There are a lot of after-market pickups out there which can represent a good upgrade. While I was at that with this guitar the owner also wanted me to remove the modern printed circuit board and replace it with traditional potentiometers and capacitors, he felt they would be more reliable in the long run. The […]
Category: Electric
Ibanez RG – Fret Dress
This a rather unusual one, Ibanez guitars are normally a lot better than this… Having set it up to a normal standard it was choking out badly at the first fret. Turns out the first fret is really low. The only way to dial that problem out would be to put in a rather excessive […]
Jazzmaster – Shielding and Pickup swap
Need to improve the sound of your guitar? How about a new set of pickups and shield the pickup cavity to stop any unwanted hum while you’re at it… The inside of the Jazzmaster must be about as complicated as they come. However, a one-for-one pickup swap should be easy. Before the new pickups go […]
Custom built “Les Paul” style guitar
A kit guitar, just needs finishing off and setting up. It does have some problems though, the frets are very uneven and so causing quite a lot of fret-buzz. The first fret in particular is rather low. That’s a big problem as it means having to take every other fret down to that level. So, […]
Hofner bridge and nut upgrade
A rather nice guitar, but with room for improvement. I’ve had this guitar in the workshop before but we couldn’t quite get the intonation properly adjusted as there wasn’t enough space to move the saddles far enough. The nut is also plastic, so while we’re upgrading the bridge, I’ll cut and fit a bone […]
Fender Stratocaster – Neck transplant.
A rather nice Stratocaster. The owner just didn’t like the neck profile so found a replacement. Swapping a neck theoretically should be easy, it’s only 4 screws after all. If you get a genuine Fender neck, as this is then yes, it will fit straight in, but you will need to re-adjust the setup. Likewise […]
Fender Stratocaster – Setup
What a beautiful piece of wood! A lovely American Strat’, just needs a setup. The neck was rather flat. so ease off on the truss-rod a little. Adjusting the neck relief will throw the action at the 12th fret, so that needs to be reset. Starting with the outside “E” strings. and then the others, […]
Schecter – Bent bridge
Fret Buss? there can be several reasons for that, this Schecter had a problem that I’d never encountered before… I’ve never encountered a bridge so bent out of shape. The top should be flat, with a curved bottom… I can’t fix that so it had to be replaced, there’s the new one, flat top, curved […]
Epiphone Firebird – High fret
Hight frets? That can be sorted quite easily… A single fret isn’t something I would normally do on it’s own but there’s always an exception to the rule. This Firebird had just one slightly high fret. As there is just one odd fret I took just a little off the top.. Enough to level them […]
Flying V – Hard Landing
They say flying is easy, it’s the landing that can bight! Well this Flying V may have flown well but it must have been a hard landing! I’m not sure what happened but the neck pocket has been split along the line of the neck. It should have been quite simple. I opened up […]