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I was approached by a local music venue about finishing over the signatures on this Dean guitar. I have finished over signatures before, but never an entire guitar. The main challenges, as I see it, with this endeavor is prepping the existing finish. Cleaning the existing finish without disturbing the signatures will be time consuming enough, but abraiding/sanding the finish will be cost prohibitive. I have already experimented on a test…

Hello, I just received an unfinished, slotted but not fretted maple neck from Warmoth. I believe standard practice is to fret then finish but I’m curious if it might be better finish before fretting? I understand one would want to prevent finish from entering the slots. I’m and going to use tru oil and do a light finish, maybe three or four light coats. Thoughts for this beginner? Dave

I've built a number of classical guitars with an adjustable neck and they seem to gather quite a bit of interest, so i'm currently in the process of looking to refine the design and build. It's quite a simple construction where the neck is held together by string tension and hangs on a pivot. I developed a 3d printed "socket" which acts as the interface between the body and the guitar and allows for some fine tuning of the alignment of t…

Hi friends, I just stumbled upon a 1966 P-Bass, nearly completely original. The owner bought it in 1971 and it had already been stripped of its original finish. That was a thing back then. You can guess that 55 years of gigging had the wood absorb much of the owner’s DNA and sweat. Maybe a few beers as well. Surface was quite tacky as you can expect. I cleaned it with naphta and StewMac’c brand-new cleaner (quite a great product I'd say…

Here You'll seehere pin tip sized bubbles. Nitro finish. It got hot in a case. They'll need a light amagolmater mixture applied to melt'm back into the surface. Im looking for advice on the recipe for said amagolmater....Straight retarder? Im not sure if Id need lacquer in the mix that I apply....Thank you! Colin O'Brien LittleCreek Instrument Repair, Nashville. Images

Hi, thanks for this great resource. This is my first post here. I work on my own instruments and have little experience with advanced repairs. Recently I acquired a ca. 78 Sigma DR28H. I bought it because it sounded great and came with a pickup installed. I wanted something for open mics and gigging. With light strumming it sounded fine but I found some buzzing when I took it to a jam. I made a nut and saddle , adjusted the truss…

Hi all. I'm in the process of working with a landlord to customize a space for my growing repair and building business. The space is approximately 800 square feet and broken into a major space (around 400 square feet), and 2nd large space (around 300 square feet) that I'm thinking of as a machine/sawdust room, and 2 smaller areas that I'm considering as a spray booth and a wood/guitar storage closet. I'd love to hear about lessons learn…

Hello estimable friends, A very long-term friend of mine left us on Christmas Eve after a long illness. His sister tasked me with evaluating, restoring, and selling his stuff. Today I'm preparing to restore a 2008 Longhorn GOM to its original EMGs. Pulling out the humbuckers I see a Pearly Gates and… what looks like an original short-magnet PAF. Correct shape brass screws for the bobbins, UV light confirms sticker and tape, tooling mark…

Does anyone have experience and advice for touching up the color of a Les Paul Goldtop? It looks to be a light sparkle. Not looking to finish the entire top. Thanks!

Hi everyone - I recently ran into trouble making new nut for one of my necks that needed to be trued and re-fretted. I roughed in the nut as usual and then, with the bass guitar fully assembled and strung up, I started cutting the slots to depth. I use the StewMac digital nut slot depth gauge and have had good results in the past. I marked the nut's lowest points (radiused) using the guitar nut scribe tool (first time using this!) and c…

Hello All! My first post and I'm very happy to be here and share the highs and lows of this pony ride. After years of bending sides on a hot pipe or bending machines belonging to 'other people', I finally built myself a bending machine. Functionally it is great, but the result on some test material was far from great. See pictures attached. What you see here is a doug fir 'test side' that certainly came out guitar shaped, but oh my, what…

Hi, I'm wondering how to achieve this color on a guitar. It's Sparkle Burgundy. I suspect the clear varnish has yellowed with age, which is why it has a coppery effect depending on the light. Can you recommend a varnish to achieve this effect? ​​Should I use a UV lamp after varnishing to age the varnish? Thanks in advance for your help.