There’s nothing really wrong with Martin Guitars, but pretty well any guitar can be improved. A simple upgrade for any acoustic is to replace the Nut and Saddle with bone ones. This Guitar seems to have some intonation problems. I’m not sure quite why, the action is a little high, the strings are a little […]
What a fantastic night out, watching The Story of the Guitar Heroes in the New Theatre Royal Lincoln. I’ve been struggling for more years than I care to remember to master the Guitar, I could practice for 25 hours a day for the next 200 years and I’ll still not achieve these levels! The playing […]
Now that the neck is finished its time to re-fix it back on the body. Since I’ve filled in the screw holes in the neck I need to make sure the new ones are in the right place. The neck pocket is also a little tired and therefore a bit of a sloppy fit I used […]
Got all the frets replaced with the ends filed down with a 45 degree bevel. Its impossible of course to fit all the frets absolutely level so a fret-dress is always needed. Just adding the tape to protect the fingerboard. Thinking ahead the neck plate is missing and I’ve not been able to find one that fits the […]
Had a spare afternoon so turned my attention to James’s old Rapier. I’ve got some ideas as to what to do with the body, but more of that later. Since the neck has no truss-rod the options were to either completely remove the fingerboard and install one or, the easier quicker, and from James’s point of view, the […]
All finished…. Now that the frets and fretboard are nicely finished the last thing to do is get the truss-rod tension set. Back on to the jig, this time with strings at normal tension, and adjust the truss-rod so that there’s about .004″-.006″ gap at the 7th fret (half way up the neck). Some people […]
Having got the neck securely levelled I had a good look at the frets. Although not particularly worn they are a little uneven, not unexpected on a guitar like this. Using a Stew’ Mac’ fret rocker I marked up the high spots, just to get an idea of bad things are. For fairly fine jobs I like to […]
A charity donation! The owner has given me this to tidy up and put on sale with the suggestion that any profits go to a service charity. It’s not a fantastic guitar but, since the owner is donating the instrument, then I think it only fair to donate my time to the project. The hardware will […]
Another job done. Looks and sounds great. I’ve included a small electrical mod I cam across recently, a resistor and capacitor in parallel across the live and output of the volume pot. It ensures you retain the quality of tone when the volume is turned down rather than it all go a little dull. Only […]
Well its done. It didn’t come out quite as well as I would have liked. I just couldn’t find the right shade of wood veneer, but its better than the hole it had to start with! Click here to see the start of this project. A comment from the owner: “Thankyou very much George for […]