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, […]

Ibanez – Setup

Here’s a lovely guitar, just not behaving properly, needs a little work. The first thing is the bridge. The trouble with the wooden bridge is that intonation is always a bit of a compromise. The “Tune-o-matic” option means each string can be adjusted separately.  Since it’s a floating bridge the tape is there just so […]

Washburn – Fret dress and setup

A rather lovely guitar, in need of a little bit of work to get it playing properly though. A lovely piece of wood. Some of the frets are rather uneven.  Big fat frets with some very low points, so it’s going to be quite a bit of work. There’s quite a bit of wear and tear […]

Texas Custom Telecaster – Setup

What a lovely piece of wood, a really great looking guitar. It’s got a couple of problems, mostly just setup, but the neck isn’t on straight either.  Since the truss-rod adjustment is on the heel of the neck I’ll have to take it off anyway. I don’t need to measure that with a feeler gauge, […]

Squire Mustang – Setup

Here’s something a little different, rather than the usual round of Stratocasters etc.  An odd scale length for Fender as well, just a little shorter than the usual.  However it just wasn’t playing properly. While the string were off I also gave the fretboard a good clean…. and oil…. The scale length means none of […]

Custom Shop Fender Stratocaster

WOW What a great guitar!  It’s not often I get such lovely guitar on the bench.  However It wasn’t quite playing as well as it should, so I gave it a bit of a tweek here and there. This really is something special, when Fender put you name on it for you.  out of deference to […]

Fender Telecaster – Intonation problems

Everyone loves a Telecaster, a cassic guitar, no-one should be without one!  There is, however, one fundamental problem with the original design.  The strings are paired up on the bridge saddles and so the intonation is always a compromise, perticulrly on the D and G strings. There is a simple solution though, compensated saddles.  I’ve […]

Samick – Fret dress and setup

A nice looking guitar, sadly the build quality has rather let it down. The first problem was a dodgy volume control, a little intermittent. I was going to replace it but once I got the wiring out I found a dry joint.  I would say it was an easier fix but the biggest problem is […]

Problematic Gretsch

Had a bit of a problem with a Gretsch this week.  The owner wanted a setup to cure some fret buzzing, sadly it needed a bit more than just that.  The frets were quite uneven so they needed dressing to get the most out of it. Rather uneven frets….Grinding the frets to level the tops…Once […]