Chubbuck Guitars / Kevin Chubbuck, making & repairing guitars in an old building just north of Boston, Massachusetts.
A Garrison dreadnought cutwaway with a split heel. The neck construction is a 5 piece stacked heel and the heel cap laminate is split through the glue joint. This is a bolt-on where the lower threaded insert in the heel lands dead-center of this glue joint and has separated the two. I worked in some glue and closed the joint with a clamp.
This Warmoth Strat is approximately 30 years old and was tough to play. The player and I found out that the bridge was vintage spaced and pushed the strings far too close to the edge of the fingerboard. The solution was to swap it out for a new Callaham V/N bridge. The "V" stands for vintage mount (6 screws) and the "N" is for narrow spacing. Wow, what a difference in both playability and sustain. (note the outer 2 bridge mounting screws were omitted as there must have been a 2 point bridge at some time with two large post holes in the body - we may opt to plug thesein the future). We also replaced the pots as the old ones were pretty rough. I used an Emerson Custom 500KA pot for the volume and went with Bourns pots for the tones. I initially had Emersons in for the tones too but found the sweep far too subtle for most of the pot's travel for this guitar (around 2-3 they began to roll off rather quickly). The Bill Lawrence bridge pickup's plastic mounting tabs were stripped out so they were plugged and re-tapped.
The pot swap was featured over on the vlog (video below).
This 1960's Aria Barney Kessel is back in for another neck set issue. I re-glued the top to the block a few weeks ago but the plywood neck block decided delaminate through one of the plies. I ended up filling the gap with epoxy in an attempt to stabilize the neck joint (video below). Fingers crossed!
A player's long-loved SG he named "Norah" in for new frets, new bone nut and dressed up with some fingerboard inlay. Originally a dot neck, we decided to go with pearl blocks along with a custom "Norah" script designed by the player's friend, cut by Dave Nichols Custom Pearl Inlay and the easy part, dropped in the board by me (video here).
The guitar is set up for slide, strung with flats and tuned to open E. I highly recommend trying flatwounds if you are into slide. Sounds killer.
Follow up on this project's photos & videos here.
Here's a brazilian rosewood Martin-style dreadnought from another builder that I did the finish and final setup work for. Got to keep my finish chops up in between my own builds when I can. Still trying to get a booth installed in my shops- someday. Just takes time and money.
![New bridge & pots :: Warmoth Strat [8.0 lbs]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53dfcee2e4b0c0da377c65c7/1445978085552-XHOKQHM8XVI4F8Q9QJAR/image-asset.jpeg)
![Custom inlay & new frets :: 1982 Gibson SG R1 [8.0 lbs]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53dfcee2e4b0c0da377c65c7/1445141437980-F8RMO3WPM1ZEJ9W07XM3/image-asset.jpeg)
![Finish work :: Martin-style dreadnought [4.6 lbs]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53dfcee2e4b0c0da377c65c7/1447252490084-5YN3D81826R10NQQEF4B/image-asset.jpeg)