This is the last post on this blog as it is moving to my NEW Chubbuck Guitars site!  The blog will continue over at www.chubbuckguitars.com/blog

Last week I updated the website. I have long wanted to better organize my content and feel this is a step in the right direction.  Everything I was posting online felt very scattered, so this new site helps gather it back together.  Plus I set it up to be super easy to update so I can make quick updates and get back to the bench!

Below is a video tour of the site.  Check it out and let me know what you think.  Thanks!

2014 Chubbuck Kalliope 001 build in progress.

Hey!  How have you been?  I bet you thought this blog was dead.  My apologies but I needed to take the year off and focus on the shop.  But I assure you that I will be adding more content on a regular basis now.

If you did not know, I maintain another blog that I dub the “Mini-Blog” that I’ve been keeping very up-to-date. Why two separate blogs?  Well, I wanted to maintain the more in-depth articles here on this blog while having another outlet to do quickly-captioned single-photo updates of the work on my bench each week.

Love to wallow in the mire with details and geek out on shop?  Stay here, this main blog is for you.

Like it light and breezy, quick and dirty?  Then head over to the Mini-Blog.

So far I’ve posted just about every repair with exception of three guitars on the Mini-Blog (though I will get them back in the shop for photos!!!).  Also the Mini-Blog is really an aliased Tumblr blog so if you are on there consider giving it a follow!

http://miniblog.chubbuckguitars.com/

I know on one of my posts from last year that I set some goals:  four guitar builds and having the spray booth up and running.  In both respects, I failed miserably.  The spray booth components are still stacked up in the corner, awaiting a solid plan-of-installation (ie. requiring more time, more money).  I do have some leads of people that I hope will help me, but it is still a long, long overdue project.  Though I did not get my four guitars built I have started on a couple acoustics.  You can check the progress on the Mini-Blog and I will be adding some posts on here soon.  Rogue 005’s body is glued up along with a new jumbo model that is dubbed the “Kalliope”.  This Kalliope 001 is a 16″ lower bout and the client requested an arm bevel and a soundport.  You can check my Instagram feed for a quick video of the new soundport.  I also have a couple hollowbodies that await my attention as well.

2014 Chubbuck Rogue 005 in progress.

Note that Rogue 005 is not spoken for as of this posting so please inquire if you are interested.  Bearclaw Engelmann spruce top with Santa Maria Mahogany back and sides.

This year is very exciting as I am getting the build side of the shop up and running.  Stay tuned!

:  :  :  :  :  :

Ok, here is an output jack crack repair on an 80’s Yamaha 335-style guitar.  And yes, I said “output” jack – not the common “input” jack misnomer.  For me, input jacks are for amps, output jacks are for guitars.  The signal leaves the guitar and enters the amp, right?

This crack highlights why having repair experience feeds into building your own guitars.  I always reinforce my output jacks in my builds for this very reason.  The instrument cable is torquing the hell out of a small area of the guitar and over time something has to give.  Many Gibson (ie. ES-175) with side jacks suffer this same crack and require some kind of reinforcement to be added when time comes for repair.  But I get it – it is an extra step that adds expense in a factory environment.  But in a small-volume build shop, I would highly suggest reinforcing the output jack.

This 1982 Yamaha SA 1200S has a solid spruce top, so it is particularly vulnerable to cracks that possibly a laminate top (plywood) could have withstood.  So this will be photo-essay style from here on out.  The basic plan of attack:

1. remove the wiring harness
2. glue the output jack crack
3. reinforce the crack with cleats
4. minor finish touch-up
5. clean up / reinstall the wiring harness
6. set up

1982 Yamaha SA 1200S “Super Axe”  Note how far away the output jack is from the f-hole in which I’ll have to access to repair this crack!

Solid spruce top with a 5″ long crack running from the binding and through output jack mounting hole.  The wiring harness was extracted via the treble f-hole.

First the crack was stabilized by forcing glue down through the crack.  The suction cup helps the glue penetrate through the crack by hydraulic pressure.  The small dental mirror is used to monitor the glue squeeze-out inside.

With the crack saturated with glue, I used a 3/8″ diameter bolt with two plexiglass cauls, a couple washers and a nut to clamp around the output jack.  A small deep-throat clamp was then used through the f-hole to align the rest of the crack.  More details on this clamping setup below.  Note that if I get another one of these repairs that I would extend the length of the top caul to the edge- I was concerned the plexiglass was too stiff to fit into the recurve (it turned out to be flexible enough).

Now that the crack is glued, it needs to be reinforced.  The larger jack reinforcement is made of maple while the smaller cleats are made from spruce.  Note that I later decided to add a third spruce cleat between the output jack and the edge.

I wanted to make the output jack reinforcement cleat as thick as I could, but the danger here lies in making it too thick and not leaving enough room to fit the nut and washer on the jack when you’re done.  I check the thickness by stacking the washer, nut and maple reinforcement on the outside and checking inside to see if the jack is just proud of the edge.  The original jack was already a long-thread version so I used an identical thread-length jack to test here.  Sure you could use the original to test this, but I didn’t want to disturb the wiring harness any more than was necessary.

Here is the breakdown of the clamping setup.  It assembles from right to left.  Bolt, washer, small plexiglass and maple reinforcement go inside the guitar.  Large plexiglass, washer and nut go on the outside.

I cut a slot into the end of the bolt with a Dremel  cutoff wheel so I could use a screwdriver along with a wrench to tighten it down later.

Here is the rig assembled.  Note that I made a small mark on the maple reinforcement so that I could easily index it into the correct orientation when it came time to install (bass side versus treble side, perpendicular to the top grain).

So the trick is to get this bolt / washer / plexiglass / maple  setup inside the treble f-hole and then over and up into the output jack.  After applying glue to the reinforcement, I used a set of long tweezers to wrangle it into the f-hole and rested the bolt head on the back, inside the guitar.  The other blue gizmo in the photo is just a couple magnets wrapped in cloth and taped up.  I used this magnet on the exterior of the back to slide the bolt that is inside the guitar over to the output jack.

Now that the bolt / maple reinforcement are in position under the output jack, I needed a way to pull that bolt up through the top.  Here comes in another larger stack of magnets.  The bolt I used, while resting on the back, was not long enough  to be attracted by these magnets.  So I had to  “throw” the bolt up into the magnets.  I did this by raising the guitar up off of the bench and then lowering it abruptly.  “Thump!”  The bolt was now suspended by the top stack of magnets.

With the bolt now suspended by the magnets, I used the dental mirror to check its orientation inside the guitar and turned the magnet stack accordingly.  When it was in the correct position (thanks to the mark I made earlier), I pulled up on the stack and brought maple reinforcement in contact with the top.  The slotted screwdriver comes into play on the next step of securing the top side of the clamping rig.

With the magnet stack removed, make sure that the bolt does not fall back into the guitar or you will have to start over! I used the slotted screwdriver to hold the bolt in position while I assembled the exterior caul and washer.  Once you get the nut started onto the bolt threads you are out of the woods.

This is where that slot I cut into the end of the bolt comes into play.  I can tighten down the nut with a wrench and keep the bolt from spinning with a slotted screwdriver.

Now that the output jack is reinforced, time to reinforce the rest of the crack.  Here are more magnets used to layout where each of the three spruce cleats will go.  I use a piece of tape under each magnet stack to protect the finish. The dental mirror along with the small “light bulb on a stick” that I got from a violin supply house are great for working through the f-hole.

When I find the right position, I tape the exterior magnets down. In order to get the cleats inside the guitar, I use this goofy wire rig to reach in through the f-hole. I’ve used this on a violin before with great results. It is made up of thin military trip wire and a thicker piece of bonsai wire to stiffen a section of it. Double stick tape keeps the cleat on the magnet. Just make sure you get your polarities correct or the magnet will flip over on you inside the guitar when it comes time to install. I work from the farthest edge (right side in this photo) and work back to the f-hole, installing the cleats one by one.

The crack repair is now stabilized so it is time to reinstall the wiring harness.  It was quite a mess so I took the time to zip tie various sections together to keep the appearance through the f-hole nice and clean (ie. – no wires visible).  I also used some Deoxit to clean the pots which can become scratchy in hollowbodies since the “control cavity” is exposed.

Here is the completed repair.  The finish is some sort of catalyzed finish (ie. NOT nitrocellulose lacquer) so I only did a minor color touch-up to take the curse off of some of the the stark white spruce that was exposed through the sunburst.

Output jack crack repaired, wiring harness installed and set up for GHS Boomers 11-50]

And let me introduce you to the guitar’s owner, Graham Kelly.  He plays around Boston in the band Dig.  I first met him last year at a gig while shooting photos at Johnny D’s in Somerville, MA.  I highly recommend you check them out if you are around Boston.

Graham Kelly, guitarist of the band Dig playing Johnny D’s in Somerville, MA.  [October 13, 2013]

In the meantime, please check out the often-updated-multiple-times-during-the-week Mini-Blog.

Oh yeah, Instagram too.

Andy Mowatt playing with Herbie at the Appalachian Brewing Company in Harrisburg, PA [2011.12.11]

Andy just so happens to play one of my hollowbodies.  I recently asked Andy if he would be down for sharing a few thoughts for the blog … here we go!

:: :: :: :: :: ::

Kevin Chubbuck (KC):

So Andy, we’ve been friends for a few years now.  I was turned onto you from a mutual friend of ours (Adam) who is a big fan of your PA based band Herbie.  When I looked you up I was blown away with both your technique and musicality in general for such a relatively young musician.  Music careers seem to call many, but choose few.  Tell me a little about your early days.  At what point do you remember that you wanted to pursue life as a professional guitarist?  What sacrifices have you made along the way to pursue your passion?

Andy Mowatt (AM):

Adam and his crew are the best! I’m glad he told me about your guitars one of those crazy nights in Bloomsburg. I took piano and guitar lessons as a kid, but never thought of instruments as more than another toy to play with, like Legos or the Nintendo. In some ways I’m grateful to be a passionate person in general and so I’m likely to get obsessed with any activity I do. It turns out guitar is the one that I’m still in awe over. And more so now, there’s an overwhelming sense of not knowing anything about music the more I learn about it. It drives the intense process day in day out. So, I guess I never really thought about pursuing a “career” until college when playing music became a lifestyle instead of just a casual game. And more so, when I was about to graduate, when bills and the reality of day to day things start happening. Everyday I’m learning from others what works and what doesn’t work on how to get paying gigs and meet more musicians who continue to challenge me. The career thing is a double edged sword. Art versus business. The business of art, as it is most of the time. I can’t say I’ve sacrificed anything…maybe just a consistent lifestyle. No pensions or job security for me. Sports too… I used to play a lot of sports, but random scheduling makes it hard now to stay as athletic as I’d like to be.

Andy Mowatt playing with Herbie at the Appalachian Brewing Company in Harrisburg, PA [2011.12.11]

KC:

Being passionate about what you do certainly helps you fight through all of the obstacles that hang up less-impassioned people.  The cliche “If it were easy, everyone would do it” comes to mind.  I can totally identify with your thought that the more you learn, the less you know.  Your awareness of what is out there keeps expanding exponentially with each new little thing you learn about.  So how do you keep from being overwhelmed with all of the new things you become hip to?  Like, how do you choose what to work on and when do you know it’s time to move onto something new?  I imagine that a productive, disciplined practice regime plays a huge role in further separating the exceptional players from the mediocre.  Please give me some insight into how you digest new material and push your playing in new directions.  How do you stoke the fire?

AM:

I’m not sure what “hip” is. Something just happens when you hear “it”. You know what I mean. It’s just so fresh and INSPIRING. The sound of “hip” seems to vary from time to time, but the feeling remains. There are waves of Charlie Parker, and more recently Charlie Hunter that I’ve been bouncing between this year. I can’t help but “practice” that stuff. Sometimes brutal/painful/diligent metronome work (feels like work) and other times just playing and letting it fall together over hours a day. I caught myself in a dark park the other evening with my guitar, just woodshedding on my own tune but in the style of Hunter. Technique and feel and fitting bass/percussive/chord/melody parts together as one. I biked over there early afternoon, and before I knew it the sun had gone down, all the people had left and I still had work to do on that guitar. I didn’t even notice I was thirsty and hungry and it had gotten cold and dark. That’s how “hip” Hunter is for me.

Andy Mowatt playing with Herbie at the Appalachian Brewing Company in Harrisburg, PA [2011.12.11]

KC:

Yeah by hip I mean something that grabs your attention and pulls you in a certain direction.  Charlie Hunter is quite amazing – I’ve been a big fan of his for a long time and love how he has created his own style.  I’ve always thought of him as playing piano on guitar, playing both chords and melody while holding down the bass.

And it is funny how you loose track of time when you are immersed in something you are inspired by.  I think it is easy to “work” when you are inspired, but inspiration is often a luxury that is not always available.  I’ve heard a sculptor (who’s name escapes me) mention that if he only worked when he was inspired, he would not have finished anything.  Professionals know they have to put in their time everyday, inspired or not (hopefully inspiration finds you while you are working though).

So tell me about what you are up to now days?   You have been the house guitarist for the American Music Theatre in Lancaster, PA for a few years now.   Other projects you have told me about are arranging charts for other theaters, playing cruise ships, sitting in and recording with UZO, Herbie seems to be playing more now days, and also have your own band (Andy Mowatt Trio).  You are a busy guy!

AM:

For sure! Some days are painful to get through cause you just don’t care, but having discipline from the experience of countless “painful” days helps in the long run. I’m preaching to the choir though…

Nowadays, I’m testing out the return on saying yes to every opportunity I come across and working hard even without the reward of getting paid for it; trying to brand my name as a high quality musician on and off the stage. It’s hard to stay focused and care thought when a gig doesn’t pay in money, but in experience and knowledge for the future. Who knows what’s next or who’s gonna be on the gig…networking is a bitch haha.

• This past year I’ve arranged and performed with two theater bands (American Music Theater, Lancaster PA, and Palace Theater, Manchester NH)
• Original 9-piece Steely Dan big band (Andy Mowatt’s Steely Jam)
• Arranged the music for a country album (Wess Cooke) due out March 2014
• Recorded with UZO (Demotion of Pluto)
• Arranged my own Christmas album
• Played on several other local albums (thanks for Mike Washkavich and MDW Productions)
• I’m also in the process of writing material for another original album (almost ready for pre-production)
• Rehearsing and recording with Herbie for our brand new album (due out this December 2013)
• Doing clinics at a local college
• Writing tracks for a pop-R&B-soul album for local female singer (Erica Lyn Everest)
• Booking my trio gigs around PA / DE
• Hosting an open jam in town (Lancaster, PA)
• Teaching a few guitar lessons, taking a few guitar lessons, and so on and so on.

I still wish I could go to live shows more often and hang to meet more people. It’s a double-edge sword making my own schedule, so I’ve been trying to leave a full day open every week. I’m impressed you can manage your own schedule with other mouths to feed! I get overwhelmed just sitting down to eat for myself. 

Andy Mowatt’s 2010 Chubbuck Mousa 001 hollowbody. “AUM” inlay by Custom Pearl Inlay artist Kiefer Dowden.

KC:  

Damn, you are busy!  And you seem to be doing things the right way.  Just getting out to meet people and telling them what you do is huge.  Then word of mouth takes over and does a lot of the legwork for you.  It doesn’t happen overnight, but investing early in these relationships can pay off enormously down the road.

If you did not have to worry about paying your bills, what would be your dream project?  What is your biggest goal that you are chasing – your own band?

AM:

I’ll let you know in a few years how things develop…hopefully on the right path. I should follow in your footsteps and hit the pavement. I have a hang up about shameless self promotion; it feels so weird and/or self centered always talking about myself to people. I should get over that I guess.

My dream gig at this point is playing my own music on tour. I have a killer group that play my originals around the area, but I’d like to stretch out with it. I love to travel so touring is the best of both worlds. Sharing music and meeting people is as good as it gets.

Andy Mowatt (near) along with Jay Baab (far) playing with Herbie at the Appalachian Brewing Company in Harrisburg, PA [2011.12.11]

KC:

Getting out and meeting people is part of the game.  I’ve struggled with my own “self promotion” for a long, long time.  But I’ve found that if your are genuine in your approach of helping other people, than they will go to bat for you.  That being said, I don’t look at new relationships with expectations of anything in return.  I really enjoy helping people and they in turn appreciate that and may think of me in the future.  I think the slimy salesman vibe you may feel when doing this goes away when you are actively listening to what the other person needs help with.  Then you come across as offering them a solution to their problem instead of selling them something that they are probably not receptive to or don’t need.  No one likes being sold to.  Listening is huge – just like playing music.  Just keep meeting people and establishing great relationships – definitely value quality over quantity.  There are so many parallels between your career as a musician and mine as a guitar builder.  Hopefully we can learn from each other!

Well, we should wrap up.  I really enjoyed this little session and look forward to seeing where your music takes you.  Every time I see you play, I’m blown away with how much you grow as a musician.  I think you’re on the right path, just keep hustling!

AM:

I’m glad you said that about helping people instead of selling something to them. I’m not the best at socializing but I’ve noticed more and more that building friendships is better for everyone. We’re all chasing similar passions in various ways, and being helpful to each other is useful for all. It’s not often I see people passing up their friends when they need a band (or promo, merch, etc, etc) for some random band they saw on a flyer or email list.

“I get by with a little help from my friends”.

Andy Mowatt playing with Herbie at the Appalachian Brewing Company in Harrisburg, PA [2011.12.11]

KC: 

I would like to take this time to thank you for allowing me the privilege of building a guitar for you.  Building for players like you is what all us luthier’s strive for.  A higher compliment I cannot think of.  I’m truly honored!

So how is the guitar treating you now days?  It’s been what, 3 years?  What was it like to order a custom guitar from a complete stranger?  What were you looking for in a custom guitar?

AM:

The guitar has been playing and sounding better than ever. I’ve grown with it over the past three years, playing it everyday. My ear and hands are tuned in with it. In studio sessions, I prefer it over anything else since my intonation is best with bends, not to mention the producer on a recent country album picked the Mousa over an American Tele for every track! I could go on for days bragging about my experiences so far. Everyone else seems to like it too. I’m grateful you took a leap and built this guitar for me. I hope to continue playing it everyday for as long as possible.

Andy Mowatt’s 2010 Chubbuck Mousa 001.

KC:

Thank you so much for the kind words – so great to hear that the guitar is in good hands. And a big thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this little interview with me. Hopefully I can get down and catch a show sometime in the near future. If not, I look forward to your next shop visit when you’re up this way.

Best of luck and keep hustlin’.

AM:

My pleasure, see you soon.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

Today I am going to tell you a little about myself as this day marks the first year of what I consider, establishing my first “real guitar shop” in Lynn, MA.

Wow.

I can’t believe how insanely fast this past year flew by. I am also amazed that I somehow paid the bills each month.  I even re-up’d on the lease.

It seemed like last week that I packed up and moved out of my modest basement shop in a house I was renting in Marblehead.  The house went up for sale last June, so it was time to look for new digs.*

*A huge thanks goes out to DaveO for helping me schlep all of my equipment across town. He is also the mastermind behind my killer website.  Those who have been following me from the early days can attest to my pre-DaveO site that I horribly cobbled together.  Awful.  Yuck.  You the man DaveO.

This past year I have been focusing on repair work while continuing to set up shop.  February of this year marked an entire year since my last build and why this blog’s focus has been mainly on repairs that have come through the shop.  February also marked the one year anniversary of this blog.  I started the blog as an outlet for me to show people what I’m up to on a somewhat regular basis outside of the world known as Facebook.**  I also more recently started a mini blog over at Tumblr so I can fill in the gaps between the slightly more substantial content posted here.

**Facebook is a great resource, but I encourage you to get outside and explore the rest of what the interwebs have to offer.  Let’s be honest, most of FB is a complete time waster, akin to the ol’ TV.

Ok Kevin, we get it.  Enough with the social media bullshit.

So a little history …

As you may or may not know, I was building Bill Tippin’s guitars over in Marblehead, MA for the past six years.  It was a great experience and I was allowed the freedom to experiment and further refine Bill’s initial designs.  Along with building, I worked on a variety of guitar repairs ranging from pre-war vintage up to high-dollar boutique.  My daily routine was working on his stuff in the day, my guitars nights and weekends.

While both living and working in Marblehead, I found myself with a feeling of isolation.  I felt disconnected from the music community.  I was severely lacking of a social life and needed to surround myself with inspired people again.  So a few years ago, I grabbed my camera and starting shooting bands around Boston.  For the first time since I had left Santa Cruz, I felt part of a community again.  Through my camera I was able to meet and hang with some amazing people.  Musicians.  Artists.  Their fans.  Other photographers.  Other builders and repair people.  I was also able to contribute to the music scene that has yielded me so much joy and inspiration.  This fed back into my guitar work and helped me maintain perspective.  I got to introduce myself to a lot of musicians as a builder and repairer of guitars.  Plus I built  some incredible friendships.

Two months ago, I decided it was time for me to focus 100% of my attention on my shop.  No more Tippin Guitars.  Things were getting really crazy juggling my time between a full-time day job and late nights at my shop.  I was getting burned out.  #chubbuckneversleeps.  Frankly I was tired of building other people’s guitars.  I feel that I have paid my dues.  Three years with Santa Cruz and six with Tippin.  Now or never, time to get my shit together.

So the idea of starting your own guitar shop sounds fun, right? Well it brings along with it an entourage of demanding disciplines far beyond that of just building and repairing guitars.  You need to learn accounting, cash flow, time management, social media / online presence, customer relations, networking, writing, photography, shop infrastructure, dealer / supply sourcing, etc.  This is not a career, but a lifestyle.  It makes you break your ass for every little win.

Guitars and my shop are always on my mind.  Always.  Most 9-5 employees have the luxury of leaving their baggage at work when they go home.  My baggage follows me everywhere I go, all hours of the day, every day of the week.  I am constantly struggling with a crushing weight that wants to paralyze me with a constantly growing list of things I need to do.  Things I haven’t learned yet.  The more-you-know-the-less-you-know kind of things.  I need to embrace this struggle and continue to connect with people far more skilled and experienced than myself.   Resistance in your life is essential as it clearly marks your shortcomings.  It shows you exactly where you need to begin expanding your boundaries.  Fuck comfort zones.

A fellow builder and friend of mine, Chuck Sanzone, told me about a conversation he had with another builder regarding family, friends and careers:

“A long-time shop owner told me recently that luthiers can’t have families or wives if they want to be successful. While I don’t completely agree, I see his point.”

I have a wife, daughter and another on the way in a couple months.  I totally agree with Chuck – it is extremely tough, but you can have both.  At least I hope so.  You do this by finding that balance between your time both inside and outside of the shop.  Here it is even more important that you maximize your productivity on both ends.  Spend the limited time you have as wisely as possible.  Balance is the key and may never be realized, but is concept that guides me.  Same is true with mixing any passion with other areas of interest in your life.  Balance.  Feed your head with a variety of foreign subjects.  Regularly take short breaks from all that intensity so you can see the forest for the trees.

As they say, easier said than done.

So what I’m saying is that I’m still figuring things out.  Although I ditched the “day job”, I still work nights.  I’m not sure if I can ever give that up.  I do work during the day full-time, but there is something about creating and feeling alive while the rest of the world is asleep.  My goals for next year at this time is to have a spray booth and to have built at least four guitars (along with repairs).  Definitely more building.  Other goals on the list?  Maybe cut back on the night hours to be a little more social?  Maybe play more guitar and create some noise with others again?  Maybe start to climb out of debt (hahahaha!)?  Being a better dad and husband is certainly on the list.  I have been reading more now that I finally picked up a Kindle.  Feed that head.  Balance.  Keep your brain on it’s toes to maintain perspective.

Until then,

#chubbuckneversleeps

I want to thank everyone for their overwhelming support of what I’m doing.   Especially my wife Sarah.  She puts up with so much of my insanity and truly believes in what I’m doing.  Even when I question it myself.  I cannot do this alone.  You are all amazing.

Year two.  Here we go …

1969 Gibson EB-1 bass.

Here is a fairly simple repair to a fairly common problem with vintage Gibson basses with two point bridges (three point bridges as well). This 1969 Gibson EB-1 “violin bass” has a classic problem of the silk string windings crossing over the saddles and robbing sustain.

The photo below shows the bass as it came into the shop. The player had unraveled portions of the silk windings to try and remedy the problem, notably on the E and A strings.

The silks of the string windings end up on the saddles when properly intonated and rob sustain.

Another issue with this bass was that the pickup was physically loose and rattling. This was a simple fix as the cover was removed and another layer of foam was fitted underneath the pickup. The foam supports the pickup while the cover holds it in place. A quick and dirty repair.

The infamous Gibson “mudbucker”. This pickup was rattling inside the cover, so foam was added underneath to make up for the compressed original foam.

So, back to the saddle issues. My customer turned me onto the Webbteca MOD-BAR, which is made by Evan Webb in Columbus, OH. This simple yet genius bar installs without modifying the original bridge and spaces the string balls back enough for the silks to clear the saddles.

The bar resting on top of the original bridge is the Webbteca MOD-BAR. This simple stainless steel bar spaces the strings back enough for the saddles to clear the silks. Note the bar needed to be further relieved so the bridge saddle adjustments would clear the bar.

The only modification required was to relieve the MOD-BAR so that it would clear the saddle intonation adjustment screws in the rear of the bridge. The photo below shows those saddle adjustment screws, just below the string ball ends.

Just below the string ball ends is the saddle intonation adjustments.

The bar is held on by string tension alone and now the saddles have plenty of room to intonate. With the silks not coming in contact with the saddles, the strings are able to vibrate free and ring true. Very slick solution Evan!

The bridge with the MOD-BAR installed. No modifications to the original bridge are required and the bar is held on by string tension alone. Very slick!

The bass now plays better than ever. And for you crazy collectors that value originality over playability, this bass can easily be brought back to stock by removing the MOD-BAR. (note the chrome bridge cover and pick guard could be added as well.)

Bassists / guitar tech’s looking for a MOD-BAR, here is some contact info. Evan is a great guy and loves to talk shop.

Evan Webb

(614) 716-9750

eBay Store

1969 Gibson EB-1 with Webbteca MOD-BAR installed in the bridge, strings ringing true.

1988 – 1989 Fender Japanese Stratocaster.

Here’s a quick post about a quirky repair that came through the shop a few months ago for a basic setup.  The output jack plate was also loose, so that was to be addressed as well.  This is a late 1980’s Fender Stratocaster, made in Japan.

Fender Stratocaster headstock.  “Made in Japan”

So the plan of attack on this one came together like this:

1. Dowel and re-drill the output jack mounting plate.

2. Check over the circuit – just so happened to find the neck pickup magnet was separated from the pickup (first time for me).

3.  Secure the loose magnet to the neck pickup.

4.  Remove the neck and adjust the truss rod.

5. Setup and check intonation.

:     :     :     :     :     :

And away we go …

Loose output jack plate. Note the right screw is floating and cannot be tightened.

Both output jack plate holes are doweled and redrilled.

Surprised to find that the neck pickup’s magnet had come loose and was only held on by it’s own magnetism.

Note the designation on the middle position magnet – this is reverse wound so that positions 2 and 4 are hum canceling.

Neck pickup magnet resecured to the pickup with glue.

The truss rod needed adjustment, so the neck had to be removed to access the screw. Note the shim in the neck pocket used to decrease the neck angle.

Hidden away in the neck pocket is access to the truss rod adjustment screw. I always find this inconvenient  to have to remove the neck for this common adjustment.

Maple fingerboard showing it’s age with some genuine player wear.

Japanese Strat back together and ready to rip.

Medium gauge strings are too much for this glue joint.

A couple weeks ago this Alvarez Dreadnought cutaway came into the shop with a severely failing bridge glue joint and a top crack. The bridge not only had a bad glue joint, but was ripping apart the Cedar top. The guitar was strung with medium gauge strings, so this increased tension was not helping things.  That combined with the low-humidy environment the guitar lives in (wood stove heat, northeast winter season), the top is under tremendous stress.

So the plan of attack:

1.  Remove the under saddle pickup.

2.  Remove the bridge.

3.  Glue and cleat the top crack.

4.  Refit / reglue the bridge using hot hide glue.

Extra credit:

5. Replace the pickup element.

:  :  :  :  :  :

And here we go, photo-essay style …

Bridge lifting and top crack on this cedar-top Alvarez.

Pieces of the cedar top being pulled from the soundboard.

Yet another view of the bridge glue joint failure.

Bass side bridge failure seems to be more pronounced than the treble side.

Bridge is distorting as it is being peeled from the top.

Before the bridge can be removed, the pickup has to be desoldered.

The pickup plugs into the side-mounted preamp.

A contour gauge is used to trace the footprint of this unique bridge so a heat shield can be made to protect the top during the removal.

This contour measurement will be used to make a heat shield.

The bridge dimensions are transferred to a piece of corrugated cardboard.

Final fitting of the cardboard heat shield.

The cardboard heat shield is covered with aluminum foil.

An ifrared light heats the bridge to soften the remaining glue joint. The top is protected from the light by the heat shield.

The bridge comes off quite easily, though there were pieces of the top that clung to the bridge.

This is the piece that we saw in an earlier photo before removing the bridge. This will be saved, along with other pieces to reglue to the top.

This jack will be used to support the lower bout top crack and keep it aligned during the repair. Note the piece of plexiglass on the jack will be inside while the other piece is used on the outside.

Here is the small piece of Cedar being glued near the bridge along with the lower bout top crack.

After crack repair dries, the area needs to be cleated to prevent the crack from reopening. There will be two cleats and magnets are taped to the outside to locate the internal cleats.  The magnets will also hold the cleat while the hide glue dries.

The cleats are double-stick taped to the magnets and a steel ruler is used to install the cleat through the soundhole. Just make sure you get your magnet polarities correct or the cleat will flip over and not glue to the top.

The top footprint is cleaned up and as much of the pieces on the bridge are reglued to the top. The bridge has been fit to the top and ready to glue. Note the new plug in the top: this was an open hole and we need as much glue surface as possible to maintain a strong joint.

A small piece of aluminum foil is glued into the saddle pickup hole. If this hole is not plugged, glue will end up in the bottom of the saddle slot.

The top is brushed with thinned, hot hide glue to seize the grain. This will prevent the top from sucking the glue joint dry.

The bridge is heated and hot hide glue applied to the bridge and top. The outer string holes have Teflon pins that hold the bridge in place and three clamps are used.

Now that the guitar is structurally sound again, time to get the pickup back in. Unfortunately, the pickup fell apart when I removed it from the guitar. The pickup slipped out of the foil wrapper and was jammed against one of the spacers. I re-wrapped the pickup and resoldered it, but it was too noisy. I clipped the lead and moved onto a new pickup.

The customer and I decided on a D-TAR Soundspots pickup. This is a passive transducer-style pickup and was able to splice into the original Alvarez preamp. The two piezo elements are super glued inside the guitar on the bridge plate.

The new pickup spliced into the original pickup lead. The pickup is the shielded cable and the other wire runs to the output jack.

Alavarez D cutaway back in business with light gauge strings to help ease the tension.  The customer also has a room humidifier now to keep his wood stove from sucking the humidity out of the guitar.

New Chubbuck Guitars’ t-shirts!!!

Chubbuck Guitars now has it’s first shirt design in the works! They are high-quality American Apparel shirts available in black or olive, sizes S – XXXL.

Note: sizes run small.

$20 shipped in the US.

Please visit the pre-order page to place your order.

The pre-order will run until Sunday March 17, 2013 and orders will ship the first week of April.

Stickers are in the works too … along with more updates to the blog here. The shop has been extremely busy with repairs. There are a lot of cool guitars coming across the bench!

Stay tuned, this is gearing up to be an exciting year for the shop.

1994-95 Japanese Fender Tele.

About six weeks ago, just before Thanksgiving, Rob Compa of Dopapod gave me a call looking to beef up his Tele tone. His primary guitar is a PRS McCarty and he wanted to fatten up his thinner-sounding Tele a bit. He was not looking for it to sound the same as the PRS, just a little bit ballsier.

Now to say I’m a huge fan of Rob’s playing and tone is an understatement. I have had the privilege to work on his guitars during the recording of Dopapod’s latest studio album Redivider, that was just released. I also photograph quite a few Dopapod shows when they come around the northeast. (many, many more shows yet to post to the site).

Stock vintage-style Tele.

Rather unique metallic blue finish on the body, with a maple neck and rosewood board.

Vintage-style bridge with screw saddles.

“666” ~ mark of the beast, straight from Japan.

I told Rob that I had a Tele with some pickups that may be what he was looking for.  A couple years ago I put together a Warmoth Tele for myself, merely as an excuse to practice some finish work.

2009 Warmoth Tele personal project loaded with a set of Lollar Special T’s.

And no, those aren’t “relic’d” scratches on the left side.  Those are “oh shit I shouldn’t have carried it in a gig bag to that jam session …” scratches.  Oh well.  Character.

In that guitar I used Jason Lollar’s Super T pickups, which are a fuller, rounder set of Tele pickups.  Just listen to Tim Lerch’s clean neck pickup demo:

Rob had a gig at The Spot in Providence, RI so we met up and traded Tele’s.  This gave him a chance to try the Lollar Special T’s out and decide if he wanted to go that route.  I brought his guitar back to my shop and he gave me the go-ahead a few days later.

“Let’s do it.”

So here’s the rundown:

1. Remove the strings and pickguard.

2. Access the control cavity.

3.  Desolder the pickups from the circuit and remove (bridge needs to come off to access bridge pickup).

4.  Install new pickups and solder them into the circuit.

5.  Reassemble, restring and setup.

:  :  :  :  :  :

Strings and pickguard are removed and the control cavity is ready to access the circuit.

The yellow and white cloth wires are the hot pickup leads on the switch (left) and the black cloth ground wires are soldered to the volume pot case (middle).

The stock neck pickup is removed, showing the body stamp.

The new Jason Lollar Special T pickups on the left, the old stock pickups on the right (bridge pickups on the top, neck pickups towards the bottom).

The new pickups installed and the leads are fished through the body, ready to make their connections.  Note that I left the leads long in case Rob wanted the control plate flipped 180 degrees for easy access to volume and tone swells.

The pickups are installed and the guitar is restrung.  The pickguard is left off so that the neck pickup height can be adjusted relative to the strings and balanced with the bridge pickup.  The guard goes on after those adjustments are set with no need to loosen the strings.

New pickups installed and ready for Rob to rip.

A couple weeks after the show in Providence, I met up with Rob at his show in Wilkes-Barre, PA at the River Street Jazz Cafe to deliver his Tele.  He sound checked it and really dug the new pickups compared to the stock ones.  Backstage we decided to go with the controls flipped around (the switch towards the tail and the volume & tone closer to the bridge).  This required the blue lead running from the switch to the volume pot to be removed and a longer one wired in. This is because the volume and tone controls swap places on the control plate, so you have the volume in the front and the tone back by the switch.

Check out the “Blast” encore from Dopapod’s Wilkes-Barre show to hear Rob playing around with the new pickups and control layout.  (There’s a great squeal and long sustained note around 7:20).

High quality (wav):

  https://chubbuckguitars.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/2012-11-23_dopapod_blast_wav.wav

Low quality (mp3):

The recording is by mkdevo.  Also check out his infamous YouTube channel for exceptional live music videos from Phish, Dopapod, etc.

Remember to check out Dopapod’s new album Redivider.  If you buy a physical copy, you will see some of my photos of the recording session included in the liner notes!  The band is on break now rehearsing some new material and is gearing up to hit the road hard again at the end of the month.  Check out their tour dates here.

Rob Compa (Dopapod), 2012.11.23 River St Jazz Cafe, Wilkes-Barre, PA

1979 Fender Stratocaster.

Happy 2013! I have a few posts leftover from the tail end of 2012 that will go up here before I do my “New Year’s” post.

Here’s a ’79 Strat from my boy DaveO from a few weeks ago …

Strats and other guitars in the single – single – humbucker pickup configuration have always reminded me of the 80’s. I’m not sure exactly why or who in particular, but most of those hair bands seemed to require a humbucker in the bridge as a minimum requirement. Nothing wrong with that, just an observation.

Guitar and original pickguard previously modified for a bridge-position humbucker. A new pickguard is required to return this guitar to it’s original single-coil bridge pickup.

The owner of this 1979 Strat bought it with the humbucker already installed. Luckily the original pickup was included in the case. He brought it in to have the guitar returned to the stock bridge pickup, along with new frets and a bone nut. Another consideration is that he wanted to keep the guitar looking as original as possible, so this meant maintaining the character of the original fingerboard’s finish.

The bridge humbucker is coming out. Note how the original pickguard was modified to accept the new pickup – not just the obvious enlargement but the original pickup mounting holes.

Fender’s large ’70’s peghead. I’m a big fan of these.

Fender’s 3-bolt neck with “micro-tilt” from the 70’s.

Note the infamous 70’s heavy polyester finish on the fingerboard and how it seals in the frets.

The customer is looking to preserve the genuine wear on the fingerboard, so we will not be stripping and refinishing the fingerboard while refretting this neck.

So here’s the plan of attack:

1. Remove the neck and secure the tuner bushings.

2. Remove the frets and nut.

3. Preserve the original fingerboard finish and fill any finish chip-outs and finish sand / buff neck.

4. Install new frets and dress.

5. Make a new bone nut.

6. Swap out old pickguard with the humbucker and install new pickguard with stock pickups.

7. Setup.

: : : : : :

Here we go!

The tuning posts are taped up to prevent the bushings from coming loose and getting lost on the shop floor. Check out this post to see an alternative trick for saving Gibson bushings.

Here’s a view inside the neck pocket. You can see the “micro-tilt” mechanism at the bridge-end.

Underneath the neck heel you see the other half of the “micro-tilt”. Two screws and a bolt, along with other hardware, secures the neck to the body.

The original nut is buried under the finish and you can see the finish chipping on the treble-side. Scoring the finish with a razor blade will help minimize finish damage as the nut is removed. These never come out in tact, so a new bone nut will be made.

Another view of the fingerboard’s “character” before removing the frets.

The original frets are installed pre-finish, so there is a thick polyester web that seals the frets in. This web needs to be completely cut-through in order to prevent damage to the surrounding fingerboard finish. This is a long and meticulous process to ensure each fret is fully disconnected from the fingerboard finish prior to removal. Another trick is to tighten the truss rod before removing the frets. This springs opens the fret slots slightly to help minimize chip-out.

From Dan Erlewine’s book, The Guitar Player Repair Guide, Fender guitars prior to 1982 were fretted sideways. This means that the frets were installed by sliding the frets in from the side of the neck as opposed to pressing or hammering them in to the face of the fingerboard. Some recommend that you need to remove these frets by tapping out the frets sideways with a hammer and a small punch so you do not chip out the fingerboard. In particular, slab-sawn rosewood fingerboards from this era can chip out substantially when not tapped out sideways (so I’ve heard). 1970’s Fender Maple fingerboards have a thick polyester finish that really builds up around the frets. This heavy finish deterred me from sliding the frets out sideways. My thoughts are if I scored the finish around each fret, I could minimize damage to the fingerboard and finish, and be able to remove them with the standard flush-ground end nipper method. I may try the “sideways” fret removal on my next pre-1982 Fender fret job, but this one went fairly well despite the heavy fingerboard finish.

The frets are removed and I have dropped filled any chips in the finish with super glue. Since the finish is so thick, I wet sand the finish in order to attempt to level the fingerboard as much as possible. This allow the new frets to seat as consistently as possible without being able to sand the board itself. I use naptha to wet sand because it evaporates quickly and will not soak in and swell the maple via the fret slots like a water-based lubricant.

The new frets are installed. I am using a higher crown fret in order to allow for more leveling of the playing surface since I could not level-sand the maple fingerboard.

The fingerboard finish is masked off with tape in between the frets to prep for fret leveling, crowning, beveling and polishing.

Another view of the masked fingerboard ready for fret dressing.

The truss rod is adjusted as straight as possible and the frets are level sanded. Note that the body end of the fingerboard is being sanded more than the rest of the board. There is a slight body hump and these frets will have to be sanded a little more aggressively than the others. Not a problem if I was able to sand the maple board itself and properly prep it for frets, but we are keeping the original finish and this is the compromise. Here’s where the higher crown frets help.

The new frets are in, the new nut is installed and the neck is back on the body. Now for swapping out the bridge humbucker for the original single coil pickup.

The bridge humbucker will be disconnected and removed. Then the remaining components are ready to be transplanted to the replacement pickguard.

Here is a view of the modifications that were required to fit a humbucker in the bridge position of the body. Note that the rough edge of the pocket was most likely free-handed with a router (no template used).

Here is a closer view of the pickguard components and humbucker.

Here is the new pickgaurd loaded with the original components and the bridge single coil back in the mix.

The Strat is now strung up and back to it’s original pickup configuration.

1979 Fender Strat back to it’s stock configuration, now with a new pickguard, frets and a new bone nut. I always love Strat’s 4th position, which is the middle and bridge pickup together – spanky and funky.

1973-75 Gibson Howard Roberts.

Here is an early 70’s Gibson Howard Roberts guitar that came through my shop recently. Let me start by saying how much I love Howard Roberts. Never heard of him? He was a mean west coast session player with a very tasteful style. I recommend you check out his 1963 quartet double album “Color Him Funky: H.R. is a Dirty Guitar Player”. Really slick three minute funky jazz tunes.

Howard Roberts is tough to find on YouTube, but here’s a tune off of “Color Him Funky”.

Get ready for the organ intro.

I had the pleasure of working on another one of these guitars a few years ago that I fell in love with. The guitar was later put up for sale and I only wish that I could have grabbed it. Ah, the ones that got away…

This most recent Howard Roberts that came through the shop is a red single pickup model with a serial number that dates it to 1973 – 1975. The controls are a master volume, mids / bass tone control (or “choke”) and a standard tone control. There was also a two pickup model available as well.

Oval sound hole with a single floating humbucker.

Controls top to bottom: master volume, mids / bass tone, standard tone.

“Howard Roberts” tailpiece.

This is a player’s guitar.

The owner of this guitar is Tom Pendergast and he plays a lot of gigs around Boston. I met him at Johnny D’s in Somerville, MA where he regularly plays their weekend jazz brunches. (I always get the catfish and eggs). Tom brought this guitar to me because he was having troubles with the pickup’s signal randomly fading. The volume would never cut out, but would be significantly quieter at times. Very odd. I have dealt with many connection issues that would cause a guitar signal to cut in and out intermittently (a loose output jack for example), but never a temporary drop in volume. A secondary concern of Tom was that this guitar’s middle tone control did not work. This additional tone control is unique to this guitar and is designed to only roll off the mids and bass frequencies. I was given the green light to fix it since I had to troubleshoot the entire wiring harness anyway.

So, the plan of attack:

1. Remove the strings and bridge, and secure the tailpiece.

2. Remove the control knobs and nuts to allow the wiring harness to be pulled out through the sound hole.

3. Clean all three control potentiometers (“pots”) and other connections.

4. Touch up any poor solder joints, bad connections, etc.

5. Troubleshoot the mids / bass tone control.

6. Test and reinstall the wiring harness.

7. Clean, restring and setup

: : : : : :

Here we go …

Handy tool for safely removing stubborn knobs.

Knobs tagged so they go back on the same pots they were removed from.

Circuit components removed. Note the RCA connection that connects the pickup to the rest of the circuit. Another wire (not pictured) runs to the tailpiece that grounds the strings and prevents complete removal of the wiring harness from the body.

Contact cleaner is used to improve these old corroded connections. Hollowbody guitars tend to have “dirtier” controls as they are not sealed inside a control cavity like a solidbody guitar. I had a theory that this RCA connection was corroded and a possible cause of the volume drops. The pots were all cleaned as well as the output jack.

Mids / bass tone control (left) has a component missing that mounts to the bracket. The schematic shows an inductor or “choke” that sets the frequency range of this control. This mids / bass control is completely disconnected from the circuit’s signal path.

The original 1.5 H inductor is very difficult to find, so I used three 0.5 H inductors in series. (Shout out to Bob Dettorre over at DST Engineering for sourcing these for me.)

Test rig before soldering in the new choke. I temporarily connected everything and tapped on the pickup with a screwdriver as I turned the mids / bass tone control and I listened through the amp. I even went as far as to string the guitar up to see how it was working.

Here are the three inductors wrapped in shrink wrap to help protect the delicate coil wires.

The three inductors are wrapped together with electrical tape to form one big inductor module. Then they are further secured with zip ties.

Here is the inductor “choke” secured to the potentiometer. Convieniently it had a bracket I could mount to with a zip tie, bolt, lock washer and nut.

Another view of the new mid / bass “choke” control, not wired up.

Here is the cleaned, repaired and tested wire harness ready to reinstall into the body. Note in this photo you can see the green ground wire that runs to the tailpiece.

A closer look at the mids / bass tone (left) and the standard tone (right).

Electronics reinstalled and the guitar sounds great. The mids / bass tone control is a very cool feature that you do not find on most guitars.

Only time will tell if cleaning the components along with touching up poor solder joints has corrected the volume issues. I could have just replaced the entire wiring harness with new components, but felt that would be overkill on this vintage guitar. As for the inductor on the second tone control? That sure was a curve ball I didn’t see coming. Luckily my amp guy Bob Dettorre found an alternative solution to a difficult-to-find original Gibson part number. The real trick was figuring a good way to secure those three inductors (in series) inside the guitar. The bracket on the pot was a lifesaver and using a proper zip tie to bolt to that bracket made the module very secure.

Overall this was a fun and challenging project that helped push my boundaries. Speaking of boundaries, I am reminded of a great quote. It inspires me so much that I even have it up hanging on the wall.

Hopefully it will inspire you.

“It is understandably human to want to sound good to ourselves when we practice, and therefor play what we already know well. However, real advancement comes from tackling new things; coming to grips with work that is more advanced, work that is out of reach unless one really tries to accomplish the seemingly impossible – after all, they’re only impossible for a while.”

-George Van Eps, Harmonic Mechanisms for Guitar, Vol. 1

1973-75 Gibson Howard Roberts.

Cheap flame maple knock-off Tele neck found online.

A customer brought in a replica flame maple Tele neck that he found online for ridiculously cheap.  The flame in the maple was incredible, however someone had modified the nut slot.  The nut slot was widened to 1/4″ for some reason.  Maybe someone thought a larger nut would improve tone or something?  Who knows.  A bigger nut is not really a problem though.  This is a knock-off replica neck, so there is no real “Fender” value to ruin with funky modifications.  The problem is that the slot was widened towards the bridge instead of adding width back towards the headstock.  The leading edge of the nut where the strings break, along with every fret and bridge saddle location, is very critical to a guitar playing in tune.  This nut slot modification pushed the nut 1/8″ closer to the bridge and makes intonating the guitar impossible.  Since this neck has a beautiful flame pattern to it, the player decided to put some money into it and have it corrected.

The plan breaks down into two parts: fix the neck and setup.

Part one:

1.  Flatten and square the existing nut slot

2.  Fill in the nut slot with a piece of maple

3.  Recut an 1/8″ nut slot in the correct location

4.  Make a new bone nut

Part two:

5.  Transfer tuners and string tree from the stock Tele neck over to the new flame maple neck

6.   Remove the stock neck from the body and install the new neck

7.  Level, crown, and polish the existing frets to account for an uneven fingerboard surface

8.  Intonate and setup

:  :  :  :  :  :

Part one: Fix that sloppy nut slot.

Improperly widened nut slot (not that there is really a need to widen a nut slot).

Headstock secured to work board.

Saddle slotting jig used to rout the existing oversized nut slot clean.

Another view of the nut slot routing setup.

Multiple passes are made at varying depths until the slot is flat and square on one edge (left side in the above photo). Then the guides are bumped to clean the other edge (right side).  I use a 1/4″ diameter router bit, but needed to cut oversize to take a little off of both edges of the slot.

A feeler gauge offsets the axillary fence enough for the undersized router bit to cut the remaining edge of the nut slot. Once the auxiliary fence is set (right side as seen above), the main guides can be repositioned to butt up against it and another pass is made with the router.

The nut slot is now flat and square and ready to be plugged.

A maple plug is cut and fit to the oversized nut slot. The edges of the slot are masked with tape to ease in cleaning the glue squeeze-out.

The maple plug is glued and clamped.

The maple fill is trimmed down and prepped for a new, properly located nut slot.

Repeating the routing process as before but cutting a new 1/8″ wide nut slot in the proper location.

1/8″ nut slot cut in the proper location to allow the neck to play in tune.

The new nut slot is complete.  The routing setup is removed, along with the screws holding the neck down to the work board.  A new bone nut is now ready to be fit.

Part two: Switcheroo the neck and setup.

The new flame maple neck is ready to be swapped with the original neck on this Fender relic Tele.  Note that a new bone nut has been fit to the new neck.

Rear view of the new flame maple neck and the stock Tele neck.

The tuning machines are removed and the bushings pressed out of the stock neck.  This Stewmac tool is great for removing stubborn bushings safely.

The stock tuning machines and bushings are ready to be installed in the new neck. Note that the string tree has been transferred as well.

Rear view – the stock vintage-style tuners installed in the new neck.

The new neck installed on the body and strung up to pitch. Even with the truss rod turned completely slack, the neck was backbowed when not under tension. Stringing up the guitar allowed me to assess how much the strings would pull the neck up. This one-piece maple neck was very flexible and did straighten out quite a bit under tension.

Another view assessing the neck’s geometry under load.  The frets were very uneven as the fingerboard surface was not properly leveled.  Ideally the frets should have been pulled and the fingerboard sanded true, refretted and then refinished, but this was a budget project to make an inexpensive “pretty” neck playable.  There is enough fret height to allow the frets to be ground true.

The strings and nut are removed and the fingerboard is taped up between the frets. This will protect the maple during the leveling, crowning and polishing of the frets.

Metallic fret dust covers the fingerboard from leveling. Note that the middle of the neck and the last few frets received the heaviest leveling, as seen from the filings left on the fingerboard masking tape. This neck required extensive leveling as the fingerboard surface was not properly leveled. A glass block with 220 grit is my weapon of choice on this neck to address these high spots.

Here is a close up of the heavy leveling required in the middle of the neck. Luckily the frets had enough height for this moderate removal of material.

Another view of the heavy fret material removal in the middle of the neck. Note that there is not much fret dust down towards the nut.

And after much leveling of this “roller coaster” fingerboard, the frets were ready for crowning and polishing, leaving the guitar ready for intonation and setup.  The neck came out great, other than being a little on the floppy side.  I have definitely have had much stiffer necks come across my bench.  Thankfully the neck pulled up enough for me to be able to tighten the one-way truss rod.  This will allow for adjustments to be made both ways  should the neck move in the future.

The player loves the feel of this new neck and the flame maple really stands out.  I do not think another one of these jobs will come across my bench again anytime soon, but these projects sure are fun!  This was certainly an odd modification to a nut slot.

The fretwork and setup are complete. The new bone nut is fit, cut and polished as well. The neck pulled up enough to require the truss rod to be tightened. Very good!

Player’s view – what a killer piece of maple! Makes all of this work worth the effort to rescue this piece of wood from a nut slot mishap.

1967 Gibson ES 175-D in for new frets.

Here is a quick little trick that may save you fellow repair folk and players from some unneeded anguish. A 1967 Gibson ES 175-D will be used for this example. This guitar is in for new frets and a general setup.

The fretjob will require:

1. remove the strings

2. remove the old frets

3. plane (sand) the board

4. install new frets

5. level, crown, bevel, dress and polish the new frets

6. install new strings and setup

I use the hammer method to install frets. This is a tried-and-true method that works great for a lot of builders / repair people. There is one issue with the hammer method that you may never think about: loose tuner bushing in the headstock.

This guitar was rather obvious that it had loose bushings as the tuner posts moved around quite a bit. You could even remove some of the bushings with your fingers. These should be a snug, press fit. I learned the hard way that once the strings are untied from the tuners, there is nothing preventing loose bushing from falling out a Gibson peghead. This also applies to most vintage-style tuners, including Martin, Guild, etc.

So back to the hammer discussion. When you strike the fret, you impart a force that vibrates the guitar. This impact can translate up to the peghead and vibrate those loose bushing out. If you have ever lost a small item on a shop floor, you know how frustrating it is to find and how you just hate yourself for letting it happen.  Your time is better spent up on your feet rather than on your hands and knees.

I am guilty of this more than I would like to admit.

So here is a good way to hold onto your bushings while the strings are removed …

A guitar string is used to prevent the loose tuner bushings from disappearing on the shop floor.

… reuse one of the old strings to loop around and cap off each tuner post. You can see how just by knocking in the frets that some of the bushings have risen up and are stopped by the string. Without tying off the posts, consider those bushings gone. Also loose bushings may look flush, it doesn’t take much for them to come loose since they are a tapered fit.  While handling the guitar, for example, they may just decide to drop out on you on your way to the buffer.

This stupid little trick will save your ass, especially on a vintage guitar. You don’t want to be scouring eBay for one period-correct bushing and pay the ridiculous prices people are asking. Really it’s about saving time as well. Time looking for the damn thing. Then time to call around or search the internet for a replacement. All can be prevented in less than 30 seconds by just saving one of the old strings and tying a quick loop.

I refitted the loose bushings by removing them and applying medium super glue to the bushing knurls.  Then I spray them with accelerator to cure the glue.  Once cured, I file away the added material until they press into the peghead with a nice snug fit.

Below you can see the finished guitar.  I love these old 175’s.

You can see why I make my living working on guitars rather than playing them.

Teuffel Niwa, truely a modern electric design.

Last week I finished up a repair on an Ulrich Teuffel Niwa guitar. Talk about a unique, innovative design. The guitar is just beautifully sculpted.

Unique body lines and subtle details.

Custom pickups, pickup covers and control knobs.

Six-in-line headstock with a ball bearing “roller” nut.

Custom pickups made by Ulrich Teuffel

The reason it came across my bench is that it had deep scratches that covered a majority of the back of the neck. The customer wanted the scratches removed and brought back to new condition.

Scratches, dents and dings run along the entire back of the neck.

This job requires:

1. Separating the neck from the body.

2. Removing the scratches.

3. Refinishing the neck.

Neck is easily removed with three bolts.

Asymmetric neck profile: note the treble side is thicker than the bass side.

The majority of the scratches were removed using the steam method. Scratches and dings in wood are often just compressed wood fibers where no material is removed. Cuts and slices are another issue because those involve the wood being removed. The theory is that the steam is forced into the crushed wood fibers and causes them to swell. You usually cannot steam a dent in wood out perfectly, but they can be significantly reduced so that the subsequent sanding required is minimal. I used a clothes iron with a damp Wypal (heavy duty paper towel) to steam out the blemishes. The trick is to know how much heat you are dealing with in combination of how damp the towel is. The heat needs to be transferred to the damp towel only. It is very easy to dry out the towel and scorch the wood. Burning this neck would severely complicate an otherwise straightforward repair.

A Wypall dampened with water and heated with a clothes iron steams out most of the damage to the neck.

The dampened cloth is placed on the neck over the scratches and the hot iron is pressed onto the cloth, creating steam that expands the damaged wood fibers.

Steaming will only take you so far. After the neck dries out, the remaining scratches are sanded out along with the finish along the barrel of the neck. #0000 steel wool preps the neck for finish.

Prepping for finish: light sanding removes the thin finish and remaining dents/scratches that could not be steamed out.

Ulrich Teuffel was kind enough to give me some information about the finish process on his necks (thanks Ulrich!). He takes polyurethane and applies a thin layer with a cloth. You let it sit for a day or so before you buff it out with #0000 steel wool. Really simple and clean, plus it makes the neck feel great.

Off to the hardware store to pick up a pint of clear matte poly.

The headstock is masked off and a couple thin layers of matte polyurethane is wiped on

The mask is pulled after the last coat and left to dry for a day or so. I’m very happy with how well the color matches the original finish.

Below is the finished repair. The neck looks great and you can never tell it was repaired.

The finish is then buffed out with #0000 steel wool and ready to reinstall to the body.

The customer also wanted to experiment with a different bridge pickup to have it better fit his tonal requirements. Ulrich was generous enough to send a couple different pickups to experiment with. He makes is own pickups and they are really well designed. He has two solder pads on the bottom of the pickups, so you just use the existing leads routed through the body and make your connections right at the pickup. Quick and easy with an allen wrench and soldering iron.

The bridge pickup is swapped out for a different Teuffel pickup at the request of the customer for tonal reasons.

After the minor repairs were finished, this guitar is back to brand-new condition. Certainly not a guitar that crosses your bench everyday, but as a builder myself I can appreciate innovative designs such as this.

Inspired.

Well done Ulrich!

The guitar is strung up and the neck restored to new condition.

Back in business. The bridge pickup is swapped out and the neck is cosmetically clean again.

Right handed Silvertone

Here is a project to help out you left handed players out there. A customer wanted to have his old Silvertone converted into a left handed guitar. You can see how the controls and instrument cable would be right in line with the player’s picking hand when playing it left handed. Although the guitar is played left handed, it is not strung like a left handed guitar. Pictured below, for example, is the Philadelphia guitarist Kenn Mogel of the band Pyschedelphia (former). He is an absolute beast and plays left handed with the guitar strung like a right-hander. This is unlike Jimmy Hendrix’s guitars that were strung lefty. I asked him how fingerstyle works for him and he says “great, I have four thumbs!”

Kenn Mogel (of the former Psychedelphia) and his left-handed Artinger guitar. Strung righty, played lefty. Note the bass strings are towards the floor. Photo © Kevin Chubbuck

“Stock” Silvertone

So in order to make this more comfortable to play left handed, we need to move the controls to the other side.

This will involve making two pickguards:

– One “dummy” guard that will be identical to the original (without control mounting holes) to cover the original control cavity.

– Another “lefty” guard for the new control location.

The body will need to be routed for a new control cavity on the other side of the body as well.

So the itinerary:

1. Original pickguard needs to be removed along with the electrical components.

2. A new “dummy” guard made identical to the original minus the control mounting holes.

3. Finally a new “lefty” guard needs to be made along with the new control cavity.

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Let the photo essay commence!

Let’s move these controls to the other side to get them away from the player’s picking left hand.

Pickguard assembly is removed.

The bare-bones circuit: single pickup, volume, tone and output jack.

Pickup riveted to pickguard, needs to be drilled out in order to remove.

Proposed left handed pickguard. Note that the output jack will have to be rewired.

A good practice is to make a copy before using the original pickguard as a routing template should things go south on the router table. This “dummy” guard will replace the original, minus the control holes.

First we need to make a “dummy” guard without any control holes to cover the original control cavity. Here is my router sandwich. There is a gap between the bearing and the blades of my router bit, so I need to space the new pickgaurd away from the original “template”. Top is the original, middle is scrap plywood, bottom is the new “dummy” guard.

A close up of my router bit. Note the gap between the bearing and the blades of the bit. The original pickguard is on the bottom and rides against the bearing.

Here is the sandwich after routing with the router gap left in the scrap plywood. This “dummy” guard is now shaped and identical to the original, minus the control holes.

The original pickguard sat on top of the pickup mounting flange and did not allow the pickguard to sit flat against the body. Here is the layout of the material to remove in the guard to allow it to accommodate the flange.

The new pickguard is routed to allow the pickup to sit on the body and the pickguard(s) to lay flush on the body too. I did this relief cut on both new guards.

Now for the other side: the new control guard. The body is asymmetric, so the new “lefty” guard has to be cut and shaped by hand. I used the pickup side of the original guard to layout the inside of the new lefty guard.

I use the bevel as my reference point to trace the outside of the lefty guard on the previous photo.

After the template is trimmed to the bevel mark, I use a compass to space the line further inwards.

The finished lefty template, ready to transfer to the pickguard stock and cut and shaped.

The pickup was originally riveted to the pickguard on the control side, so I glued a dowel into the control cavity to fasten the pickup to.

Another view of the added pickup mounting dowel.

Yet another view of the pickup mounting dowel to secure the pickup.

Both new pickguards are finished: 1. the replacement guard without the control mounting holes, and 2. the new lefty guard for the new control location.

The new lefty guard – the output jack needs to be rewired to fit the new lefty “mirrored” layout.

The output jack is rewired. Note that I traced around the controls to layout the new control cavity that will have to be routed into the body.

The control cavity tracing is photocopied so I can make a routing template. Note that above on the body I transferred the new control hole locations.

The photocopy is cut out and used to layout both the cavity location on the body, and the routing template made of scrap plywood. I use the control mounting holes in the new lefty guard to “center” the routing template location using my control hole marks on the body.

Here is my quick and dirty routing template that will be held in place with double-sided “carpet” tape on the body.

The routing template is “stuck” to the body with the double-sided tape. I use the paper template to locate the position of the plywood routing template.

A router bit in combination with a collar to begins the new control cavity.

Originally I thought I was going to use a thicker piece of plywood for this template. This plywood was too short to allow the router base clear the bridge, so I had to remove the hardware. No biggie.

Here is the cavity so far, with some freehand routing to transition down into the deeper main cavity. This maxes out my collar-cutting setup as my bit is not long enough to go to full depth.

I switch to a bearing router bit to finish off the cavity. The template is removed and the bearing will flush-trim off of the established cavity walls. I tape the base of the router to help protect the guitar’s finish.

Here is the finished cavity. Note that I used a smaller router (freehand) to finish up the tip of the cavity to accommodate the pickup’s lead wire.

The new lefty guard and control cavity.

The finished lefty conversion with dual guards. Note that the strings are still strung like a right-handed guitar.

Left handed Silvertone. No more instrument cable and control knobs digging into the player’s forearm.

The customer is really happy with his new guitar. I can sympathize with left handed players. It is a right handed world and options are extremely limited for those on the right-handed outcasts. Can you righties imagine playing left handed? It feels so damn awkward, right? I have a 2-year old daughter that I am casually teaching to play guitar. Anytime she grabs the pick with her left hand, I cringe! To each there own, but I hope to keep that pick in her right hand !) !!!

Vintage Goya classical made in Sweeden

This post is going to be a little different from my previous ones. I’m going for more of a photo-essay approach here.

More photos. Less words.

Simpler is better, right? Please let me know if you like this style better in the comments below.

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And here we go!

A good customer of mine brought in one of his student’s guitars on his last visit to the shop. The student was having difficulties fretting her vintage Goya classical guitar as she has smaller hands. Most classical necks clock in at 2 inches at the nut, which is much wider than most modern steel string fingerstyle guitars. 1 – 3/4″ to 1 – 13/16″ nut widths are common in the steel string world.

I know.

I know that this is not a steel string guitar.

Classical guitars are different from steel string guitars. I’m right there with you – if you want something that plays more like a steel string, then get a steel string. But this player loves her guitar and did not want another guitar. She just wanted her guitar easier to play.  Making an instrument mesh with a player’s style is the ultimate goal of every guitar that comes across my bench.

So we want to make this guitar easier for her smaller hands to accommodate. We decided to go with a new nut laid out with spacing found on a 1 – 3/4″ neck. I thought about it and realized that just merely shrinking the strings in on-center would space the high e string in way too far in from the edge of the board.

What if we just left the high e string where it was and squeezed the rest of the strings in towards it?

This would be different, let’s see if it works …

Standard wide classical nut spacing

First I noticed that the bridge glue joint was failing, so I addressed that before making a new nut.

Post-it® slips in to reveal a failing glue joint

Visible gap at the rear of the bridge

Locating holes drilled into the saddle slot prior to removing the bridge.  This makes sure you reglue it back in the same position

Infrared heat lamp to release the remaining glue bond

Modified pallet knife to shear softened glue

Preparing for reglue: (left to right) bridge with locating pins, scraping/sanding safety guide, scraper and sanding block

Thinned hot hide glue brushed on bridge footprint to seize the grain. This prevents the top from sucking the joint dry when the bridge is glued

Heat gun is used to warm up the bridge and soundboard footprint to extend hot hide glue working time

Vacuum frame removes the air around the bridge to allow the weight of the atmosphere to clamp the bridge down

Bridge is clamped while the timer clicks away … let’s work on the nut

Old nut removed and the slot is cleaned and trued before fitting the new bone nut

A pencil flattened on-axis projects the plane of the frets onto the new nut, along with marking the edges to be trimmed

Converting a 2″ wide nut into a 1- 3/4″ nut to decrease string spacing

New nut with tighter spacing and biased to the treble side

Non-destructively narrowing the feel of a wide neck

New bone nut with 1 – 3/4″ string spacing on a 2″ neck

Love that finish checking on older guitars. Also working on my classical tie-jobs

Pretty wild, right? I think this is an elegant solution to the problem. Just as long as the student doesn’t fret any chords with her thumb.

Spruce top / maple back semi hollowbody

A customer contacted me about his custom semi-hollowbody. He commented that the frets were very sharp and cutting his hands when he tried to play it. This made the guitar totally unplayable and it sat in it’s case for years.

I told him to bring it by and we can probably clean up the fret ends.

With the guitar on my bench, I could recognized immediately what the issue was. The ebony fingerboard had shrunk to the point it was forcing the frets out of the fret slots. I told him while technically I could dress the frets to make them more comfortable, the elevated frets had me concerned. With the fret ends rising out of the fingerboard, each one would elevate to it’s own random height. Also the fret ends where like diving boards – depressing the string on them would cause a few to move and therefor steal sustain from the string.

A correct solution is to pull the frets and install new ones.

Lifted fret ends making for uncomfortable playing

So you may ask, “Why did the fingerboard shrink so much?”

The answer is that wood is a hygroscopic material. This is just a fancy term for anything that absorbs and releases moisture. When you build a guitar (or anything out of wood), you need to control the humidity in which that item is built. By controlling the build humidity, you set the environment in which that guitar will like to live in. Most builders like to keep their shops around 45% relative humidity. 45% is an average that will allow a guitar to remain stable in a wide variety of climates. The problem if you build in a high relative humidity environment, the guitar can suffer more damage when it is introduced to a low relative humidity environment. Wood contracts (shrinks) with loss of moisture and this can lead to cracks in extreme cases.

This ebony fingerboard did not crack, but shrank while the metal frets remained the same length and pushed up. Some areas of the fingerboard binding were separated from the board as well. My guess is that this ebony fingerboard was not thoroughly dried when it was glued to the neck. Another possibility is that the guitar was not properly humidified after leaving the shop and exposed to low humidity.

Loose binding and inlay voids

The original nut had some issues. The strings were cut too far into the nut and not sized properly to each gauge of string. A few of the slots were shimmed up and did not properly support the bottom of the strings. I could not file new slots as this would have brought the strings down too close to the frets, causing buzzing. The nut was also slightly too wide for the neck and hung out slightly. A new nut will correct this issues.

Original nut

Poorly cut nut slots – note the E & A string shims

Excessive nut width

Original nut removed. Note the shim on bottom.

So I removed the frets like I did on my previous post on the 1964 Jazzmaster. Before sanding the board, I reglued the loose sections of binding and filled in some voids around the inlays.

Loose binding reglued before sanding.

Once the board was sanded true and the compound radius maintained (7.25″ @ the 1st fret to 20″), I hammered in the new frets. The frets were then leveled, crowned, beveled, dressed and polished.

“Leveling” the fingerboard in prep for new frets.

New frets in and ready to be dressed.

New frets.

A new nut cut, fit, polished and slotted.

New bone nut.

New frets and a nut brought this guitar back to life again. Wow, it sounds really, really good with it’s Bill Lawrence pickups! The customer decided to go with La Bella Flatwound 12 – 52 strings. The new setup and flatwound strings make this a jazz beast really come to life.

Back in business, easy on the hands again.

I dare say it sounds so good it puts me into a jazz trance …

1968 Vox Grand Prix with onboard effects

Now here is something that doesn’t come across your bench very often, a 1968 Vox Grand Prix! The guitar’s owner brought it in because it would not pass a signal anymore. Normally this isn’t too difficult to troubleshoot. Just work through the circuit and find the band connection or component. This guitar is a little bit more complicated – it has four onboard effects and even includes an E reference tone tuner. The four effects are a treble booster, distortion, repeater (actually tremolo is more accurate) and a hand operated wah. She’s definitively a funky blast from the past. This will be an interesting one …

1968 Vox Grand Prix loaded with four onboard effects plus a “tuner”

Grand Prix controls – treble booster, distortion, repeater (tremolo), master volume, independent tones and 3-way pickup selector.

“E tuner” reference pitch created by an oscillator. Note the heavy finish checking / delamination in the cutaway.

Hand operated wah behind the bridge.

Single coil pickups.

The neck is a bolt on with a spoke nut style truss rod. These are always handy as some bolt on necks require removal in order to adjust the relief. The headstock has a space-age look to it.

Bolt on neck. “The Brittish sound”

Spoke-nut truss rod adjustment.

Vox headstock, with a “zero” fret

Rear of the headstock. “Made in Italy by Vox”

So first things first, let’s see what’s going on inside the body. Most hollowbody guitars do not have an access cover on the back of the guitar in which to work on the electronics. Guitars like Gibson hollowbodies have their electronics installed through the pickup or f-holes. The customer pulled the guitar out of the case and then flipped it over. There is a padded cover fastened to the back. I thought it maybe a similar function to what some mandolins use to help separate the back’s vibrations from the player’s body.

Rear access control cover.

But then the customer pulls off the cover and BAM! There’s a nice big access hole in the back of the guitar. This will make diagnosing this circuit much, much easier. Peeking into the opening revealed a truly amazing mess of wires and components. I removed the silver battery tray to get a better look.

A glimpse into the mayhem inside the guitar with the cover removed.

Once I got my bearings, I discovered that there were a couple cracked circuit boards and that the hand wah mechanism was disconnected.

Broken “E tuner” oscillator circuit board.

The sliding wah potentiometer (pot) is mounted to an aluminum bar that is then supposed to be fastened to the top bracing. The braces had split and stripped out, leaving the wah assembly to flop around inside the guitar wreaking havoc. The linkage to the hand lever was also disconnected.

Wah linkage disconnected from the slider pot. Note the crack in the plywood top.

Wah slider pot assembly mounted to the split and stripped tone bars.

The photo below is a close up the main circuit module. It is a multi-tiered array of circuit boards that does not lend itself well to servicing. In order to replace one bad component, you need to desolder all the connections on the top board before you can remove it from the circuit. Another consideration is that all of the leads are cut to length after soldering. These shortened leads make the board even more difficult to reinstall Plus you can see where the mounting screws have cracked the board and most likely broke traces on the back side.

Circuit boards sandwiched upon circuit boards in the main effects module

Main circuit board module cracked at mounting screw.

After going over the guitar, I decided to give my good friend and amp builder Bob Dettorre of DST Engineering a call. He is actually the one who referred this project to me since he does not work on guitars. He stopped taking on minor guitar repairs since he has tight quarters in his shop (easy to ding a guitar). Plus he is busy as hell building and repairing amps of his own. As eager as I was to diagnose this circuit, I did not have the time to go through it. Amps and effects are not my specialty and I did not want to bill out the customer for my inexperienced explorations. After talking with Bob, he told me to bring it on by. So I grabbed the guitar, my purple drop cloth (to protect the guitar on his bench) and some schematics that the customer gave me and took a drive over to Beverly.

The infamous Bob Dettorre of DST Engineering

It’s always great to see Bob. He is the nicest guy you are ever going to meet and the man knows his electrons. Bob spends his days as an electrical engineer designing transformers. He is an amazing amp repairman who does not push work on you. He will let you spend as much as you want, but YOU have to tell him what you want. No wonder he is “THE” amp guy to go to on Boston’s north shore.

After a couple hours and a few “interruptions” from his customers, he had it passing a signal through all of the effects again. It only took him a few minutes to get the bypass signal to work – the wah bypass switch had a slew of broken wires. Once reconnected, the guitar was finally audible.

Now it was time to check each effect. His methodology was to take each effect one at a time. The repeater was the only effect that worked. First he tackled the broken main module board by solering heavy buss wire on the back side of the circuit board. This reconnected the broken traces and also added rigidity to fragile module. This was the fix to the distortion circuit. Now the treble booster was filtering the signal, but was not “boosting” it. Bob knew this was a voltage issue as power is required to give the circuit gain (increase volume). He found another broken lead and we were three for four.

Now the wah circuit was the tricky one. Bob did find a leaky electrolytic cap (he measured voltage across it) that he replaced. It was a little better, but not completely. He then focused on the slider pot and disassembled it. What he found was that the carbon traces in the pot were extremely worn and beyond repair. He cleaned it up as best he could and put it back together. The wah works, but it is more of a static filter than a traditional wah.

Now that the guitar’s electronic problems were resolved as best they could, it’s back to my shop to finish it up.

Thank you Bob. You. Are. The. Man.

[note: sorry about the lack of photos from over at Bob’s -you don’t want to bother a man who’s doing you a favor working on something that wasn’t designed to be worked on]

The guitar is back on my bench. First thing to address is that loose wah assembly. The tone bar holes are doweled and the split braces glued.

Did I mention how awesome this huge rear access hole is? This is a repairman’s dream.

Tone bars doweled to better secure the wah slide pot mount.

Split tone bar glued and clamped. Ready for redrilling to mount the wah slide pot mount.

I drilled and reinstalled the wah assembly plate to the tone bars. The spring then can be attached from the plate’s anchor point to the wah lever, which is also attached to the slider pot.

Wah assembly resecured and linkage reattached.

Now time to try and clean up this mess. There are wires leading everywhere, but I managed to bundle and zip tie wires in order to keep them away from the moving wah mechanism. The battery tray is reinstalled and the cover is ready to be snapped on.

Circuit troubleshooted and secured. Wires are zip tied to keep the wah mechanism clear.

I know what your thinking.

“What about the tuner?”

Well, we decided that it was not worth repairing at this time. Especially when you have real tuners you can use. These old analog oscillator circuits are very inaccurate, so that E is not going to be of much use other than relatively tuning the guitar to a random pitch.

The guitar is in dire need of new frets and a new 3-way pickup selector switch, but that was beyond the customer’s budget at the time. The zero fret had to be replaced though as the open strings were buzzing horribly, so I replaced it with a high-crown fret. I also recommended that we install a traditional pot for the wah circuit down the road, something you can use for that “parked wah” sound. Maybe even a push-pull pot so you can switch between stock and the new modification. Who knows, possibly we can track down another slider pot in good condition.

Overall this was a fun project. It is just insane to see how much work went into this guitar back in the 60’s. The guitar is certainly a novelty as you can buy much better sounding effects pedals, but then you need a pedal board, right? The customer was extremely pleased that we were able to fix the guitar within budget. I can see this guitar being a whole lot of fun in the studio.

All strung up and ready to get freaky.

1964 Jazzmaster

I’m back! I had to take a month off from the blog to move into a new apartment. This coupled with my new shop move back in May has kept me away from the bench more that I would like.

So, here we go!

Here is a cool old 1964 Fender Jazzmaster on the bench. It sounds really, really killer . Just a few minor things to get it back playing sweet. The guitar needs new frets, a new bridge, and the pick guard flattened. You can see below how badly the guard had shrunken and distorted. This is common with old Fenders.

Warped and shrunken pick guard

The original bridge, while technically in fine condition, is a poor design to begin with. The low break angle of the strings running to the tailpiece is really shallow, so there is not much down pressure holding the strings against the screw saddles. It is easy on these stock bridges to accidentally pull the strings out of the bridge grooves while playing. Ideally you want to be able to keep your string spacing constant.

Original stock bridge

The customer wanted to go with a new Mastery bridge as made popular by Nels Cline of the band Wilco. You can see below how each string now has a dedicated slot in the new bridge. The replacement is super easy. Just loosen the posts on the old bridge and it pulls right out of the existing “thimbles” mounted in the body. The new bridge just drops right in. Set the action and adjust intonation and you are all set.

New Mastery bridge compared to the stock original

We will install the new bridge later after the pick guard issues are addressed.

I pulled the neck since we will need to access the truss rod during the refret. This will also make it easier to pull the pick guard so it can be flattened.

Neck and bridge removed and pick guard ready to taken off

The neck is stamped “4 Nov 64 B”. CBS took over Fender in 1965, so this guitar is right at the end of the often preferred “pre CBS” era of Fender’s history. I believe the 4th of November 1964 was a Wednesday.  Actually though, the “4” denotes the model, not the date. The “B” is for the neck width being “normal”.

And no, I do not know this information off the top of my head, see this link for where I pulled references from. (note: I just flashed back to all of the college reports I had to write and giving due credit. I guess I did learn something in college …).

November 1964 neck stamp

Below is the neck pocket and the shim that was used to further decrease the guitar’s already low neck angle. I will remove it when I bolt the neck back on (screw really, not sure why they are referenced as “bolt on”). It can always be put back in if I do not like the neck angle. Also take note of the the “x” looking depression in the pocket just below the shim. This is a sure-fire giveaway that this guitar has been refinished. The old Fender factory would pound nails into the neck pocket and various areas in the pickup or control cavity. This would allow the person spraying to shoot finish on the face and then flip the guitar over onto the nails that act like stilts. Then they could finish spraying the back. This nail mark should be bare wood as the original nail would have been pulled after the original spray work was completed. Knowing the originality of the finish heavily impacts the value of vintage guitars, so know what you are buying. This customer got a deal on the guitar and was aware of the refinish when he purchased it.

Neck shim and note the nail hole in the neck pocket has finish in it

Below is the pick guard flipped over. Take note of the grounding plate that is sandwiched between the electronics and the pick guard. Everything appears to look original. The pickups are mounted directly into the the body.

Underside of the pick guard and shield

Here is a close up of the bottom primary controls. Jazzmasters have dual set of controls for volume and tone – one in the traditional location at the bottom of the guitar and another set on the upper bout.

Lower bout volume, tone and output jack

The upper bout volume and tone controls are roller wheels. Pretty slick for the 1960’s. You choose between the two sets of controls by a small switch on the upper bout. What is cool about this is you can set two independent volume and tone sounds and then select between the two on the fly. Also you can use the pickup selector with both sets of controls. Again, really slick.

Upper bout volume, tone and control selector switch

The control cavities have formed brass / copper tubs that fit into the guitar to help shield the circuit from outside noise. This is a pretty heavy-duty solution compared to modern guitars that use either copper tape or shielding paint. Again (again), very slick.

Stamped copper / brass tins fit into the control cavities

Now that the electronics and shielding plate have been removed from the guard, we are ready to start flattening it. I use a heat gun to gently (GENTLY!) warm up the plastic. This allows the the guard to soften and begin to relax. Since this is a multi-ply laminated guard, I heat from both sides to get everything warmed up evenly. I keep my hand right next to where I am heating with the thought that if it is too hot for my hand, then it is too hot for the plastic. When it is softened, I remove the heat and use hand pressure to push down the warped sections against my aluminum plate. This guard was difficult to flatten completely, but it is now much flatter than it was initially.

Flattening of the distorted pick guard

The warping of the pick guard is caused by the plastic shrinking over it’s 48 or so year life. The pickups and bridge mounting thimbles are independent of the pick guard and their locations to do not change over time. This causes the guard to become hung up on these elements (along with the guard mounting screws) and to distort where it is restricted from shrinking. The metal shield plate also retains the original dimensions, so it causes further issues for the moving plastic pick guard.

The pickups do not fit in the shrunken guard like they once did. This is not from heating the guard, but from the previously described shrinking effect.

Pickups do not fit into the distorted pick guard

The pick guard needs to be opened up in order for both pickups to fit easily and for the guard to mount flush.

Another view of the distorted pick guard around the pickups

I use a cabinet scraper to open up the pickup holes. You just need to be careful not to crack the guard while doing so.

Cabinet scraper used to fit the pickups in the pick guard

Now for the bridge mounting thimbles. You can see how they do not line up with the shrunken guard. I use a dowel with sandpaper to open up these holes in the guard. The holes will become out-of-round, but will be covered by the bridge. The benefit of a flat pick guard outweighs this minor detail in my eyes.

Bridge mount thimbles do not align with the pick guard

The guard is now fit to the bridge thimbles in the blurry photo below.

Pick guard fit to accommodate the bridge thimbles

Now that everything fits and the guard lies flat, the grounding shield and electronics are reinstalled onto the pick guard and put back onto the guitar. Since the guard has shrunk, many of the mounting holes do not line up with the body. I start with one screw and then jump across the guard to another screw and install them in a spread out pattern, similar to tightening the lug nuts on your car tire. Once all the screws are started, I go back and snug them all down.

Pick guard remounted after flattening and fitting

Now for the neck and it’s new frets. I use a large soldering iron with a ground end that sits nicely on the old frets to heat them up. Heating them loosens up any glue and makes the fretboard sweat a little bit, which allows the frets to be removed with minimum damage to the fingerboard.

Heat applied to loosen frets for removal

I use flush-ground end nippers (like many other repair persons use) to pull the old frets out. Note that I am only squeezing the pliers and not actually pulling with them. Keeping the face of the pliers in contact with the fingerboard keeps the board from chipping up and the business end of the pliers lifts the fret up. I usually hold the soldering iron in my left and and follow behind it with the pliers. The photo below just shows the pliers as my other hand was taking the photo.

Tool used to remove frets

All of the old frets are out now and we can get to installing the new ones. First the neck needs to be straightened via the truss rod. Once straightened, the board can be sanded flat and the radius maintained. New frets are then pounded in with a hammer on my buck-shot filled bag to ensure they go in solid. After the new frets are beveled, trued, crowned and polished, it’s ready to reinstall the nut and screw back onto the guitar. Remember to adjust that truss rod to give a little relief where you like it before reattaching the neck. You will most likely have to pull the neck again after you string it up to dial in the truss rod, but at least you can get close (or better yet lucky) on the first try.

New frets being hammered in place

Everything is back together. The pick guard is nice and flat and the new bridge is installed with both the action and intonation adjustments made. The guitar plays really nice with the new frets and bridge. It’s sad to see her go, but you have to move on. Maybe I’ll have to keep my eyes out for a Jazzmaster of my own …

’64 Jazzmaster with my ’72 Pro Reverb

SG taped off and ready to glue back together

This is an older repair, but a good one. I was at a party with a bunch of friends and had a casual jam session. Well, more of a noisemaker session where we brought instruments to pass around while drinking. Usually making “music” and alcohol don’t mix well. I usually bring my beater Warmoth Tele to situations like this as Tele’s are just about as bulletproof a guitar you can find. My hollowbodies definitely stay at home on these nights.

While at this jam session, one of my friends decides to take a break to step outside and sets down his Epiphone SG. Another one of our friends (who will remain anonymous), picked up the SG and put the strap over her head and shoulder. Getting ready to rock, she took her left hand off the neck for a split second and BOOM! The strap slips off of the strap button and the guitar comes crashing down on the hardwood floor, neck first. Just by the sound it made, I knew it was not going to be OK. It sounded just like splitting fire wood, if you have ever done so. I’ll never forget the look of panic in her eyes as she looked across the room at me. She reaches down to pick up the guitar and the neck was completely broken free of the body, loosely tethered by the strings. Since she knew I was a guitar builder, she immediately asked me to fix it. I kind of laughed because I was still in shock myself by how fast things went down (literally, “down”). I told her that I was not going to be able to do a quick fix before the owner came back inside. This one needed a trip to the ER.

You can see from the picture above that the neck snapped off clean, which is good for a solid reglue. The only parts that chipped off were pieces of the finish. When I got it back to the shop, I taped off around the proposed glue joint to help contain the squeeze out. My glue of choice in this situation is West Systems Epoxy. This stuff is marine grade, serious adhesive. Plus it gives you adequate working time before it sets so you can make sure everything is clamped and aligned properly.

Neck clamped to body

Once I applied the epoxy it was just a matter of aligning and clamping up the joint. I always do a dry run first before gluing so I can double check that my proposed clamps / cauls will work and that the joint will close tightly without excessive pressure. With the epoxy spread onto both surfaces and clamps set, I cleaned up the excess epoxy with a paper towel dampened with acetone. Then I pulled my masking tape so the epoxy didn’t bond the tape to the guitar. Since the finish is catalyzed and insoluble with acetone, I continued to clean up the small amount of epoxy squeeze out that remained. The guitar was then left to sit overnight while the epoxy cured. The cure time on my mix was 8 to 12 hours. I like to keep the leftover epoxy from a batch to see how well it cured before pulling the clamps.

Note: you can test finishes by pulling a tuning machine and experiment within it’s footprint.

Finished repair – no color work

The glue up went very well. The color layer had been chipped when the guitar met the floor and we decided it was not worth the time to do any color work. I did however use superglue to fill in for the missing finish. Once sanded and buffed, you can’t tell by feel that it was ever broken.

Epiphone SG back in one piece

I was very pleased how well the repair came out and the owner was glad to have his old guitar back. Also worth mentioning that there is no “bad blood” between the SG’s owner and the girl that dropped it.

One of biggest recommendations that I can give players is to install strap locks on their guitar. They come in a variety of styles and are one of the least expensive things you can do to protect your instrument. Strap locks will ensure that your strap stays connected unless you want to remove it. My personal preference is the Shaller / Gotoh security locks and they are standard issue on all of my hollowbody builds.

One more often overlooked item to protect your guitar is a solid guitar stand. It drives me nuts when players spend all of this money on their guitar and then cheap out on a stand. You need to have a secure place to put your guitar down. No leaning it against or on your amp! If it is not going back in the case, my recommendation is to pick up any of the Hercules stands. They are rock solid. A player just told me this past weekend about an incident with his acoustic on a Hercules. He was up on stage and the piano player had to run around stage in the middle of a song. He accidentally kicked the acoustic on his way past and the stand slid back, tipped a bit, then came to a rest. Not saying that a good stand will save you from all the rambunctious pianists out there, but it saved the day in this case. Oh, and while I’m at it, please unplug the guitar before you put it down! I see so many people get hung up on a cable and taking guitars on an epic journey across the stage. Pretty funny to watch though – unless it’s your guitar.

So your fortune in this little cookie,

“Treat your guitar well and it will love you in return.”

And think twice about which guitar to bring to your next booze jam.

The Barn at Tyrone Farm

Some of you may already know my connection with Dopapod, but for those that don’t, I got hooked up with the Brooklyn-based band last summer through my camera. You can check out Kevin Chubbuck Photography and search “dopapod” to see all of the shows I have up (many, many more shows waiting to be edited / posted when I find time). I jumped into concert photography last year in an effort to get out of the workshop and get to know some musicians. I try to shoot as many shows as my schedule permits and feel I can give a little back to the live music community that has given me so much inspiration.

Dopapod’s 3rd studio album recording session

Last week, guitarist Rob Compa called me up and asked me if I could stop in on a recording session to work on his PRS McCarty semi-hollowbody. I am a huge fan of Rob’s playing and immediately jumped at the opportunity to help him out. The band had booked 10 days to record their 3rd studio album at the beautiful Tyrone Farm in Pomfret, CT. The farm is only 90 miles from my shop, so I gathered up my kit and headed down to north east Connecticut.

Rob Compa playing a Chubbuck modified 1962 Guild M-20

I thought Rob might like my modified 1962 Guild M-20 to use in the studio, so I brought that along. It doesn’t have the access to the upper frets that his PRS does, but he really enjoyed the notes he could grab.

A few of Rob’s guitars used on the session

Above are a few guitars that Rob used on the session. The guitar on the left is Rob’s circa 2005 PRS McCarty that has been his main guitar for the past 7 years. The middle guitar is a Japanese Tele that Rob makes sound killer in the studio. It had a worn out nut, so I ended up shimming the A, D, and G strings to lessen the open string buzzes. It was not a huge concern to him but I wanted to fix it since I was there. I also put a little more relief in the neck, which is a pain in the ass on these Fender’s as you need to remove the neck to gain access to the truss rod. No problem though. The guitar on the right is my Guild M-20. Not pictured is a Strat that Rob has been using quite a bit on tour lately.

Fun fact: the Strat is actually Luke Stratton’s guitar – the band’s soundman and lighting designer.

Rob Compa’s main guitar – PRS McCarty

Here is Rob’s #1 that he called me about. The frets were heavily worn and he was having troubles with bending and sliding cleanly.

Makeshift workspace in the main farmhouse

Above is my makeshift workspace that the farm’s owner, Ian MacLaren, let me set up. The farmhouse’s sunroom is right across from the barn where the band was recording so I could make all the noise I wanted to without distracting the band. A huge shout out goes out to Ian. Ian is the nicest guy you are ever going to meet and he knows how to take care of his guests. He took all of us out later that night to a local Thai restaurant that was absolutely amazing. You are the man Ian!

Fret level, crown and polish

So back to the repair. The strings were removed and the frets leveled with a piece of glass and sandpaper. The glass pictured above is my short block that I use to spot level and have another longer one for the initial level. Also pictured is my Rocket air blower that I use to clean off my camera lenses. It makes a great little air compressor when you are away from the shop.

I removed the nut because I needed to shim it up from the bottom so I could increase the string heights above the first fret.

This nut happened come out in four clean pieces, which is a new one for me. There was a shim underneath the original nut and then two wings glued to the edges to widen nut to make it flush with the edges of the fingerboard. I took all of my usual percautions when removing a nut and this one still surprised me. Nothing a little superglue can’t fix though. Another concern was that there was a thick paper shim in the D string nut slot. I was going to have to shim the bottom of the nut even more to account for removing the paper. The rest of the slots were fairly deep too, so I was going to end up shimming the nut up approximately 0.025″ (about 5 sheets of paper to give you an idea). I only had clear self-adhesive pickguard material with me that I have used in the past for quick temporary shims in a pinch. This nut however was going to need a substantial lift and stacking 5 layers of this pickguard material provided an unstable base for the nut to sit on. You can usually get away with a couple shims, but not more than that unless you have a something like a Martin or Gibson nut slot. The Martin / Gibson nut is inset into the peghead with three contact surfaces. PRS nut slots only have two contact surfaces since the headplate runs under the nut. The shims were far from an ideal solution in this situation and I had to come back later in the week with some bone (which I forgot to bring initially) to make a new nut from scratch.

Finished repair, minus the new bone nut

Here is Rob’s guitar all cleaned up with freshly dressed frets. Note that this photo has the original repaired / shimmed nut. I came back later and cut Rob a nice new bone nut.

Rob with his freshly-dressed PRS

And Rob really dug the new setup. His bends were much cleaner to execute and the bone nut helped brighten the open strings and stabilize any tuning issues.

Chuck keepin’ it real on his Fender Jaguar bass

While I was there at the farm, Dopapod’s bass player Chuck Jones wanted me to check out his Fender Jaguar bass that he has had for the past 6 years. He was having issues with the open E string rattling and buzzing on all of the strings when he played up past the 12th fret.

Chuck’s Fender Jaguar fret dress on frets above the 12th

To solve the upper fret buzzes, I leveled, crowned and polished the frets from the 12 fret and above.

New bone nut

His orignal nut was fairly worn and causing the buzzing on the open E string, so I cut him a new bone nut since I remembered to bring extra on my second trip.

Chuck’s bass repairs finished, note the white pick guard under the black duct tape!

And here is the finished repair and all cleaned up. Dopapod fans will notice that the bass looks a little different than it usually does up on stage. The white pickguard was covered with black duct tape for aesthetics. I had to remove the tape to be able to get the pickguard off to do a quick check on the electronics. Also Chuck wanted to raise the neck pickup slightly but it would not come up when you loosened the pickup screws. I found that the foam under the pickup had fully compressed, so I put some more padding under the neck pickup to allow it to be adjusted closer to the strings.

Chuck laying it down with the Jag’s new setup

And here is Chuck testing out the new setup on a take. Good to hear that planing the upper frets made his buzzing issues up the neck go away. There is a slight ramp at the end of the fingerboard that was causing the buzzing, so I minimized that hump my focusing my sanding on those last few frets. In more extreme cases, new frets are usually required as you have to sand the fingerboard itself quite a bit to flatten this transition to the body.

Now that my “work” was finished, I brought out my camera to photograph the band while they recorded.

Rob and a few guitars to choose from

Rob Compa and Eli Winderman tracking while Sandwich relaxes on the couch

Eli Winderman – master locksmith on keys

Here’s Eli Winderman, who plays organ, synth, clavinet, piano and a mean accordion.

Neal “Fro” Evans and his percussion campsite

Fro is an absolute beast behind the kit.

Sandwich getting down on a take

Above is Chuck’s dog Sandwich. Everyone loves this dog and this dog had a blast at the farm for sure.

Luke Stratton – Dopapod’s engineer and lighting designer extraordinaire

The man. The myth. Luke Stratton.

If you have been to a Dopapod show, Luke is the one making sure the band sounds and looks incredible running both sound and an inspiring light show. Think Kuroda in a club environment. He’s good.

Trevor Meyer capturing everything on both film and tape

And above is Trevor Meyer. Currently he is a Brooklyn-based recording engineer who does incredible music videography. Here’s one of his videos from Dopapod’s tour rehearsal back in February. Vol. 3 #86 …

Below is a shot from the loft of the main entrance to the barn. What an incredible space to make music in.

Loft view – main interior entrance to the barn

I loved this place so much that I had to come back for a third time. This time I brought my wife Sarah and daughter Molly to hang out with the band and enjoy the farm.

Below is my 2 year old daughter Molly hearing music pouring out of the barn. She had to go check it out. Maybe she is Dopapod’s youngest fan?

My daughter Molly drawn onward

So there you have it. The guys were so on their game and all of their hard work is really paying off. I can’t wait to hear the album when it comes out. What an incredible few days at an amazing place with some of my favorite people to be around. I want to thank the guys for welcoming me in to be a small part of their world. It’s musicians like this that really get me fired up to do what I do.

I love my job.

Chubbuck Guitars has a new home! This past weekend my friend DaveO and I moved all of my equipment to a new shop in Lynn, MA. This shop is only 25 minutes north of Boston. DaveO and I had our hands full, but we were able to take a few photos along the way …

Here is the loading dock with a 16′ truck that was rented for the weekend. Up on the top floor is my new shop. The two banks of three windows plus the single one on the left are mine.

Loading out of the old garage shop was not too bad. The lift gate on the truck was a lifesaver.

Here’s my trucker pose from DaveO’s perspective. This thing was a lot of fun to drive, but you felt every bump in the road.

The mysterious DaveO! Here we are on our last run up the freight elevator. We did two truck runs and who knows how many trips on the elevator.

The space filled up quickly. Everything is moved in and it is just a matter of figuring out the best layout.

Here’s DaveO signing off in his final desent down the freight elevator. I can’t thank him enough for his huge help on the move. It took much longer than I had planned on and he stuck it out well into the night. He even gave me a call the next day, so we’re still on good terms!

There you go, more photos will be posted once everything is set up. I am pretty beat up from the move but very excited to keep things progressing. Stay tuned!

This week a player brought me in a custom acoustic baritone guitar with a 28″ scale length and a LR Baggs Hex saddle pickup system. The guitar is primarily played in drop Bb, but in DADGAD intervals, so Bb – F – Bb – D# – F -Bb. This thing sounds huge and is strung with a custom set of Newtone Strings gauged 0.060″, 0.050″, 0.038″, 0.028″, 0.019″, 0.016″. As with many fingerstyle players, this customer was experimenting with different gauges and drop tunings until arriving at this configuration. The problem is that with these bigger strings, the intonation is pushing everything sharp.

What the hell is intonation? Basically in this context, intonation deals with setting the saddle location(s) at the bridge. The correct position will allow the entire guitar’s range to play as in tune as possible. Many guitarist know that the tuning system we use does not allow for perfect pitch on each fretted note. Setting the intonation on a guitar is really just minimizing those tuning errors. Since this guitar is playing everything sharp, the points at which the strings break from the saddle need to be pushed back towards the bridge pins. The Hex pickup saddles do not allow you to adjust this compensation, so it has to go.

First step is removing the six individual saddles of the Hex.

Each saddle has a it’s own lead that connects to a circuit board that was attached with Velcro to the inside / back of the guitar. The copper foil is a shield that is tacked down. Desolder two corners and the foil peels back to reveal the six (Hex) saddle leads plus one lead that goes to the output jack. Now desolder the six pickups and the lead to the output jack.

Note that this guitar had a dual source pickup system composed of the Hex saddle pickups and D-TAR SoundSpot transducers on the bridge plate. The stereo output jack was wired so that I could disconnect the Hex leads and the D-TAR will still function without any rewiring.

The SoundSpots stay, the Hex goes away.

The large gauge strings are going to need quite a bit more compensation than the original split saddle slots would allow. Let’s plug these so we can cut a new single slot.

And here are those plugs brought down flush and the bridge polished. Yes, I know the plugs do not match as well as I would like. I only had Walnut on hand and this bridge was some sort of exotic Rosewood. Plus the player is a true “player”, and not as concerned with aesthetics as he is with playability. Ideally I like to match the plug(s) as perfectly as possible. Ebony bridges are easy to plug invisibly. Rosewood bridges are always more difficult.

Now we cut a single saddle slot located further back to allow for proper compensation. I am not a fan of split saddles and have yet to come across an intonation issue that has required two independent saddles. Plus it’s twice the work for no real benefit, in my opinion. The new saddle is going to be slightly wider at 5/32″, which will allow us to better fine tune each string’s break point.

Here is the front edge location of the new saddle position. Note that the Hex saddles set the intonation of each string in the middle of the plugged split saddle slots. The pencil line shows the front of the new saddle and will allow me to push the string breaks an additional 5/32″ if necessary. That huge 0.060″ diameter bass string is going to need to be pushed all the way to the back of the new saddle.

OK, time to rout.

My saddle slotting jig works beautifully for cutting slots to accommodate any saddle width regardless of the diameter of the router bit I have. I’m using an 1/8″ diameter bit to cut a 5/32″ wide slot. First, the jig is clamped to the body. The routing guides are then aligned to cut the new slot in the correct position. I cut the slot in multiple passes until I get down to the depth I like. Then I can reset the rear fence (right side in the photo below) to widen the slot to accommodate the new 5/32″ saddle. A feeler gauge spaces the rear fence back roughly 0.030″ to give me the approximate 5/32″ slot (came out at 0.160″). Once the rear fence is set back, I move the routing guide back until it makes contact with the rear fence, tighten it down and make another pass.

And here is the final results with the new 5/32″ compensated bone saddle. The original action was quite high, so I brought it down with the new saddle. High action also affects to how well a guitar plays in tune. The higher the action, the more you have to stretch the strings to fret and this can pull notes sharp. The neck angle is on the shallow side, so there is not as much saddle height above the bridge as I would usually like to see. A neck reset would correct for this and give the guitar a little bit more volume. That being said though, I am very pleased with how this repair came out great. The player loves how much better the guitar plays in tune now and also appreciates the lowered action. He commented that can play the guitar for longer sessions at a time now without fatiguing his left hand.

So there you have it, the ol’ Plug-n-Recut.

So here is a 1962 Guild M-20 built in Hoboken, NJ. Well, sort of …

Let me premise this post by stating that I am against drastically modifying vintage instruments. I usually do everything I can to restore an instrument back to it’s original spec’s unless those original spec’s hamper playability. The above conversion is a drastic modification. I believe that we as luthier’s need to respect the builders of the past and keep their instruments alive for future generations.

So while I seem to be a hypocrite right now, let me explain where I’m coming from.

In the meantime, here is a little background music. This recording is of the above guitar played by yours truly. Sloppy playing? Yes. But it gives you an idea how the guitar sounds.

Below is a photo of the guitar as it came into the shop. Now you know what I mean by a drastic modification. The original M-20 is an all-mahogany flat top steel string acoustic guitar. I do not remember what exactly happened to this guitar, but the bridge is literally being ripped off the top.

Here is a closer look at what’s going on at the bridge.

Wow. I have not seen anything this bad in a long time.

The story goes like this, a customer sent this guitar in to have a new replacement top made. Once he realized how expensive a new top was going to cost, along with the finish work and neck reset, he decided that it was not worth it. Also note that this guitar is not terribly valuable – possibly $1,500 in mint condition. This one is far from mint. Please note that monetary value is not always the deciding factor in going forward in a repair. I work on quite a few guitars where the repair costs are well over the value of the guitar. This however, was not going to be one of those guitars. The customer donated the guitar to the shop as he did not want to have it shipped back.

So the guitar sat around for a few months. I saw the potential in this broken guitar and wanted to try an experiment. The guitar was destined to be another casualty of war sitting in the corner of the shop collecting dust. I wanted to make it live again. I have always wanted a guitar with P-90’s. I also love to practice finish work anytime I can, so a sunburst was in this guitar’s future too.

Here we go …

Off comes the neck and the top is removed. Below is what the inside of the top looks like. The bridge plate is bent straight through the pin holes and pushed up through the top. Also someone had tried to bondo this thing down with some funky glue.

Here’s the label on the back. I do not think these repairs will be covered under warranty.

Ok, so now the top is off and we can see inside. I want to make this a semi-hollow by installing a mahogany block down the center that still allows the back to vibrate. Let’s call this a float-block.

I use my saddle slotting jig to rabbet the end blocks. The jig’s router guide plate is removed and I use the edge of the cutout as a straightedge for my routing collar to locate against.

Here’s a close up of the tail block rabbet.

Now the neck block’s turn.

And the close-up of the neck block rabbet.

Since I am going electric, I decided to glue in a jack block. This one is Baltic Birch plywood. I like plywood for it’s strength to weight ratio in this application.

I also glued in a support block for the upper bout strap button. Also take note of the dowel holes in the neck block rabbet.

Here’s a view of the tail section with the new mahogany center block fit and ready to glue in.

The center block is glued in and I radius sanded the rim just for the hell of it. Note that my center block is fairly thick. I will probably go a little thinner if I ever do another one of these again just to save a little weight. In the background is the new top.

The new top is a nice piece of bearclaw Sitka spruce with Red spruce laminates on areas outside of the center block. This top was well off-quarter and way too flimsy to use for a traditional steel string acoustic guitar. A perfect top for this float-block.

Here we are in the spray booth. I decided to use cream binding and a couple black / maple / black purfles around the top. The back and sides are masked off because I want to keep the character of the 40+ year old finish.

And here is the finished guitar. It has a set of Jason Lollar P-90’s with a three way switch and master volume and tone. The bridge is a TonePros tuneomatic-style locking bridge and the tailpiece is something I had lying around. It seemed to fit the vibe of the guitar. The fingerboard received new frets and I even swapped out the old pearl fret markers for parchment ones. A new bone nut was cut and I string this guitar with Ernie Ball 12’s with an unwound G. The scale length is 24.75″, so the heavy strings bring the tension back up to where I like it.

I built this guitar in late 2010 and have absolutely fell in love with this thing. Sure you do not have access to the upper frets, but it sounds really sweet where you can grab ‘em. Eventually I hope to take this concept forward and build one of my own models with what I have done here.

I was reluctant to do this post as I do not want to encourage any of you out there to start ripping the tops off of perfectly good old acoustic guitars. I sincerely hope that I have not offended any diehard Guild M-20 fans out there. I would NEVER do any sort of conversion like this on a rare/valuable or repairable guitar. This one was going to sit around damaged for a long, long time and to me (and the original owner), was not worth the time and money involved to restore back to original.

I believe I gave this guitar a respectable second life. I love this guitar. Please feel free to let me know your thoughts.

:   :   :   :   :   :

UPDATE:  3/18/2013

A customer who found out about me from this post recently brought in his 1962 Guild M-20 for some work.  And no, I am not converting it.  His guitar is absolutely gorgeous and shows decades of playing wear.

1962 Guild class reunion: original M-20 on the left with my conversion on the right.

A good customer of mine brought in his 1972 Martin D-35 into the shop for me to check out. Upon inspection I quickly noticed that there was a gap behind the bridge.

Sliding a piece of paper under the bridge revealed that it had separated all the way to the bridge pin holes. This bridge happens to be a custom oversized bridge made by a previous luthier. The 70’s Martins have a reputation for having the bridge in the wrong location and hence having poor intonation. This custom bridge, along with the saddle extension on the bass string, improves the intonation on both standard and dropped tunings that the customer uses. Unfortunately this bridge may have not been glued down properly or the guitar was in a hot / dry environment and the joint has begun to fail.

Let’s pull it off and reglue it.

This guitar has a Fishman Ellipse Blend pickup system which contains both an undersaddle piezo pickup and interior microphone. We need to remove the undersaddle pickup before removing the bridge. I loosened the jack and opened up the housing to gain access to the preamp’s circuit board.

See the middle black wire coming up through the board on the bottom of the photo? This is the piezo undersaddle pickup that we need to disconnect. Follow the wire up the board and there are two connections that must be desoldered. The left bare wire is the ground shield and the right side is the hot lead. Make sure you remember which one is which for later.

Here below is an amazing tool for desoldering. It is called a “Soldapullt” and is in essence, a spring loaded vacuum. Say goodbye to your old rolls of copper braid. The copper braid method is very crude in comparison and you always risk burning components trying to get all of the solder to wick up into the braid. With this tool you can apply heat with your soldering iron until the solder melts, then hold the tip of the Soldapullt over the solder and push the trigger. Boom. The solder is sucked up into the tool. Push the ram to eject the solidified solder and it’s ready to use again.

So beautiful. You’re welcome :)

Ok, now the pickup is removed and I reinstalled the jack so it doesn’t flop around inside the guitar. I place the disconnected pickup in my parts box along with the other loose items for this particular guitar. Waverly tuner boxes are excellent for keeping your repairs organized.

Now we are ready to get started on removing the bridge. Most glues used in guitar building are broken down with either moisture or heat, or a combination of both. We’re going to keep things dry and just use heat on this bridge. First though, we need to protect the areas of the top that we do not want to heat.

This is just a piece of corrugated cardboard with a cutout for the bridge and covered with aluminum foil. This will reflect the heat and keep the top nice and cool.

The bridge on the other hand, is going to get a sun tan.

This is an infrared lightbulb in a common shop light fixture that you find at the hardware store. This one just so happens to be mounted on an old mic stand with a boom. Whatever stand you use, make sure that it is secure. You do not want anything that is suspended over a customer’s instrument to come crashing down.

Another word of caution: never leave any high-heat source like this unattended. Soldering irons, bending irons, propane torches, side bending blankets, infrared light bulbs … just do not walk away because you are going to get distracted and bad things can happen quickly. This is not a time to multitask.

(stepping down off the soapbox …)

Ok, after a few minutes of heating I check the bridge with my fingers to see how hot things are getting. You do not want to burn the bridge off. Heat it just enough to soften the glue. When it feels hot to the touch, turn off the light, pull the light away and remove the corrugated_cardboard_covered_with_aluminum_foil thingy.

Now we can test how well the glue was softened by using your pallet knife of choice. Since the bridge was lifting in the back, we have our access point.

This is a gentle process. The more methodically approach prevents a slew of additional repair work for you. If the knife is hard to insert under the bridge, repeat the heating process for a few more minutes. Remember, stay put!

Work the knife from the edges and be careful not to go through to the other side. You want to work from the outside in towards the center. Also be careful of the finish surrounding the bridge. This is a delicate area that is easily damaged by careless knife work.

One more concern is the run out in the top. You need to be conscious if the top has any run out.

“What the hell are you talking about? What is run out?”

Glad you asked.

The simple “tell” that a top has runout is when one half is dark and the other half is light in color. If you flip the guitar around 180 degrees, the light and dark sides switch. The dark side is actually the end grain coming up through the surface of a top that was usually not split in the milling process. Splitting the top blank (or billet) before resawing helps minimize run out because the wood will naturally separate along the grain line. This increases the likelihood of subsequent cuts being parallel to the grain. Larger diameter trees and certain species are less susceptible to run out. Run out in a tree is caused by the tree actually twisting to follow the sun in the sky throughout the seasons. At least that’s what I’ve heard …

Woah, back to getting this bridge off.

So now that we know what run out is, what do we do about it? We want to work our knife in on the light side of the soundboard. This will minimize our chances of the knife catching this run out and diving down into the top, which is a bad thing. This D-35 top had no signs of run out, so I was free to to go in from any edge.

And here it is. The bridge came off relatively cleanly. Note that you can see that the finish around the bridge was damaged slightly from the previous luthier’s bridge removal. Now the bridge is still really hot, so I like to clamp it to something flat, like a piece of aluminum. This allows the bridge to stay flat while it cools and minimizes any further distortion. Usually when you have a bridge that is failing, it can be slightly (or even moderately) distorted because all the string pressure is being held by a reduced portion of the bridge. The bridge can cup upwards slightly. You may have to replace a bridge if it cannot be refit to the top. This one should be ok to refit.

You can see above how much the previous luthier had to move the bridge pin holes by where he / she plugged the original holes with rosewood.

I will let the bridge cool down and then start cleaning off the old glue and refitting it to the top. We want a nice clean, tight fit so the bridge can stay down.

On the side of this guitar just so happens to be Tommy Emmanuel’s signature! Pretty cool, just have to make sure I don’t get it wet or sweat on it.

I do not repair signatures :)