3 String Cigar Box Guitar

This wonderful little cigar box guitar needed a fair bit of work to get it in working order, the owner had requested that he could play it like a guitar and with a slide.

The action started off at about 5mm, I had a look at the saddles and they were pretty much flat to the bridge, the solution? a shim in the neck, as you can see below it's not the ordinary sort of neck. 

The action ended up about 2.5mm, I also leveled out the strings so the owner can use his slide easier,

The saddles, intonated and heights set, the intonation is still a bit out, as you can see the saddles and very much at there limits.

The nut also needed taking down a fair bit, i'm going to finish it off a bit more before I return ti to the owner, there's still a bit more work needed before it's completely finished. 

Some general pictures of the guitar

Ibanez prestige

I had an Ibanez in, customer wanted a low action and a set up, this one didn't need much work other then 1 high fret.

There are some high res photos at the end on the WIP photos

Rickenbacker Bass

Another instrument that needed a set up and look at was this lovely Rickenbacker, the major problem was a loose pickup, the bridge pickup was wobbling about and didn't seem to have any springs.

I took the strings off and unscrewed the pickup cover, and had a look at the back of the pickup.

I could see that the springs that hold the pickup in place had vanished,

I installed 2 pickup springs and strung it up again

2013 Gibson SG

A customer handed me a 2013 SG for a set up as he's switched from 10s to 11s, it was a simple enough job with no hidden surprises.

Taylor 810C nut repair

Over this weekend I worked on this beautiful Taylor 810C, the owner had cut the original nut a bit short so instead of the usual new nut he wanted to keep the original, I filled the nut with bone dust and glued it.

There are some high res photos of the finished guitar at the end

This was the original slot, The slots are cut too deep to give enough clearance for the first fret

I used some bone dust from a nut I had previously cut, if you don't have bone you can use wood or plastic dust. 

Once the slots were packed i dropped one drop of glue into the slots

after 24 hours it was fully cured and I could recut the slots, i also lowered the saddle a fraction so the action could be low like the owner requested.

This si the nut with new strings and all cleaned up

Warmoth Custom Strat

I had the pleasure of working on this lovely Warmoth Custom build,

The customer wanted the lowest action he could get so I few bits and pieces needed doing.

Sorry about the poor quality of the WIP photos, they're pulled from the photos I sent doing the work to the customer, there are some high res photos at the end :D

I started off with getting the neck relief sorted, on this neck it there's a small nut for side adjusting the truss rod

I popped the neck off and had a look at the pocket, it was still having problems with buzzing after a set up so I wondered if it had a shim or something in there, I found a shim at about 1mm, I changed it for a 0.5mm and it sorted out the over all buzz. 

The frets needed some work, not much but there were a couple of high frets

I tried tapping them with a hammer and it helped a bit but they still needed some work

After a bit of leveling they worked out great

Here's o high res photos of the final set up

Vintage telecaster nut installation

Work on a vintage telecaster, it needed a setup and a new nut installed.
The owner had tried to remove the original but damaged the fretboard, I cleaned up the damage and popped on a new bone nut.