The Hub

Looking to get a custom fingerboard slotted, radiused and cut for block inlays, preferably in Canada. Any leads much appreciated! 🙏

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

Hello, I hope everyone is having a great 4th of July weekend so far. I was recently asked by a friend to work on a cheap S101 bass someone had given to him. It had no electronics and it was severally back bowed. After finishing up the electronics, I did the set up. He wanted the guitar tuned low, to Drop C. So, I went out and bought some Ernie Ball Power Slinkies 55-110. Once I got to the nut depth check, it was clear there were large, g…

This guitar appears to have been assembled with urea formaldehyde glue, which is insoluble in water and doesn’t melt at any reasonable temperature. It is definitely not hide glue or resorcinol.The neck pocket is not under a fret slot. Luckily, very little glue was used to assemble the neck and it was all on the cheeks of the tenon and the neck came off rather easily using a combination of the StewMac heat rod and foam cutters, with smal…

Let me start with this; I'm trying to find the root cause of difficult fret wire installation of two different SM fret wires. I've spent a lot of time gathering dimensions and experimenting with techniques wich could cause the problem. I enlisted the help of a colleague who arrived at a similar poor performance. His solution was to glue the fret ends/ beat the frets in. My "rather" is to find the root cause so I don't have to go thr…

I am working on a neck reset on a Washburn Parlor - SN 283552. I have read that the 28 in the SN indicates that is was built in 1928, but the owner thinks based on her research that it was built before 1920. I am assuming a dovetail joint and that I can get into the neck joint for steaming by drilling into the 13th fret slot, but if anyone knows differently please let me know. The fingerboard extension has already separated slightly…

Well, I am pulling my hair out here... just did a compression fret job on a 2017 D18 Authentic 1939. Neck had severe excess relief, so I pulled the frets, planed the board flat, and got to work....done this a handfull of times, so I wasnt expecting anything out of the ordinary...... I got a handful of frets in, checked my relief by stringing up the guitar, and decided I need to keep pushing, so I got a full set of frets in and som…

I'm restoring an old parlor guitar. I have just discovered that it plays 20 cents sharp. Thats not in and of itself a mystery, usually. This guitar however has exactly the same distance from the nut to the 12th fret, and from the 12th fret to the "saddle" which is now a small shim under the two E strings both are 12 3/32"...with room in front of the bridge pins to finesse the location of the saddle slot, which I have not routed yet) I s…

Good afternoon all. I have started the process of removing all the binding from the old Country Gentleman and it's going well. I did discover after removing the strings that the neck is pretty loose and moves around quite a bit (no surprises there). I removed the black plug on the back side of the body then removed the large regular (slot) screw that holds the neck in place. I thought the neck would just slide out considering how loose…

Hi there! Working on a Squire Vintage Modified Jag. relevelled and crowned the frets. Lovely job. Set the relief and action to factory spec. So far so good. With a capo on the first fret, I set the string radius at the saddles to 9.5" using an under-string radius gauge, everything lined up nicely... ...but when I measured the action of all the strings along the 14th fret using my digital nut slotting gauge (expecting a unifo…

It would be helpful what this group is doing regarding fret glues, no glue, wicked-in thin CA, slot fill medium CA +/- acceleration, aliphatic? What do folks like/dislike and why? Do you practice differently bound vs unbound? How do you minimize cleanup after thin CA? Does it matter acoustically if the frets are glued? It adds time and the risk of a CA mess to the job … Thanks

Hi all, new to nut slot work world, please can you help me with this mystery? fret levelling, neck relief and string action adjustment all completed to Fender 9.5" radius spec. very happy with that. the next step: 0.011” High E string’s nut slot was a bit low. I used Dave Johnson’s (MI Guitar Craft Academy) “q-tip slot raising method”: the pulled cotton strand, plus extra thin CA glue, to fill the slot, then trim it off once dry,…