Manchester Guitar Tech
Ozzy Lister – guitar and bass repair
I finally finished this build today – a Tele style guitar which uses a Warmoth vintage style body and an AllParts fat neck.
The ash body was stained and sprayed with a few coats of clear satin nitrocellulose lacquer for a natural look.
The pickups are Bill Lawrence and also fitted is a Bill Lawrence Q-Filter which is a subtle device.
This guitar was built for a customer in the USA who as you’ll see below, had a very strong view regarding what he wanted.
Warmoth body and neck
The body and neck were made by Warmoth, the body being chambered and exceptionally light. My customer wanted a tightly coupled neck join so opted for my neck fitting kit. Because the body had a contoured heel, I used the version with shortened screws.
Trem-King Tremolo
A Trem-king vibrato was also specified which required some complex routing in order to fit it. It’s always a bit stressful cutting holes in someones brand new guitar but of course and thanks partly to the supplied templates, everything went well.
Here’s a top view of the fitted Trem-king.
Tor-tis pickguard
Another specification was that all the plastics, that is pickguard, control and tremolo cavities should be made from Tor-tis. This is a fantastic material which was a lot of fun to work with. I rounded and polished all the edges to give a very organic feel.
The shape of the pickguard was designed by the customer who supplied a cardboard approximation of its shape.
Completed guitar
The finished guitar certainly has a certain style about it – all screws were brass slot head, provided by the customer. I’m just not sure about his choice of white knobs!
Here’s another Gibson Les Paul headstock repair, the second within the space of two days!
The owner of this guitar had left it in his rehearsal room and come back to find it broken. It was pretty clear from the break and other damage on the body that someone had taken the guitar out of its case and dropped it on its back.
Still, it’s as good as new now and I even managed to preserve the “Gibson Custom” transfer on the rear of the headstock despite it being very close to the break. Because the finish is opaque, there is no sign that the break ever occurred.
I did of course use my own black and clear gloss nitrocellulose lacquer aerosols which incidentally I have supplied to Gibson’s own repair shop for the same purpose!