Guitar Making

Guitar making is a very different discipline to repair.
The repairer's day could involve anything from vintage instruments to brand new. Any sort of stringed instrument with any problem could walk in the door. Its certainly interesting and keeps you thinking.
 The guitar maker chooses what they do day to day. The process is often more creative and hugely rewarding.
 In some ways repair is harder - you work with what's there and of course you cannot afford to make a mistake. If a maker makes a big mistake they can start again with another piece of wood - its not that easy for a repairer especially with vintage instruments.
 When I started off in the mid 90's I made a few guitars but ended up concentrating on repair. In the ensuing 15 years I've seen a lot of instruments, listened and looked hard and tried to determine what goes into a great guitar. There are so many interacting elements, so many variables.
 I've now decided to start making again.
 I'm making a pair of Dreadnought guitars to begin with.
 Here are a few pictures of the progress so far:

 This is a back getting thicknessed by hand.  I've chosen Australian Blackwood for its acoustic properties - somewhere between Mahogany and Rosewood. This is New Zealand grown.

The bookmatched halves of the back are jointed together.

 

 My side bending machine. 

Fitted back braces.

Carving and tuning the top braces using a thumb plane and chisels.

 Working on the sides in the mould.

So the process is well under way. I'm making a pair of Dreadnoughts with Carpathian spruce tops, Blackwood back and sides with Honduras Mahogany necks. I'd love them to be finished by the end of the year but that really depends on my repair workload.

Glyn




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I am no longer repairing guitars - since covid 19 I now work full time making pickups

www.mrglynspickups.com

Gibson LG2 - 1955

This is a beautiful old Gibson guitar from 1955.

There's no serial number on some of the less expensive older Gibsons. Instead it has a Factory Order Number. The first letter 'W' tells us the year. This number is not unique to the instrument but to the batch that was made at the same time.

It came into the workshop because the bridge pins were sitting wonky and the guitar was hard to re-string.

 This is a picture taken of the inside of the guitar using a mirror - the ball ends of the strings have dragged their way through the wood. But the main problem is the bridge plate. It was fitted in the wrong place - someone at Gibson must have been having a daydream, made the bridge plate too small but stuck it in anyway.

This diagram shows what it should look like. Although this is of a Martin the principle is the same.

So I decided to remove the existing plate and replace it with a new one. The bridge is bolted as well as glued on. As the bolts go through the bridge plate they need to be removed first. The bolt heads are hidden under two mother-of-pearl dots. I push the bolts out from inside and pop the dots out.

 The whole guitar is constructed using heat reversible glue so to remove the plate I can soften the glue by warming it up. I only want to warm up the bridge plate - the adjacent braces are also attached with the same glue and I'm keen not to get them too hot.
To localize the heat I use an iron which I warm up using a heat gun. As you can see its made from an old Strat neck plate with a wooden handle.
 I moisten the bridge plate with a sponge and very carefully using the iron heat it up.
 Its rather tricky and very easy to damage the guitar and burn your hand.

It takes time and patience. When I feel it is hot enough I can start to prise the plate of using a bent 6" ruler. There's more heating and more easing - it can take a while. I want to get the plate out in one piece. This photo is taken using a mirror inside the guitar.

Finally the plate is out cleanly.

I can now make the new bridge plate. I can use the old one to get the angle of the sides right. I'm using a rather nice piece of flamed maple I got from Adrian at Ash Customworks (www.ashcustomworks.com/) - I didn't happen to have any maple and he was kind enough to help me out.

Once I'm sure its the right size its ready for fitting. I tape a plastic covered piece of plywood to the underside to prevent the clamps from causing any damage. The plastic ensures the ply doesn't get glued to the bridge plate.

 It is now glued and clamped in place using animal glue of course - that's what Gibson used.

Here's the finished job - the pegs sit straight and the string ball ends have a positive anchor point. You can hear the difference in how focused the sound is.

Finally after 55 years she gets a proper bridge plate. Lets hope this guitar is still in regular use in another 55.


Glyn




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I am no longer repairing guitars - since covid 19 I now work full time making pickups

www.mrglynspickups.com

Music Man Stingray V de-fretting

 I got a call the other day from Matt from the Auckland Rockshop - "can I de-fret a Music Man Stingray 5 string Bass for them?"
 Well in fact he said "what will it cost?".
 This is a job I do from time to time so I thought I'd write a bit about the process.
 It turns out this bass is for Tony Levin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Levin


 He's playing at the G-Taranaki Guitar Festival in New Plymouth and isn't bringing an electric bass with him. Rockshop being the NZ dealer for Music Man are lending him an instrument (nice of them). The only 5 string Stingray they had was fretted - that's where I come in.
  Tony Levin is a brilliantly creative, thinking musician so I'm hugely chuffed to be working on an instrument for him. Not that I get to meet him - he's not stopping in Auckland at all.

 The first part of the job is to take the neck off the guitar and strip it of hardware. Then remove the nut and on to the frets.

 I gently lift the frets with my modified pincers but you can see from this picture that the board is crumbling a little. This guitar is new - straight out of the box so I'm a little surprised but it isn't too big a deal, I can fix that.
 Here's an area of the board with a few little chunks missing

 It's the three wee pieces in the middle of the picture I'm going to repair.

I put a piece of metal in the fret slot to prevent it from filling up with glue

I then pack the holes with rosewood dust. I keep jars of different coloured wood dust for jobs like this

Then I saturate the dust with a thin super glue. I prefer the 'Hot Stuff' brand.

Once the area has been sanded the fills are almost undetectable.

I've decided to fill the fret slots with Maple veneer. I can't hide them so I'm making a feature instead. If there was more time I could have made a new fingerboard but I only had 48 hours to do the entire job.
 I measure the radius of the board with guages I made when I was in college 15 years ago. Its 7.5 inches - rather less than I'd imagined.

I cut pieces of veneer with a 7.5 inch radius on the underside and to the exact length to fit the slot.

This is the most time consuming parts of the job - they all have to be an exact fit.

Once they're all made I glue them in using Titebond Alaphatic Resin. I leave it overnight to dry.

The following day I trim the excess veneer off with a very sharp chisel and sand the board smooth. I start at 150 grade and work through up to 1000 wetting the board between grits. There's no need to go to such a fine grade I just can't help myself - it feels so good.
 I string it and set it up and its ready to be picked up by Rockshop and delivered to Mr Levin.

Not wanting to take any chances I leave it with my highly trained head of security to guard while waiting for Richard from the Auckland Rockshop to pick it up.

 Matt tells me the bass is going to be for sale at Rockshop after Tony's used it at the festival. So there's a chance to get a one off instrument with some serious pedigree.


Glyn


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HERE'S AN UPDATE:

Tony liked the bass and played it at the gig. Matt from Rockshop sent me some pics of him with it.

I am no longer repairing guitars - since covid 19 I now work full time making pickups

www.mrglynspickups.com

On tour - Tales From The Back Line

There are a few different aspects to guitar repairing. All my work happens in my own controlled environment - the workshop.
Touring Guitar Techs have to work wherever they find themselves - they need to be quick, have magician like fault finding skills, work under pressure and remain good humored.
 Gavin Downie is such a wizard, take a look at his blog

http://kiwiguitars.blogspot.com/

Not only does Gav have the coolest job in NZ but he's a top bloke too - can't wait til he writes his memoirs.

 Be sure to read his piece called:

From the Musik Market to find Bungalow Bill

Some NZ music history you may not know


Glyn



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I am no longer repairing guitars - since covid 19 I now work full time making pickups

www.mrglynspickups.com

So what guitars do I use?

 Over the years I've managed to wittle down the amount of guitars I own.
It's not easy parting with instruments but I feel if they're not getting played then they're not earning their keep. We all have stories of the one we should never have sold - oh I miss my '65 Duosonic.
 So I'm down to only 3 electric guitars. None of them expensive but all 3 have that magic 'something'.

This is a 'bitsa' Tele.
 The body is from Allparts and its a really light piece of Swamp Ash. Swamp Ash is lighter and airier sounding than other ash. With the large metal bridge and maple neck I needed to mellow out the tone of this guitar while keeping the essence of the Telecaster sound. Swamp Ash does this.
I've finished it with Danish Oil so as not to impede the resonance of the timber. This guitar just gets better with age - the more its played and the harder its played the better it gets (If only cars were like that).

 The neck is from a mid 90's 'Made in Japan' Squire. They are really fat club like necks so it was ideal as a blank for me to re-shape. It's slab cut and pretty rigid and stable.
I've given it a very slight 'V' profile, keeping the depth but removing a lot of wood from the sides. I removed the headstock logo and re-finished the neck with matt nitrocellulose lacquer. One of these days I'll get around to re-fretting it - they are still the original frets.

 All the hardware is USA made Allparts except the tuners which are still Squire. It has the Fender 4-way switch to get the extra humbucker sound although I never use it. I want my Tele to do Tele stuff and that just doesn't fit. I don't want versatility - if a guitar can do one or two things well then I'm happy. Its got the TBX tone control which I leave set to the middle. I have occasionally turned it to the more treble setting towards the end of a long gig when my treble hearing's going but try not to.

 The pickups are Texas Specials which I was never 100% happy with so I've re-wound them. I scatter wound them to be a wee bit hotter than vintage spec and its opened the sound up a huge amount - so much more clarity.


I've kept the look as simple and traditional as possible - for me that's what Telecasters are about.


Stratocaster

 This is a ROCK monster! This Frankenstrat has one purpose and that's when I play in a rock covers band. Its a Chinese made Axe Tech (?) and cost $90NZ second hand. It weight almost nothing and fits like a glove - important when doing 4 hour gigs.

 The fretboard has been re-radiused to 20" (very flat) and fretted with narrow jumbo fretwire. After an accident at a gig I re-finished the neck with shellac which feels great. The action is low with D'Addario 10-52 in E flat. This is a fast guitar built for stage use.
I've removed a fair bit of the finish on the body to open the sound up.

 The trem is blocked off and the posts re-mounted in hardwood inserts which brought a lot more life to the sound.

 The pickups are Seymour Duncan JB and Jazz. They have a fantastic generic rock sound which works really well for covers. There's not a lot of character in them but they can sound close enough to most things. The middle pickup's a dummy.
 The 5-way switch gives me JB humbucking, JB in parallel, JB and Jazz in parllel, Jazz in parallel, Jazz humbucking. Works for me.

 The third one is my archtop.

It's a copy of a Gibson L5 made by Hondo in the early 70's. Its one of the ones that actually came out of the Ibanez factory. It's huge and uncomfortable but I love it. There's such a huge fat sound in there.

 For amplification I'm using a vintage Carlsbro TC60R. I believe this model was discontinued in 1973. Its an all valve 1x12 combo with ECC83's and EL34's. Is got 2 channels and reverb.


There's no master volume so it just does loud and clean. I get overdrive from a boss pedal. Using both channels that gives me 4 basic sounds - loud and louder, clean and dirty.
 For rock gigs I take the amplifier out of the combo and slot it into a head I made for it and run a Laney 4x12. That gives so much more punch and direction to the sound - completely different.

 So that's my set up - simple really. I do try not to buy guitars but who knows what temptation is around the corner.

Glyn



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I am no longer repairing guitars - since covid 19 I now work full time making pickups

www.mrglynspickups.com

Gibson Tennessee nut repair

  This is an unusual guitar - It's a 1990 Gibson Tennessee Chet Atkins model. Here's the serial number, the first and fifth number tell me the year. I think it was '76 they started this system. Gibson's website is good for dating older ones.

 The guitar had a buzzing open 'A' string. All the others were fine. The problem was the string slot at the top-nut was too deep. This leaves me with a choice - make a new bone nut-
although this guitar is not old it is certainly unusual and will no doubt be a serious collector's item in the future. The original nut has distinctive lacquer on its ends and it is only one string that's too low.
- repair the existing one-
 I decided to do this by what I call 'giving it a filling'.

 Firstly I opened up the string slot using a gent saw to a width about 1.5mm wider than the string (0.75mm either side). And about 1mm deeper than the existing slot.

 I carve a piece of bone from an old nut off cut to fit in the slot exactly but to protrude above the slot so I can trim it off later.

 I mask off the fretboard and head with tape just in case. Then I glue the piece of bone in with 'Hotstuff' super glue.

 After a couple of minutes the glue is completely dry and I can file and sand the new piece flush with the nut.

 Then its just a case of filing the nut slot to the right depth as I would in a set up.

 This 'filling' method works really well, is almost undetectable and gives the string a fresh, clean slot to slide in.


   I wonder if I could do the same to my front tooth?

    Glyn




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I am no longer repairing guitars - since covid 19 I now work full time making pickups

www.mrglynspickups.com

Fender Bronco fretboard repair

This one is a 'real' repair, in the sense that something is broken. Its a Fender Bronco which is an instrument I very rarely see.

It is by no means a new guitar but it still gets regularly gigged and toured with NZ punk band Die!Die!Die!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die!_Die!_Die!

 For more info on the Fender Bronco take a look at:

 http://www.fenderbronco.com/id2.html

It spent a brief few days at my workshop between a UK and an Australian tour. The main priority was sorting out the electrics, a missing fret (!), and some set up problems. I also took the opportunity to repair a missing chunk of fretboard.

It looks to me like the neck has has an accident with a mic stand. The maple of the neck has been dented and a chunk of rosewood snapped off along with a fret. I've put a new fret in and need to replace the piece of fretboard before I can file the fret end to match the existing frets.

 I find a piece of rosewood that is a good colour and grain match and glue it into position.

I've cut it to marry up to the old fretboard but at this stage I'm not concerned about the shape of it.

 

I use Hot stuff super glue for this. It comes in a few viscosity and I've used the thicker one so it doesn't soak into the grain too much. To speed the job up I use accelerator spray which makes the glue dry almost instantly. There's no need for clamping.

 So now there's a lump of wood sticking out of the side of the fretboard I need to shave off what I don't want.

I use my old 5/8 chisel for this. I like sharp tools a lot. I sharpen most of my chisels to a much shallower cutting angle than most woodworkers. This gives me a sharper blade but it doesn't hold its edge for long. So I have to sharpen it more often. I only ever use them for shaving - never with a mallet. If I was cutting out door hinges it would be a different matter but this is luthierie.

  I use wet stones and a strop and get my chisels sharp enough to shave my arm hairs without a rash. You can spot a luthier by the bald patches around their left fore arm :-)

 

Here's the new piece after the chiseling and I've started shaping the fret end to match the old ones.

The dented maple on the side of the neck I filled with super glue and smoothed off. You can see it but not feel it. To make it invisible would simply take too long - this guitar is going to be gigging in Oz in a couple of days.

So the Bronco lives to gig another day. I do love seeing vintage guitars still out there doing it. It seems so sad to me when they get retired because they become too precious. This is Rock n roll after all.

      Glyn

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I am no longer repairing guitars - since covid 19 I now work full time making pickups

www.mrglynspickups.com