From the Home of Tone bench
Chris' Les Paul project
This has been a lovely project to be a part of for it's owner Chris. He fairly recently took ownership of this '90s Gibson Les Paul Standard burst, but it was rather sorry for itself. A too low cut top nut, insanely low action and 8 gauge strings left the playing experience, to put it bluntly, awful. Chris had decided it was worth saving though, and I agree, as even through those issues you could tell it was a resonant example. He had purchased a Faber tune-o-matic and a pair of 'Wizz' un-potted PAF humbuckers for it. So I was set with the task of fitting the pickups, installing one of my Signature Series 50s style wiring kits (pots section only), re-wiring the original switch and jack with some Gavitt 22awg traditional braided 2 conductor wire, removing the plastic top nut and replacing with an in house made unbleached bone nut and then setting it up on Stringjoy Broadway pure nickel 10 gauge strings. All went really well and I'm blown away by the results, it plays beautifully and is one of the most resonant LPs I've played in a long time. Here's some pics of the progress and the final beauty shots.
Building a custom hardtail Strat body
I wanted to feature something a little different to the usual content on the blog, so have decided to document my process of making a guitar body. I'll may follow on with more like this if it's of interest! Within this article I'll be making a hardtail Strat body for a project, there are of course some superb pre-made bodies available these days, including custom specs but when you've got a workshop full of tools they need to be put to use don't they! So let's get busy and I suspect as a result the final product will be more meaningful too. I have a few spec ideas that will make this body a little unique, something that has been bouncing around my head for a while so will be nice to bring it to life.
2012 Gibson Double Cut for new wiring and nut
I have neglected my workshop blog a little the past few weeks, apologies there. So let's make up for it with a cool job in this week. Steve dropped off his very cool 2012 Gibson Billy Joe signature Les Paul Double Cut for a new wiring harness and new bone nut. This one has been gigged a lot, and Steve took it on from it's original owner opting to give it some Johnny Thunders vibes!
A partscaster build for Nik
Nik first reached out to me to inquire about some pickups and wiring for a partscaster project he was starting. Cut a long story short, he kindly opted for a loaded pickguard from myself, including the awesome McNelly 'S-Bar' hybrid strat pickup design, wired to a 7-way Strat harness and all mounted to a nice pearloid pickguard w/parchment plastics to soften the colours a little. Whilst we waited for the pickups to be made and arrive, we discussed his project further and he kindly asked me to assemble the whole guitar when everything was ready.
Descendant Vibrato install on a nice Vintera Jazzmaster
I had the pleasure of installing a Descendant vibrato unit on a really nice Jazzmaster earlier this week. It had the factory Mexico spec Fender vibrato, and Karl opted to give the Descendant upgrade a go. I have covered installation of these on my YouTube channel and main blog before, so I won't show those steps in specific detail again but will chat through a little about the approach. I've gotten pretty used to installing these and can usually eyeball the guitar as is, to see whether it'll be best with 1 or 2 depth shims installed. If the bridge sits pretty high in the thimbles therefore hinting that the neck break angle is fairly steep, then I find you can use two shims. If the neck break angle is shallow meaning the bridge sits pretty low in the body/thimbles, then two shims may be too steep of an angle so only one shim will be best/optimal.
A little TLC for a Miguel Malo Classical
Had a fun day working on a really nice nylon string guitar, courtesy of my Dad! His 20 year old Miguel Malo classical guitar needed a little TLC and refinement after many hours of use. Although in the grand scheme of things, it is in great condition, Dad's pretty meticulous to say the least. But understandably after years of regular use, some things could do with a little care and attention.
Left handed CIJ Fender Stratocaster - Setup and wiring tweak
Roger kindly brought in his CIJ Fender Strat for a bit of TLC. It had suffered a fall, but thankfully only suffered very minor damage as a result. It had fell head on with an edge on the fretboard, and only damage was the edge pressing the strings into the fretwire. It had marked a couple of frets with the strings, but it wasn't deep by any means so nothing a minor fret level, crown and polish wouldn't resolve. As this is part of the setup process here anyway, to get the very best from the setup and guitar's play-ability, this was no trouble at all to resolve. With a few passes with the leveling file and radius block, those dents were a distant memory and I cracked on with the crown, polish then setup work as normal.