South Austin Guitar Repair

 
This project was special, it was a personal project, resurrected from one of the first basses I ever built! This particular project had changed appearances a few times through it’s life. Originally, it was a Jazz bass, then I experimented with a series of different pickup combinations, all of which required routing to the body. Eventually, this bass was set aside and scraped for parts. After using some of the spalted maple for a repair on another build, I sanded the top wood of the bass entirely and set it aside as a future project.

 
Finally, I had an objective. Build a bass with a sharp attack, broad tonal range, sleek look, light-weighted and elegant aesthetic. Having never built a bass with a graphite neck, I knew that was a necessary component. I had this bookmatched AAAA quilted maple top sitting around for years. Originally, I was planning to build a guitar with it, but things got in the way and the farthest I ever got was gluing the two pieces together until it sat for years. Something funny about working with this this maple top: I don’t currently own a band saw, which is how I typically would cut out wood when building. SO when working with this piece of maple, I cut it by hand, scoring the wood with a straight-edge ruler and a razor. When the top wood was close to shape, I glued it onto the walnut body and rasped the rest of it to fit the shape. Lastly, I beveled the top with a hand router.

 
For electronics, I was on a mission for a versatile, sharp-attacking growling bass tone. I hadn’t had a jazz bass for a long time. I am always experimenting with different pickup combinations and manufacturers to see what is best, but you can’t the simplicity of the almighty jazz bass. Gritty, tight, balanced; there’s good reason why they are the winning combination for musicians and manufacturers. I am a firm supporter of the Aguliar OBP preamps. I have them installed on each of my 6 basses. This one was an OBP-2, which offers a bass/treble boost and cut. I wired those with a stacked pot to save space. I prefer my pickups to be wired through a 3-way mini toggle switch into to a single volume. I’m all or nothing when it comes to pickup volume and combinations. Now, comes is my ace in the hole. The middle knob on this bass is actually a 5-way rotary switch. It’s a distortion circuit that moves from true bypass and though 4 switchable distortion models that get progressively grittier as you go up. Personally, I prefer the 3rd position for my stylings. Just enough break-up for each note to pierce through the mix while still maintaining clarity and the role of the low end of my band.

 
For all your guitar repair needs, contact Andrew of South Austin Guitar Repair – 512-590-1225

South Austin Guitar Repair

This poor Taylor had a run-in with a misstep of the wrong foot! The customer had borrowed this guitar from a friend and mistakenly used it for a slipper, or boot, or… I dunno. But it done got broke!

The customer was nervous this guitar might not be fixable in its condition. The breaks were complex and many. When it all comes down, (most) guitars are wood. Everything can be fixed one way or another.

Clamping wood from the outside is no issue, but when a crack is 8″ or longer and going through a surface, is difficult to keep level when re-gluing. I needed to create pressure from the inside-out for the guitar’s top to clamp evenly on the exterior.

For this repair, I went Macguyver and made a new set of clamps from a turnbuckle, threaded furniture foot and… a another, non-threaded furniture foot! The threaded furniture foot provided the necessary torque to apply pressure outward when unscrewed, inside the guitar body. Any additional clamp on the outside can apply pressure inward. The cracks are then equalized between the two sides so not to set unevenly.

Some of the cracks where odd, broken and uneven with the grain where they rest. Overlapping from where they should rest. In some of those occurrences, it’s easier to break the piece off and re-glue than to attempt to force it back.

After all the pieces were glued in place, the back, the guitar back needed to be evened out. Fortunately, Taylor uses light lacquer on their guitars, so it only took a few hours of sanding to get through the finish and level the wood. Once that was even, A few coats of clear lacquer was applied and the back was good as new.

South Austin Guitar Repair

 
This is the type of project I totally geek out with. I LOVE wiring modifications on guitars. I often wonder why coil tapping isn’t a standard on every guitar. You have a guitar humbucker that can always single out one or the other side of it’s coil, why not add a push-pull pot and give the guitar an extension of it’s tonal range?

Ah, let me back up a few steps here. What is this coil-tapping and phase reversal you ask? A humbucker is a dual coil guitar pickup. It’s essentially two, single-coil pickups wired together to cancel that age-old wiring hum. By wiring a pickup to a switch, you can single out either side of the humbucker’s coil and have the sound of a single-coil pickup. With 2 humbuckers, you’ve now doubled your guitars potential sound!

Phase-reversing involves flipping a humbucker’s magnet polarity. The effect it gives is a thinner, nasally, quackier sound. It seems to accent different overtones when switched on and even makes it easier to play harmonics… though that’s more of an opinion. Phase-reversing was used a lot in the 1970′s and 80′s. The effect is liked by a lot of blues players for lead tones… though certainly not limited by it.

So first off, the guitar’s owner provided a set of DiMarzio humbuckers which first needed to be installed and two holes needed to be drilled for the mini-switches. The push-pull potentiometer was used for the coil-tapping switch, and the on/on mini-toggle for the phase-reversal. After an hour or so of meticulous soldering, the electronics were ready and working.

Something interesting, which I was unaware upon the start of this job is the phase-reversal switch also acts as a coil selector when the humbucker has been split. In other words, you can select which side of the humbucker you single-out when the coil-tap is enabled. With these two switches installed, this guitar’s tonal range increased exponentially from 3 tones, to 15!

After all this funness with wiring, the guitar was set up to C standard. The string slots of the nut all needed filing to fit the new, larger strings. Lastly, the guitar was strung up and this job was done!

Does your guitar have more to say? Call Andrew from South Austin Guitar Repair (512) 590-1225 to find out more on humbucker wiring modification.

South Austin Guitar Repair

 
Here is an old guitar that underwent a total makeover. Once again, the was the unfortunate result of parents allowing their young children to “play” their guitars. I honestly don’t know how these kids are able to deconstruct this guitar the way they did, but this is absolutely the most broken guitar I have ever come across…

The top and back were almost completely separated from from the sides, only being held together by the neck, which was broken at the dovetail joint, loose from the top and fingerboard splitting apart from the rest of the neck. The inside of the guitar had melted crayons scattered about. There were no tuners or string nut and bridge saddle. The kerfing on the sides has been split in various locations… basically, this guitar was as they call in the auto-industry, “totaled.”

But one can’t put a price on sentimental value and it was decided to bring this guitar back to life. I think for this occasion, I’ll let the pictures do the talking

South Austin Guitar Repair

 
 
Ever feel like your guitar doesn’t play as fast as you want? Well, aside from hours of practices, there are some other tweaks you can make to your guitar to help train yourself to play faster. Scalloping a fingerboard does exactly that.

The idea is to train your fretting hand to press as lightly as possible when hitting a fret. With the loss of wood, the harder you press down, the more you sharpen the note’s pitch. As you gain the softer touch, you press lighter on the fret, and in turn gain a faster fretting hand.

For this whole job, I used 2 round files. One large, and one smaller. I always start in the middle of the fretting space and take that down 1/8″ to 1/4″ to create the “trench” which I can then begin rounding the wood on either side.

Each scallop takes about 15 – 20 minutes from start to finish. Some of the larger spaces take even longer. There is no sense in rushing this because one slip of the rasp can cause you lots of extra time covering up an unwanted blemish or something even worse…

The inlay dots are as good as gone by the time you’ve scalloped the neck. But the owner did specify he needed them for when he teaches lessons. Using a dowel made of walnut, I cut small sections for each inlay, drilled the spot on the neck to place them and plugged them right in. Because the dowels made for a snug fit I went ahead and rasped them down to the fingerboard level while waiting for the glue to dry.

Then, I took 2 grades of sandpaper to get the nasty file and rasp marks out of the fingerboard and make it nice and smooth. I applied a few layers of clear lacquer to seal the deal and wet-dry sanded in between coats. I then lightly sanded the frets to get the unwanted lacquer off and applied some rubbing compound just the same as I do when refretting a guitar.

The very last step was to apply some rubbing compound to the recently lacquered neck and viola! A new life for a 25-year old guitar neck.

South Austin Guitar Repair

 
Wow, it’s almost been a month since I’ve had time to blog about Austin guitar repairs. Despite the summer rush for repairs being over, the rush itself seems to continue on. I guess it’s a good problem to have?

So, down to the nitty gritty.

After many years of love and play time, the owner of this guitar made an honest attempt to re-fret the first four frets on his own. Unfortunately for his efforts, murphy’s law is especially true when doing any kind of work on your frets. So after his replaced frets completely fret themselves out, he brought it in to my shop for a fix.

The main issue, was the frets were not a good replacement size (too short in crown height) and I couldn’t simply mill them down to match the others. In this case, it was faster and easier to replace them entirely.

First the frets needed to be pulled. The customer didn’t use any glue, so they were only being held in by the teng of the fret. Once they were out, I cleaned out the inside of the fret slots for any debris.

Next, I use a gauge to determine what radius the fingerboard has been manufactured. This guitar was 10″. To translate, imagine a 10″ diameter circle; the top of that circle is the shape of this guitar’s fingerboard, which the frets are placed.

Using my handy fret bender, I fed the fret wire through and cut sections to place on the neck. Because this fingerboard had binding on its sides, I also needed to undercut the ten on the ends so it could sit flush on the fingerboard.

After applying a bit of glue to the bottom of the frets, I hammered them into their slots using a brass-tipped hammer. Once they were in, I clamped them down with a radius block that matched the fingerboard’s profile.

After a night of the glue curing, I removed the clamp and beveled the edges of the frets for any sharp corners. Using that same radius block and a bit of 150 and 220 sand paper, I leveled any imperfections in the new frets and it’s older neighboring ones. Then, using some wet/dry sandpaper, I gave them each a “once over” to smooth them further.

Next, I polished each one with a bit of rubbing compound to buff out any additional scratches. After removing the masking tape from the fingerboard, I apply a few dabs of lemon oil to coat and enrich the rosewood fingerboard

Once that’s dried, I string out the guitar and it’s back in action! Fret work, to say the least, is a series of steps. But when performed correctly, bring a tired, worn guitar, back to life.

Today, we have another one of the many awesome guitar projects here in Austin, TX. The owner of this guitar wanted to do some electronic upgrades to his main ax; an American Fender Telecaster. He didn’t like the output of his current neck pickup and always liked the idea of adding a humbucker in the neck position, just not with the idea of routing out so much material from the guitar’s body and pick guard.

Fortunately, the bright minds at Seymour Duncan provide almost every option under the sun for guitar pickups and after spending a few minutes talking about preferences and styles the owner liked to play, we decided to install the Li’l Screamin’ Demon.

This pickups is actually designed to fit a Stratocaster and though not by much, don’t fit the routing in the body or pick guard “as-is.”

No problem. With my handy little Dremel, the pickup route was opened ever so slightly to accommodate the new addition. After some free-handed filing to the pick guard, the pickup was mounted ready for action.

Lastly, the guitar was wired with a on/off kill switch to be able to achieve the Tom Morello signal cut effect.

Yep… just another day at the office.

Well, it’s been a busy, busy month. And not coincidentally, a hot, Texas month. The kind that makes old glue weakened and acoustic bridges start to pull apart from the surface of a guitar. I’ve had about 5 guitars brought to me in the last 30 days with this very problem. If you’ve been perusing this guitar repair blog, you may have seen an older entry, of a Framus Nylon String guitar, whose bridge popped off entirely. This guitar, didn’t quite have that luxury, and required some extra TLC to get the job done.

After removing the strings, I heat up a metal putty knife by holding it against an iron. I carefully slide the hot putty knife into an open area of the pulled bridge. Once I hit a section of the bridge that is still glued down, I give it a little push to force itself in, and wait a few seconds for the heated glue to settle and I pull the knife back out, and heat it again on the iron. I do this until one end of the bridge has been lifted enough to wedge another plastic putty knife under. This helps any glue that’s been heated not find its way back down to the guitar top.

Once the bridge has popped off, the old glue from the underside of the bridge needs to be removed entirely so we’re working with bare wood. After a little sanding on the bridge’s underside, the next thing to do is clean the surface of the guitar. I totally dropped the ball and forgot to take a picture of this step. But to paint a picture for you, I place the bridge back on the guitar top, mask off the area around the bridge with blue painter’s tape and use a combination of a sanding block and flat chisel (for scraping) to get any bits of old glue or lacquer.

Now, we’re ready to glue this bridge down! Because the bridge has a tendency to shift when clamps are applied, I manufactured a device to keep the bridge from shifting while gluing. I use a strip of wood with two threaded rods epoxied to accommodate the two farthest and most opposite holes which the guitar’s bridge pins secure. After the glue is applied and the clamping begins, there’s a mad rush with a series of wet and dry rags to wipe away any excess of glue that is pushed out from the under side. After a few minutes of tightening clamps and wiping excess glue, the guitar can sit over night and allow the glue to cure.

The next day, clamps are removed, the strings are strung and this guitar is back in action!

The fatal flaw in guitars with 45º angle headstock is the very thing we like about them most… the 45º angle. All too often, we rest our guitars against a couch, or our amp, you graze the body with your leg, or your dog comes bounding through the room or your toddler wonders what happens if they push it to the ground.

SNAP.

All of the above, actually were not a factor in this decapitation. This guitar just recently moved to Austin by plane, and the owner had no idea to loosen the strings before checking this as baggage. One would think, that by securing a guitar in a hard case would be enough to keep if safe, but not from the extremely cold temperatures at 7000′

Luckily, this was a fairly clean break, and after applying some glue and left clamped overnight, the headstock was back in-tact, and back to life.

Lastly, a little wood filler was used to fill in small areas along the break that were missing wood entirely, and then a few coats of black lacquer to cover the damage.

This Les Paul was back to rocking’ and rollin’ in the live music capital in no time.

This is my kind of project. I often have customers ask me what upgrades are the best bang for their buck to make a guitar they’re owned for years, new and exciting. Can you guess what my two recommendations are?

Bone, is a much more dense material than any stock plastic nut and yields a brighter sound, longer sustain and overall, nicer feel when picking strings.

Similar to the stock nut, stock pickups are anything but glamorous. They tend to sound… mass-produced, converter-belt manufactured and slightly dull. But this isn’t the kind of thing you notice until you’ve seen and listened to a higher quality pickup. Depending on what sound you’re after out of your guitar, several factors play into what voicing you need in a pickup. This ranges from the amount of copper winding inside the pickup to the type of magnet utilized. (Alnico II, Alnico V and Ceramic are the choices).

It was decided to install a set of Gibson ’57 Classic Humbuckers. After that, a piece of Canadian moose bone was carved and filed down and placed on the headstock. Lastly, a set of D’Addario XL’s were slapped on and this Epiphone Les Paul was transformed from good, to great.