New Orleans, LA
I am a bassist, guitar tech, and founder of Strange Guitarworks. When not working on guitars, I create experimental music under the moniker of UFO Death Cult, utilizing microtonal instruments of my own design. "Intonation is a social construct."
Apr 17 2014
The Fender Telecaster is just about the simplest electric guitar out there – a plank of wood screwed onto another hunk of wood with a bit of plastic and metal thrown in and viola! A Telecaster! It’s simplicity is what makes it great, but what if you want to mess with the formula a little …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/installing-middle-pickup/
Apr 07 2014
For many years I was strictly a fretless player. I did my first fretless conversion on my second bass about 15 years ago – a composite necked Peavey B-Quad, which was quite the chore for my younger self! Over the years, I’ve defretted several of my basses, including my now main instrument, a 1974 Ovation …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/fretless-conversion/
Mar 31 2014
I think that perhaps guitarists are a bit like lemmings – oftentimes the same kind of guitars and the same kind of work all comes in to the shop in waves. This week has brought in wave upon wave of Bigsby work: I’ve installed two Bigsby trems (one Fender Telecaster, one Gretsch White Penguin), ordered …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/installing-bigsby/
Mar 14 2014
Over the past month I’ve been working on a massive acoustic neck reset project. This one was a real doozy: the top was severely warped, several braces had come loose, the neck was severely underset, the fingerboard was coming loose from the neck… the whole thing was falling apart in my hands. I anticipated that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/acoustic-neck-reset-2/
Feb 12 2014
Every once in a while, instead of being asked to repair something, I get asked to build something. While I really enjoy repairing guitars, I really love building – I can get completely lost in a project, and hours will fly by without me even noticing. Unfortunately, my shop isn’t set up to do complete …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/bass-ramp/
Feb 10 2014
Here’s how to relic a guitar the easy way. Step 1: Buy a guitar. Step 2: Play the hell out of it for 40 years! My friend Tony followed these instructions to the letter. He bought this Les Paul Deluxe back in 1971, after trying every Les Paul in town, and has played it for hours …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/relic-guitar-two-easy-steps/
Feb 03 2014
Hurricane Katrina not only wrecked my beloved city of New Orleans, but it also destroyed countless musical instruments. Somewhat surprisingly, nine years later not only are there whole swaths of houses that are untouched since the storm, and there’s also tons of guitars that haven’t been fixed up yet. Last week I had one such …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/katrina-guitar-rescue/
Jan 15 2014
Sometimes a seemingly simple job becomes wildly complex in an instant. This kind of thing actually happens more often than you’d expect in this line of work – guitars are finicky things, and sometimes minor details conspire to thwart the efforts of the intrepid guitar tech. This week I was presented with a (normally) simple …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/installing-music-man-stingray-pickup/
Jan 08 2014
I’ve never really understood counterfeiters. Building a guitar takes a lot of work, and requires a ton of expensive tools – so if you’re going to build a guitar, why make a copy of somebody else’s work? I guess they think they’re going to fool a lot of people with their fake guitar, but surely …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/spotting-fake-guitar/
Dec 11 2013
The electric guitar is easily the most popular instrument of the last 100 years, and has given birth to new sounds, new forms of music, and introduced to the world the concept of “rock star”. It has also inspired endless navel gazing; an endless hunt for the perfect mousetrap. Due to it’s rather modular design, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/installing-resomax-bridge/
