The Hub

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…

good evening to all. This one showed up on the marketplace. I'm wondering if its too much to chew for me at this time. Is it a very difficult repair? Is it worthwhile pursuing? It's another $25 crash test dummy. Please, don't hold back. I can take it.

Hello! Im working on a repair for a cutsom build for a customer. Its a Dunable Yeti built in 2022. Anyway, all work was going fine till testing the rod... i discovered that the rod is working the opposite of how it should function on any other guitar. CCW is tightening (and no, no a dual action rod) Tightening this rod is adding relief. The guitar already had too much when disengaged. Trying to figure out how to approach this as this is a f…

Good morning everyone, I was taking some measurement on production necks with scarf-joint (13° headstock angle) to add some machining process with the cnc. I so recreated the standard neck blank feature (100mm wide and 20mm thick), then drawed the 13° angle. Everything correspond the to the real piace but two measurement: the startingcut behind the break angle is ''off'' by 20mm +/- as well as the cut on the bottom, still off by 20mm…

Since most of us fix or make guitars, we have probably heard something about the cease and desist letters Fender has sent out concerning the Stratocaster. I thought I would offer some thoughts. As always, caveat emptor. There are three basic ways to protect intellectual property under Federal law. Patent, trademark, and copyright. Each protects different things, and has different underlying legal theories. Lets begin with pate…

Gah! I need help wiring Lollar Monoliths to coil split each pup at their own 2 way mini switch...client brought it in wired to a card ( based on rough drawing ) said he "tested it"....I had to clean up his wiring and soldering some...both pots, 3-way and 2-way switches are functioning but I get a weak signal when plugged in....what am I missing here? I redrew it ( nicer drawing ) with the black hots going to the 3-way ( swapped with gre…

Greetings fellow Looths! I recently received a request from a customer to replicate Kurt Cobains 59 Martin, starting with a Sigma DM3. I have pasted the customers email to me below. While I have been a looth hobbyist for many years, I just recently opened my official business, Finger Lakes Guitar Works, and am just getting off the ground and a good flow of repair work is already coming in. While I feel 100% confident in my abilities to…

Im Testing

Great Tool. Great Benchy. Testing Threads, Sliding Dovetails, Overhangs, and it’s actually useful instead of that boat.. so testing wear resistance too. igus iglidur I151 Thanks for the model @member

Hi guys, here’s something I’ve been working on: a fully automated, programmable pickup winder. The software is still in alpha testing and there’s still a lot to design, but this is what it looks like so far! Images

Hey guys, Up until now I've always tried to blend any repairs into the surrounding area when it comes to finishing and avoid refinishing as much as possible. However, im yet to be fully satisfied with the results or hit the elusive "invisible repair" So my question is, for this headstock fix in the image, would you simplly refinish over the splines or consider refinishing the whole neck to avoid the blending battle? For what its worth, its…

Just wondering, anyone doing Ken Parker finishing on an acoustic with the bridge glued on? I've been using the finish for a while but I'd like to start glueing the bridge on before I finish so I can acoustic test everything in its final state. I can't see a reason why I couldn't wipe the epoxy and oil up into the bridge joint and then remove it by rubbing but I was wondering if anyone has done it already. It would mean finishing the…

In Michael Baskin's on-line video, he uses a frequency test of a guitar in the white to determine whether to thin the lower bout before finishing. The guitar in the video has a bridge attached. I'm wondering if this is the final bridge or something temporary. If the latter, how do the results compare to the final frequency analysis? I've used a bolt-on bridge to do the same, but don't have enough data points to draw a firm conclusion…

For my current mandolin build, I set out to answer 2 questions: 1. Whether to use physical deflection or frequency analysis to measure stiffness, and 2. How well can I measure wood quality in rough sawn form? (T. Gore says it needs to be planed smooth and rectangular for frequency analysis.) I have 4 different topwood species available for my current build: California Sitka, Englemann, Lutz, and Coastal Redwood. The billets range from 37…

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…

I dyed an East Indian Rosewood bridge black to match the Blackwood fretboard before gluing it on*. The bridge is now glued to the top. What are some ways to "fix" that dye into the wood. I'm not crazy about TruOil - up to 40% mystery oil..... *I did a sample on rosewood with 4 different "dyes" and they were all stable, would not rub off with paper towel, naptha or mineral spirt. I went with the TransTInt. I did not however test with…