Broken headstock & upgrades :: 1992 Gibson Les Paul [7.7 lbs]

Comment

Broken headstock & upgrades :: 1992 Gibson Les Paul [7.7 lbs]

Broken headstock & upgrades :: 1992 Gibson Les Paul [7.7 lbs]

Another Gibson, another broken headstock. The neck break was repaired along with an odd break in the control cavity.  While the guitar was in the shop, the player decided to make a few upgrades, including a Tonepros bridge, amber bell knobs and cream appointments (pickup rings, switch plate, output jack plate - all originally black).  The player will be swapping out the Dimarzio "Mega Drive" (DP107) bridge pickup himself for a classic '57.  In order to cosmetically match the new pickup, the player had me install a gold cover on the neck pickup.

Below is the headstock repair.  We opted for no finish touch ups, so I just wet sanded and buffed the area to improve the feel.

Comment

New frets & bone nut :: 1967 Guild Starfire IV [7.6 lbs]

Comment

New frets & bone nut :: 1967 Guild Starfire IV [7.6 lbs]

New frets & bone nut :: 1967 Guild Starfire IV [7.6 lbs]

Here's an all-mahogany 335-style Hoboken Guild in for new frets and unbleached bone nut.  Photos of the fretwork can be seen here and here.  This is also the guitar that I dumped kitty litter into in an attempt to take the curse off of a moldy smell.

The Melita Syncro-Sonic bridge radius needed to be adjusted to match the fingerboard's radius.  While working on the bridge I found that the foot was double-stick taped to the top.  In order to give more range to the action adjustment (and side-to-side), the tape was removed and the underside of the bridge foot was re-fit to the top in order to lower the overall height.

The exposed patches of mahogany on the body were lightly sealed with shellac and the guitar strung with Thomastik flats.  This is a great sounding guitar.  She will be missed ...

Comment

Bridge from Hell :: 1994 Fender Strat Plus Deluxe [7.8 lbs]

2 Comments

Bridge from Hell :: 1994 Fender Strat Plus Deluxe [7.8 lbs]

Bridge from Hell :: 1994 Fender Strat Plus Deluxe [7.8 lbs]

Here is an interesting Strat that was in last week for a setup.  It has a set of the Lace Sensor blue, silver and red pickups along with a LSR roller nut, locking tuners and Fender's Deluxe Floyd Rose-style locking bridge.  The fret ends on the maple fingeboard needed to be dressed as they were extremely sharp.  I also removed a couple shims from the roller nut to lower the action over the first fret.

Oh boy, the bridge though.  This design is a pain in the ass to set up.  The string ball ends need to be clipped off and then locked into the saddles - no problems there.  But in order to adjust the intonation, you need to make your adjustments through the rear cavity in the back.  There are two adjustments for each saddle, one to lock it down and one to act as a stop for the intonation.  I found that making these adjustments was much easier with the bridge removed from the body, so I would string it up to check the intonation and then have to remove the bridge to make my adjustments.  Then reinstall and string up to check.  Further complicating things were the too-short intonation stop screws on the low E and A.  They were so short that I had to fabricate shims to keep the saddles from creeping forward under string tension.  These shims had to be precisely fitted as they dictate the intonation for those strings.

I've worked on quite a few Strats and Fender threw me an unexpected curve ball on this one.

2 Comments