Vintage Metal XX – Setup

I’ve never been a fan of this sort of thing, and Vintage Guitars are not the best, but this one worked out quite well. There are a couple of bits missing, but they should be easy to find… The trem’ was a little gummed up, so I stripped it all down to clean each part. […]

Epiphone Les-Paul – Fret Dress

Nice looking guitar, just not playing right. The problem is with a couple of rather uneven frets. Unless they’re sorted out it’s never going to play well. With the strings off and the neck levelled it’s just a case of grinding the frets down to the lowest common point. You can see where the 4th, […]

Fender Stratocaster – New Pickup

Fancy and upgrade?  How about a new pickup or 2?  Not too sure about fitting them yourself?  Just give me a shout… Just one to change in this case, the bridge pickup. It’s also a question of the quality of wire, I don’t use the cheap stuff.  Decent wire not only lasts longer, will maximize the […]

Telecaster – Bone nut and setup

What a fantastic looking guitar.  Got to love a Tele’, but a Tele with a Bigsby, even better! That black and white finish look just great. There’s some problems with the bridge though.  It’s sitting rather low, I’m not sure if it’s able to rock backwards and forwards properly?  The trouble is, if I raise it […]

Ibanez RG – Fret Dress and Setup

I generally rate Ibanez guitars, but this one’s not so good.  It’s got some very uneven frets. The only way to get it playing properly is to dress them all, to get a common level.  It’s always easiest to do that with the neck off the guitar. There we go, taped up and levelled. As […]

Fender Stratocaster – Cleanup

Here’s a classic looking Strat,  Just needs a bit of a clean, I think had a bit of damp at it. Nothing too bad, but that’s what I got off the face of the fretboard. The frets themselves were also a little corroded.. so gently polish them with steel wool It’s difficult to clean the […]

PRS – Rebuild

A bit of a mess this one, but with a bit of effort I think it should be recoverable.. The first fault is rather obvious, it’s just between the nut and the machine heads! To glue it back together was quite simple, the break was along the grain. The trouble is there were some large pieces […]

Telecaster rebuild

Wow, an interesting mix of old and new.  The neck is genuine Fender, but I don’t know about the rest.  The body’s probably the heaviest Telecaster I’ve ever come across. I’m going to fit the neck to a new body with a mix of old and new hardware. The first stage is to sort out the […]

Gibson SG – Fret Dress and setup

I rather fancy one of these, This one needed quite a bit of sorting out though… The string break angle over the bridge looks a little extreme to me, but I can sort that out when I get it back together and complete the setup. The frets have got some worn spots…. and are a […]

Unknown Bass – re-wire

I’ve never been sure exactly what this is, it’s a bitsa’ (bitsa’ this and bitsa’ that)  It’s not been working properly lately, the electrics have been playing up so I’m going to replace the pots’ and possibly the switch. just a direct swap, one for one. While I’m at it, I drilled out and plugged […]