Manchester Guitar Tech
Ozzy Lister – guitar and bass repair
I made the Tortoiseshell pickguard for this Fender USA Deluxe Jazz Bass the other day.
For some reason, Fender don’t make this bass with a torty ‘guard but I think that tortoiseshell over 3-tone sunburst is a classic look.
The material is genuine 4-ply cellulose nitrate which smells great when it’s being cut.
Making a pickguard is a time-consuming task. The first step is to make a template from MDF or plywood, sanding accurately to the outline of the pickguard. Once the template is made, the roughed-out blank is attached and trimmed with a router bit, then bevelled as and where necessary.
This 50s archtop acoustic is a Zenith Standard 21 “Bijou”. Zenith guitars were made by Framus in Germany and re-badged Zenith by the importers, who were the major instrument distributors Boosey and Hawkes. This one has Ivor Mairant’s signature in ballpoint pen on the label inside, but I don’t know if it is the signature of the man himself.
This Zenith guitar was brought to me by the owner’s guitar teacher for me to repair a split in the top. For a 50+ year-old guitar it is in amazing condition and looks like it’s spent most of its life in the loft. When I received it however it had old, mismatched strings which looked nearly as old as the guitar and it was rather grubby.
I repaired the split and touched in the lacquer, levelled, dressed and polished the frets, oiled the fretboard, lowered the bridge a touch, lubricated the tuners and gave the whole guitar a good clean before restringing with a long-overdue set of Martin phosphor bronze strings and adjusting the intonation.
The owner will hardly recognise it!
By the way…
Paul McCartney’s first guitar was a Zenith type 17, very much like this.
Last week I refretted this maple board Stratocaster with huge wire – 0.057″ high.
I removed the old frets, left the finish intact and laid the new frets onto the strips bare wood that were exposed.
I used Sintoms fretwire which was an absolute pleasure to work with. It held the slot tightly and the undercut on the body meant that it seated beautifully in the finish-free channel.