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 […]

Fender Jazz Bass – Setup

What’s in a Bass setup?  Much the same as a guitar really, just slightly different settings to allow for the heavier strings… The neck had a little too much set, or curve…. so a tweek of the truss-rod. With the neck flattened out a little it did bring the action at the 12th fret down […]

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 […]

Gibson – Low Fret

Now this is a lovely guitar, a pity it’s just got that Gibson inconsistency about it.  Some of the frets are rather uneven. The first one’s particularly low. The only way to really sort that lot out is with a fret-dress.  There we go, with the fretboard flat, the nut removed and taped up to […]

Telecaster – New Machine Heads

These were a nice touch I thought, a nice upgrade. There’s nothing wrong with the old heads, but the owner wanted Black ones The new ones are slightly different, and need new holes for the screws.  Making sure they’re all lined up squarely. There we go. Match the guitar quite nicely. To see what else […]

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 […]

Fender Precision Bass – Setup

A great looking guitar, just not playing at all well.  I didn’t really need to measure the action, more like a step-ladder to reach it! Yeh, that’s possibly the highest action I’ve ever seen, even on a Bass. The bridge saddles were quite low though, and those pickups are rather close to the strings. While […]

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 […]