s a very attractive guitar, lovely piece of wood. Had a couple of requests with this one, both easy to sort but one a little more unusual. The owner would prefer just one set of volume and tone controls, rather than a set for each pickup? It’s got standard wiring so it’s an easy enough job, just re-arranging […]
Ovation – Electric Pickup
These are nice. The owner wanted an electric pickup fitted. The usual place for the jack socket is to combine it with the strap button. Unfortunately I don’t think if I extend the hole it’ll be strong enough. So I’m going to use a standard jack socket mounted elsewhere. The pickup is actually a little […]
Fender Acoustic – Setup with lower action
There’s nothing worse than trying to learn the guitar on one that’s really hard to play! The action on this one was very high which is only ever going to give you sore fingers! Measuring up at the 12th fret the action’s way too high… The frets are a little uneven so I’ll never be […]
Santa Cruz – Setup and action lower
What a beautiful Guitar. Really nicely made, but with a rather high action. The neck set was about right, so nothing I can do there. The frets are nice and even so I can afford to bring the action down by quite a bit. Up at the 12th fret the action is much too high… […]
Freshman – Setup and lower action
This is another nice one. I’m not a great fan of Freshman but this one feels right. Nothing much wrong, just a little high in the action. The neck had just a little too much set in it for my liking. so flatten it out just a little. I did that with the old strings […]
Classical Acoustic – New Nut and Saddle
This needs a little TLC if it’s going to play again. The bridge saddle is badly damaged so I’m going to make a new one. The nut’s broken as well, so that’ll need to be replaced as well. First the nut. From a bone blank. Next the saddle, using the old one as guide. One […]
Gretsch Country Gentleman – Neck binding
Finally got back to that old Gretsch. Rather fragile, just handling it and bits of the binding are just falling off. The only way to be able to play it, is to strip it all off and replace it. I found some modern binding that just about matches the colour of the old stuff. It’s […]