Epiphone 335 Snapped Headstock Repair with Splines
Broken headstocks can be devastating. Guitars with angled headstocks are one accident away from certain doom. It can happen anywhere, and any time. You may see it as it happens – after playing the last song of your set, you prop your guitar against your amp, only to be bumped by the drummer exiting the reiser behind and knocks it to the floor of the stage. Or the time your dog, or kid are running through the house graze the tripod stand just enough. Or when traveling by plane, you didn’t know to loosen the strings before checking your hard case with the luggage that goes into the freezing belly of the plane. Seeing your beloved guitar broken, always hits hard.
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And for a guitar repairman like me, it’s just another Tuesday. Angled headstocks are built in business that will always be there as long as there are people playing guitars. The angled headstock certainly has its benefits. The string break angle allows a cleaner look to the headstock, not requiring string trees to combat the string buzz between the nut and tuners. It’s a scarf joint construction, which many luthiers pride themselves in implementing. Most of all, it has the “it” factor that has made so many guitars achieve their aesthetic. You know those models.
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In many cases, headstocks break at a diagonal angel. You can often apply glue in the break, clamp overnight, and structurally, it’s good to go. Most folks opt to cover over the break with some touch up sanding and finish work to hide the damage, but it is certainly not necessary for those who are cost conscious.
This type of break, however, needs extra love to get back to playing. It’s a vertical break. They don’t happen nearly as often as the angled ones, and it’s the result of poor wood grain choice made by the manufacturer. In this case, because the finish covered any visibility of the neck’s wood grain pattern, someone at the factory got away with it. The moment this guitar suffered its fate, was uneventful. The customer was loading the guitar, which was in a hard case, into his car. There was just enough “umph” when throwing it into his trunk, when he opened the case, there it was. In two pieces.
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The first step in this repair is getting the parts back together. The wood fibers were many, and splintered off in a few directions from the break. Using my ape brain, I fit the headstock back into place and wiggle it around, trying to find the traces of where all these fibers originally met. Eventually, when I find the right fit, I separate the two pieces, apply glue into the peaks and valleys of both ends, then fashion them back together. I use a series of clamps to maintain pressure, and forgot to snap a pic of them. Oops.
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The following day, I measure and mark off where the truss rod sits on the back of the headstock with a piece of tape. Now, the real fun begins. Using my neck spline routing jig, I route two channels in between the edges of either side of the neck and the tapped off truss rod area. Next, I begin cutting the plugs using a particularly dense, hard rock maple. I shape it to a rough size on my drum sander and make the final refinements by hand with sandpaper on a flat surface. When I achieve a snug fit, I use a “shoeshine” sanding technique to round the squared edges.
Once I have maple splines with a snug fit, they are glued and clamped into place. The next day, it’s time to carve! Using a seriously sharp sloyd knife, I begin removing material from the splines, a little at a time and carve them into the geometry of the neck. Eventually, they are just above the threshold and I can use scrapers and sanding blocks to get them even with the surrounding surfaces. The neck is now ready for some finish coats to cover the break.
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The good people at Gracey’s Finishes have meticulously matched all of the iconic guitar finishes over the decades, and from my research, the only ones with a matching Pellham Blue lacquer to make the fix. Thank you guys!
This headstock break, though challenging, doesn’t mean the guitar is beyond repair. When re-gluing a broken headstock, the most important factor is having fresh, un-touched wood to apply glue for adhesion. Glued joints are surprisingly stronger than the original wood fibers of the neck. Adding splines from dense hardwoods will certainly reinforce the break. When it comes to the dreaded vertical break, they are a must. After some time and care with touch up work, the neck was better than new.
Does your guitar neck need splines to reinforce a break?
Call Andrew with South Austin Guitar Repair. 512-590-1225.
Epiphone 335 – LR Baggs T-Bridge Install
Epiphone 335 – LR Baggs T-Bridge Install
South Austin Guitar Repair
Wow. You know it’s a busy year when I took pictures of a project from February and have not got a chance to write about it until September.
Well, this was a noteworthy project to me. I love electronic mods to guitars. They’re magic to me. This one in particular was as much of a challenge as rewarding when finished. There isn’t much info on the T-Bridge system aside from purchasing and the product page on LR Baggs’ site. I hope this blog post can serve as a reference to other luthiers trying to find installation tips for the T-Bridge as I was when I took on the job.
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The T-Bridge allows a guitar to blend the magnetic pickups with a piezo pickup in the bridge. The piezo pickup acts as a makeshift acoustic guitar for those who don’t want to change instruments between songs. It installs discreetly with a hole drilled under the tune-o-matic bridge to feed the 6 wires. From there, you can decide which way you want to wire the controls.
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The customer wanted a separate output jack for the T-Bridge so he could send the signal to a separate amp. The controls were then wired as 2 volumes and a master tone, with the T-Bridge volume in place where the bridge tone knob was originally located. It is possible to wire the T-Bridge into the same circuit as the magnetic pickups and have a single output for the guitar. But wasn’t requested for this install.
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Most aftermarket guitar mods come with some sort of “gotcha” or hiccup in the process. The T-Bridge was no exception. Two major hiccups, as a matter of fact. I didn’t manage to get pictures of them since I was preoccupied trying to finish the job on time. The first problem: There are two standard sizes for Tune-O-Matic bridge posts. Let’s just call them wide and narrow for simplacy. The bridge posts originally on this guitar were the wide variety and the T-Bridge were the narrow. The old holes for the bridge posts had to be doweled and re-drilled before anything else could move forward. Fantastic…
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The second problem (and this one is a lot less inexcusable), the T-Bridge volume pot, is short shaft. So after wiring the system up, drilling irreversible holes into the customer’s guitar, I feed the electronics into the guitar to find the shaft of the pot is not long enough for the nut and washer to catch on the top side. This makes absolutely no sense to me. A short shaft pot only works when mounted to small distances; a pick guard (like a Strat or Tele). It doesn’t span the distance necessary to mount on a carved top body. What is infuriating about this, you know Baggs made this bridge to work as a direct replacement for Gibson guitars. After all, they are the biggest brand to utilize the Tune-O-Matic bridge. NEARLY ALL GIBSON GUITARS HAVE CARVED TOPS. A SHORT SHAFT POT DOESN’T FRIGGIN’ WORK! And I can’t exactly route the underside of the cavity on a guitar with a glued top, who’s electronics are fed through the F-holes. Oh, and I didn’t mention this pot is 5 meg. An uncommon potentiometer value, which barely exists in the outside electronics manufacturing world, much less the electronics intended for guitars. I contacted LR Baggs, they said they don’t offer a long shaft version of this pot. I had to find one on my own. Great customer service fellas!
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Fry’s is the only electronic store in town that might carry something like this. They do not. After searching online, I came across a company which had a 5 meg pot A set of two cost me $20. They took a week to ship to me, setting the project back. When they arrived, I was heartbroken after wiring up the pot and finding it was too large to fit into the F hole. It’s things like this that drive me crazy, when working on projects. At this point, I contacted the customer and let him know the situation. Thankfully, he was an understanding guy and sympathized. I contacted LR Baggs again, asking what the alternatives were, given the circumstance. The lesser of evils ended up being a 1 meg pot. These are typically found in the upper circuit of Jazzmaster guitars and are readily obtainable. I even had a few in my shop, ready to go. 1 meg pots have a warmer sounding value than 250k pots, which are typically used to dampen the brightness of the single coil pickup. Piezo bridges are naturally and overly-bright. This is because of the way the piezo transducer converts string vibrations to sound. The purpose of the 5 meg pot was to help dampen this occurrence. The 1 meg pot, would not effectively dampen the brightness of the piezo, but is the closest that we could get, and still perform functionally. The end result, the piezo was a bit brighter and the customer will have to roll back some treble and presence on his amp so the T-Bridge doesn’t make his audience’s’ eardrums explode at the next gig.
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All this aside, the T-Bridge is a cool innovation and a highly functional upgrade for a guitarist that appreciates a multi-function instrument. I just wish, for the love of luthier, LR Baggs, get your shit together and provide us with a long shaft pot! Simple stuff!
Telecaster Re-Fret, Bone Nut and Neck Shim
Telecaster Re-Fret, Bone Nut and Neck Shim
South Austin Guitar Repair
This project brought new life to an old friend. The Telecaster that was pieced together by my customer. It was loved and played for many years to the point where the frets had divots all up and down the neck. Normally, frets have enough material on them to get at least one or two fret levelings before replacing them is needed, but at the customer’s request, they needed to go.
With the guitar pieced together, the height of the neck at the heel didn’t match the neck pocket. The action was still quite high even with the bridge lowered all the way down. The customer actually placed 2 outdated credit cards as shims…
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To remove the frets, I heat them one by one, with a soldering iron and working each out with a fret puller. It’s important to keep the frets warm so the teng pulls the least amount of wood grain with them.
Once the frets are out, I measure the radius of the fingerboard so I know what to bend the new fretwire into. This Tele has a particularly round radius of 7.25″ After cleaning off the new frets, I run the wire through the fret bender. Usually takes a few times of trial and error to get the correct curvature. After that, I prep the existing slots in the neck with a saw which matches the new fret wire’s teng. Not much is needed.
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Next, I pre-cut the bent fret-wire and begin pressing the frets into the fingerboard with my handy arbor press. This tool is amazing. Traditionally, a neck is re-fret with a hammer, which is loud… really loud and takes at least 5 hits per fret to sit properly. Multiply that by 21 or more frets and you have angry neighbors.
Sometimes, I like to use glue when pressing in the frets. I chose not to this time and let the teng of the fret work its magic. After all the frets are pressed in, the next step is to file the edges flush with the fingerboard. As you can tell the picture with the sleeping cat, I was working late into the night… or maybe early afternoon, or… I don’t know. Cats sleep 2/3 of the day apparently.
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Next up, I take a small, 3-corner file and round out the fret ends. If you’ve ever played a guitar off a factory belt that skipped this step, you’ll probably remember it for the rest of your life because those cuts are nasty! I mask off the fingerboard with tape and file each fret end, both sides
After that, the new frets need to be leveled. Although they look to be at the same height at a glance, there are always high spots. and check each string position with my handy fret rocker and make a note of which spots that will need leveling. Then, I get to work with my leveling file. I check the marked areas with my fret rocker as I go. Once everything is at an even height, I take a crowning file and re-shape each fret. This same procedure can be done with the 3-corner file, but for the sake of time, this is my method. Then, I sand out any remaining scratches with wet/dry sandpaper and finish them off with some rubbing compound. I remove the tape and apply a bit of lemon oil to condition the fingerboard.
Lastly, I discarded the credit cards and shape a piece of 1/8″ maple to the neck pocket to aid the neck height. I cut the new bone nut, (which I’ve explained my process in a few other blog entries), strung the guitar up and VIOLIA! This guitar’s got a brand new start in life.
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Does your guitar need some a re-fret leveling or re-fret? Call Andrew with South Austin Guitar Repair 512-590-1225 for fast friendly fret work.
Paul Reed Smith – Pickup installation, Wiring Modification Coil Tap and Phase Reversal
Paul Reed Smith – Pickup installation, Wiring Modification Coil Tap and Phase Reversal
South Austin Guitar Repair
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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.
Fender Stratocaster Neck Scallop
Fender Stratocaster Neck Scallop
South Austin Guitar Repair
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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.
Fender Telecaster – Pickup Swap, Body Route, Pick Guard File, Kill Switch Wiring Modification
Fender Telecaster – Pickup Swap, Body Route, Pick Guard File, Kill Switch Wiring Modification
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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.
Epiphone Les Paul Snapped Headstock Re-Glue and Setup
Epiphone Les Paul Snapped Headstock Re-Glue and Setup
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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.
Epiphone Les Paul – Bone Nut Carve, Pickup Swap and Setup
Epiphone Les Paul – Bone Nut Carve, Pickup Swap and Setup
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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.
Ibanez Artcore Semi Hollow – Electronics Fix
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Ibanez Artcore Semi Hollow – Electronics Fix
Every once and a while, there is a DIY project that just doesn’t make the cut. This was one of those.
The customer redid all of the electronics from scratch, from the pickup swap to the re-wire. And did a fine job at that, with the exception of trusting the advice of the internet and utilizing a problematic “vintage” style wire.
The problem with this wire, was each strand included a cloth/wax coated lead wire, surrounded by a thin layer of bare shielding. Seems legit, right?
The problem was, no matter how delicate, how careful he was (and me for that matter) the shielding wires were always severed when stripping the wires for soldering. They were simply too thin. And on the grand scheme, it only takes a single time removing and reinstalling the electronics of a semi-hollow guitar to realize how much of a pain in the ass the process is.
The thought of vintage style wiring in your guitar is a romantic on indeed, but make no mistake, it’s never the wires that give you the “vintage” tone. The wires are there to carry electric current – not voice it
To make a long short short, all the blue wires pictured were replaced with a fine and dandy 16 gauge stranded copper wire. Just the right kind to fulfill its duty and this guitar wired up perfectly to sing another day.
Ibanez RG Guitar Brass Nut Carve
Ibanez RGT42DXQM Brass Nut Carve
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Another fun project at South Austin Guitar Repair. This Ibanez RG is absolutely stunning. figured quilt top in my personal favorite translucent green finish. An all, around beauty. And yet, this slice of perfection had grown a nasty problem.
The owner of this guitar switched tunings frequently enough to have worn the plastic nut so far down, playing an open string in standard tuning would fret out at the first fret. It was decided that a brass nut would be the most dense material able to stand the abrasion of the strings tightening and loosening over and over and last for years to come.
After obtaining the right brass stock at a local metal stock yard, it only took a little sawing, rasping and sanding to get the nut to shape take and some quick measurements for the proper height and string spacing and viola! Brass Nuts!