Monday, October 1, 2012

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Volute Headstock Repair


I tend to use splines only when it is a 2nd break or if the break is on the scarf joint.

This was a first break on a Tanglewood acoustic guitar. I used hot hide glue and did some minimal touch up with cyanoacrylate and a french polish so that the break area was smooth to the touch.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

August 2012


 4534 Nicollet August 8th, 2012. 

Here's a Martin that was on one of my benches last week. Crack repair, partial re-fret, new bone nut & saddle plus a K & K Pure Mini pickup. I use the sound hole pickup (made by Seymour Duncan) to set intonation. The K & K pickup is installed inside the instrument  at the bridge plate and goes out through an end button jack. Pretty nice.

I've started carrying both K & K and L.R. Baggs pickups for acoustic instruments. Check them out if you are not familiar:

Monday, May 14, 2012

Jazz Bass Style Pick-ups

Until recently I've stuck to repairing and rewinding pickups; but the original Jazz Bass style pickups in this "Grande" bass were so corroded that I decided to try my hand at making a new pair for the customer.

Old Pickup

New Pickups

 
I fit the new pickups to the old covers.

I was fascinated by the name of this bass.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Fret Press

My new setup for pressing in frets. These are going into a Rickenbacker that had delamination issues with the finish on it's bubinga fretboard.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Silvertone 1410L Converted To Lefty

P.A. brought me a nice Silvertone 1410L specimen for some structural repairs including a new nut and a new bridge to be cut & set up for a left handed player.

This instrument was suffering from "rising tongue" (upward sloping of the fingerboard after the 14th fret) which caused the notes to fret out badly after the 15th.

Rising tongue profile shot w/ frets removed.

The frets were not friendly about being removed from their slots.

No more rising tongue. Hard to tell from the picture, but trust me it's gone.

I put the old frets backs in and gave them a level n crown. No more fretting out.

Lefty nut and ebony truss cover

Lefty bridge made from rosewood.

Silvertone 1410L