Soldering Day

A couple of small jobs today, one volume and one tone control. A simple replacement of a broken tone control. It does make life easy when the controls are on a separate plate, I don’t have to take the strings off to get to the trouble. Likewise this Yamaha, I was able to get to […]

Jim Harley, Fret Dress and Refurb

I’ve got quite a soft spot for Jim Harley Guitars, you don’t see many around but they make quite a wide range of gear.  I’ve got one myself.  This one is a nice piece of wood, it’s just in need of a little TLC. The first problem is it just doesn’t work, no output at […]

Peavey Restoration – 2nd Update

Next step, re-wire the pickups.  I’ve cleaned the pots and they seem ok but the pickup switch and jack socket were both beyond recovery so I’ve wired in new ones. The jack-plate is very flat, not enough depth to fit countersunk screws, so I’m going to use ones with much smaller heads.  The trouble is […]

New Gibson Pickups

Quite a simple update.  The chap has an Epiphone Les Paul that didn’t quite sound right and so asked me to fit a pair of Gibson pickups.  I like jobs like that, nice and easy, old ones out news ones in. Before… After…. (can you tell the difference?)  Well I guess you have to hear it. […]

Telecaster Build – Final Update

Got the Tele finished this afternoon.  Not before the neck caused me more grief. Next stage, wire in the electrics.  A slightly unconventional wiring with a 4 position switch so that the pickups can be selected singly, in parallel or series. Once the wiring was done It’s the final lap, put the strings back and […]

Telecaster Build – 3rd Update

Added most of the hardware today, even that proved more difficult than I thought.  Since the pick-guard is of a very early design there are no holes for the neck pickup screws.  I’ve mounted the pickup on two springs with screws directly into the body.  Since the pick-guard has to fit over the pickup but under the […]

Les Paul Upgrade

Got what might seem to be a strange request.  To upgrade a modern Les Paul with old style electrics.  The modern Les Pauls have all their electrics built in a modular fashion, which I guess make assembly much quicker and easy.  What this guy wanted was very specific, I like it when the customer knows exactly what […]

Noisey Telecaster

I was asked if I could fix a noisy Telecaster, I thought that was the idea!  However on listening there was an excessive amount of hum.  I though it would be less complicated as you can get to the wiring without taking the strings off.  However once I got it open I couldn’t immediately find anything […]