Manchester Guitar Tech
This Les Paul Junior has had a hard life. When it came to me for a refinish in nice thin nitrocellulose it was coated with a thick layer of yellow paint which on closer inspection revealed a history that the owner was completely unaware of. It seems that at some point in its life it …
This guitar is a long-term test guitar for a UK magazine. It was dropped on its face, suffering some damage from the plain strings to frets 17 and 18. A couple of higher frets were also lightly marked but this was damage which would dress out easily. As you can see below, the damage wasn’t bad …
For some reason known only to Fender, the US American Standard Stratocasters and Telecasters use a 1/8″ Allen key to adjust the Bi-Flex truss rod. It’s okay if the rod is working well and whoever adjusts it used a tight-fitting key of the correct size, but if not, the nut can quickly be trashed and require replacement. Replacing …
These two Vintage Gibsons came in, each needing a new nut. The mid-1960s SG Special had a nut cut too low meaning that the unfretted strings were buzzing against the first fret. I replaced this with a nut made from bleached bone. I had to use an oversize blank as the person who previously replaced …
NOTE This applies only to the original Schaller bridge and exact copies. I often read that people find it difficult to change the saddles in a Gibson “Nashville” bridge. This bridge was introduced in the mid 70s, replacing the original ABR-1 Tune-o-matic bridge which had been designed at Gibson in the early 1950s by Ted McCarty. …
In the mid-70s, some Gibson semi-acoustics such as the ES-335 and ES-347 were fitted with coil splitting switches, which shorted out one coil of each pickup to provide a single coil sound. I think this was a nod to fashion as thanks to disco and in particular Nile Rogers, the Fender Stratocaster sound was all …
Following on from the “70s Bass Extravaganza” earlier this year I have two early 80s basses in for set up this week. Gibson Grabber Bass The first is a lovely 1982 Gibson Grabber Bass. It was suffering from uneven frets and a rising tongue caused by some unwise heavy shimming of the neck with a …
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, or so they say. The owner of this guitar fitted a Fender LSR roller nut himself and I have to say showed some skill in cutting the wood away. Unfortunately he misunderstood how the nut should be fitted and cut away far too much wood. I tidied the …
Here’s another nasty break, this time a longitudinal split in a Les Paul neck, caused by a fall. All that was required was to glue and clamp both sides before refinishing the back of the neck using my nitrocellulose lacquers.
This Les Paul was only a week old when it suffered this catastrophic break. Unusually, the fall was so severe that it broke the fibre headstock face right across between the E tuners. Although not an easy repair the break had plenty of surface area for glue. The repaired headstock was relacquered and the repair …