USA Fender Telecaster Tuning problems

A really nice Tele’ but the owner’s unhappy as it won’t stay in tune. There is always the problem with the standard Tele’ bridge.  The Intonation is always a compromise so I’m going to change them for a compensated set…   With the strings off I’ve had a good look at the machine heads.  They […]

US Stratocaster Setup

Had a rather nice US Stratocaster on the bench today.  Nothing major, just a clean and setup. I rather like the body, nice paint finish over a very nice piece of wood…. The fretboard was a little grubby… A quick rub down with some steel wool will remove that and polish the frets at the same time.  […]

Les Paul# Copy

I’ve not had one of these Chinese copies before.  I’m all for cheaper copies and cheaper lines.  There’s nothing wrong with Squire, I’ve got an Electromatic Gretsch myself and I even built a “Rickenfaker” but I don’t like labelling things and pretending they are something they are not. However one of my customers took a punt on this […]

Fender Flame

Wow, what a fantastic guitar!  I guess I’m lucky, just now and then someone brings in something really nice….  All it needed was a new jack socket so it was an easy fix..

How many strings can you change in a day?

I think I’ve set a personal record, 72 strings in all… A dozen guitars from Lincolnshire Music Services, a quick cleanup, new set of strings and fix a few minor problems.  Most of them had very rusty strings…. and grubby, dry fretboards. The bodies will clean up easily enough…. The fretboard will also clean up […]

Fender Squire – Fret-dress and new heads

A fairly routine job.  Take a standard Squire Stratocaster and those special touches which will make it so much better.  The biggest setback to a really good playing action are the slightly uneven frets. They are a little worn as well so a fret dress will sort out both problems. The other problem lies in the machine heads.  […]

Maverick, fret-dress and setup

I don’t think I’ve had one of these on the bench before.  Not quite my cup of tea but different.  It’s obviously had a lot of use and needs a spot of TLC.  The frets are a little worn and the fret-board has several years worth of goop on it.  There were also a couple of high […]

Very Green Ibanez!

Quite a long job this one, been on the go for a couple of weeks.  The customer wanted a really nice setup, which really ment a fret dress before he had the body re-painted.  I though it was a bit daft to do the setup twice so ended up pulling it apart and doing the […]

Custom Build 4th update

Things have been a little quiet in the workshop this week, a couple of minor jobs but nothing worth putting on the blog. I did find some time to finally wire in the custom job I’ve been working on in my spare time, I just haven’t had much spare time lately. I’m not so keen […]