The Hub

I was going to buy a pot cleaning cap from StewMac, but never got around to it. Well, today I needed to clean a bunch of scratchy old pots, so I made one from a piece of surgical tubing and a zip tie. I punched a hole with an awl for the straw nozzle, and held the rubber tubing tight to the bottom of the pot shaft. Almost no mess, and the pots aren't scratchy anymore.

Dropped my old crappy digital hygrometer. What are the hive’s recommendations for a trustworthy one? I’m leaning towards an analogue one like the StewMac one but am open to suggestions.

Stew Mac Erlewine Neck Jig for sale, purchased new in May of 2023. Very light use in excellent condition. More photos upon request. Comes with angle vise, shipping based on location. Available for pickup in Fairfield County, CT. $550.00 Erlewine Neck Jig Workstation - StewMac

Hello good people, My shop’s in Quebec City, so I get to repair an ungodly amount of cracks thanks to our brutal winter and customers being largely unaware of the requirements of maintaining proper RH. Now for the first time (call me lucky) I have two very good guitars in the shop whose cracks won't close up after having been rehumidified for a few weeks. I have tried over-humidifying and it does it, but once returned to proper RH (50%)…

A client has asked me to build an acoustic guitar using crelicam ebony for the back and sides that he is getting form Stewmac. I have heard it's challenging to bend, and this will be an OM so the waist is pretty tight. Any thoughts or suggestions for bending these sides? I use a homemade bending machine modelled after LMI's latest design (may they rest in peace) and I have had good success bending rosewood, walnut, mahogany, and pau fer…

I've been slowly chipping away at a rebind on a Gretsch streamliner with full on rotted binding. The repair was started by a luthier in KC that passed away a couple years ago and I inherited the repair after it sat for a few years. I've glued some binding back in place on martins with the Pacer canopy glue, and that has worked out fine in the past. I did a test w/ some new ABS from stewmac that I was going to use for rebinding the gr…

Listening in on the great zoom call today, a question was asked by the Stewmac representative, if the shop in the hot seat was an authorized repair center for any major brands. How many of you shop owners are authorized repair centers for the major brands? Gibson, Fender, Martin, Taylor and so on…. Do you have any wisdom you can share or contacts to get signed up to do work for the major brands? Also do you find doing warranty repairs i…

I'm in the process of setting up a Parker (PDF-80 Maxx Fly Floyd Rose Special; Early-2010s) and one of the Floyd Rose saddles (G string) are stripped. Found exact replacement parts on StewMac and ordered in hopes of just swapping out one of the saddles and not having to replace everything: https://www.stewmac.com/parts-and-hardware/bridges-and-tailpieces/bridges-and-tailpieces-for-electric-guitar/floyd-rose-tremolos/floyd-rose-special-s…

Hi! I just made a headless electric ukulele by misusing Steinberger's headstock tuner drop-in replacement: https://www.instagram.com/p/DD0nVr_NWnV/ It's fun, and I'd like to make more, (maybe even actually sand and apply finish to one!) but it sure would be nice to get the tuners at a wholesale rate if there's a possibility of selling an instrument. I got these at 6/$100 from Stewmac (https://www.stewmac.com/parts-and-hardware/tuning-m…

Hey there folks - putting together a couple of StewMac ukulele kits and my partner asked a great question about whether to apply finish to the inside surfaces like we do the outside. We will be staining and applying wipe on poly for protection. The logic seems reasonable - protect from moisture inside and out. Only concern I could think of was trapping moisture between the layers but that was it. Anybody have experience with applying a…

Posted this to my timeline instead of here.. woops I got to shielding a guitar of mine that has a laser etched piece of plywood for a pickguard (it looks really cool – I didn’t do it/design it, it came that way; pics can be added soon). I did the cavity with shielding tape but alas it did not stick to the plywood. This may have also been because I oiled it with Howard Feed-n-wax but jury is out. So I got StewMac’s conductive paint and…

Stewmac #0882 Set of 6 nut files for medium electric guitar. $65 includes postage in US Fret Guru Dagger 2.0 Crowning file. $35 shipped Stewmac #4490 narrow/medium crowning file. $30 shipped Stewmac Nut files 4541, 4542, 4543. $20 each, shipped They all have lots of life left in 'em!

Hey All I am finishing a ukulele and I am getting all these weird pits. I was able to drop fill a lot of them but most of them do not want to stay filled and it is driving me mad! Anyone have an idea as to what may be causing these little pits? I used StewMac's dry power pore filler and their lacquer. I'm about to strip it and start over because at this point I've been chasing my tail so much I'm going crossed eyed. Thoughts?

I'd like to start a discussion about guitar polishes. We have always been careful to use only non-silicone products on nitro finishes. We previously used Stewmac Preservation polish for years, but they don't offer that product anymore. We recently had maybe what was a bad batch of Stewmac "Clean and Shine" that was softening nitro finishes so we trashed it and haven't purchased anymore. The first bottle we got worked great, but the s…

Hey guys, Sorry, this may be a dumb question. I'm cutting some new frets for this D-28 with a bound fretboard. Does anyone know of a good way to prevent the fret ends from twisting when cutting the tangs? They're stainless steel frets, not sure if that would matter. I'm using a fret tang nipper from StewMac. It seems like no matter how little material I try to bite off at a time, the tang nipper twists the fret, which leads to the ends s…