Benjamin was invited to sit down with Chris Vincent on his podcast, “Number One Guitar”, to discuss music, fretless bass guitars, and life as a guitar tech. Check it out!
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/podcast-with-benjamin-strange/
Jan 23 2025
Acoustic Guitar Neck Reset
We tend to write blog posts about projects that we find interesting or unique in some way, but that’s not typically how our days go. Most of what we do is routine guitar maintenance. Instruments need to be serviced at regular intervals – much like oil changes, brake pads and tire rotations on your car. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/acoustic-guitar-neck-reset/
Aug 06 2024
Making a bone nut from scratch
We believe that your guitar’s nut is the most important lynch pin of a good setup. If it’s not cut properly, there’s no other adjustment you can make that will improve the feel of your instrument. The nut is also the most crucial aspect of keeping your guitar in tune. We’ve seen so many people …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/making-a-bone-nut-from-scratch/
May 27 2024
Repairing a Broken Gibson Headstock and Adding a Volute
We all love Gibson guitars. Gibson is a seminal contributor to rock and roll history and some of their designs (like our two personal shop favorites, the Explorer and the Firebird) are among the coolest guitars ever made. Period. But it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room: the Gibson headstock design. Repairing …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/repairing-a-broken-gibson-headstock-and-adding-a-volute/
Mar 04 2024
Bar Refret on a Vintage Martin
You don’t see these everyday! A while back our buddy Mark brought us his vintage Martin 0-18K (koa) for a refret, which is usually a very run-of-the-mill job for us here – except for one thing. This instrument comes from a bygone era when C.F. Martin guitars were made using bar frets. Bar frets differ …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/bar-refret-on-a-vintage-martin/
Jan 16 2024
The case against Fender’s Micro-Tilt
Today, I’m going after one of my least favorite features on the world’s most popular guitar: I’m making a case against Fender’s Micro-Tilt. Fender introduced the Micro-Tilt in the early 70’s, and this has been causing problems with their necks for over 50 years. This was designed to angle a bolt-on neck back in the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/the-case-against-fenders-micro-tilt/
Nov 13 2023
Fretting a fretless bass
I’m a fretless guy. My first foray into fretless bass was back in 2001, when I yanked the frets out of the carbon-fiber neck on my Peavey B-Quad4. Over the years I’ve rarely owned a fretted bass, and have gone deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of fretless playing – so much now that …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/fretting-a-fretless-bass/
Oct 03 2023
Repairing a Floyd Rose route
Woodworking can be a tedious process that requires patience, preparation and precision to execute well. Oftentimes we see examples of someone taking a more, uh… expeditious route. Like this guitar: someone attempted to modify this Floyd Rose cavity to fit a different style bridge that it wasn’t designed for, with less than stellar results. Maybe …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/repairing-a-floyd-rose-route/
Sep 18 2023
PLEKing a multiscale guitar
If you had asked us a year ago if a multiscale guitar could be PLEKed, we would have said “Not yet!” The PLEK machine was designed for parallel frets, and for many years doing a PLEK job on a multiscale (or fanned fret) instrument simply wasn’t possible. But the good people at PLEK are always …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/pleking-a-multiscale-guitar/
Jul 24 2023
Gibson frets in the wrong place – FIXED!
“Intonation is a social construct”. I’m not sure if I coined this phrase or inadvertently appropriated it, but I do say it often. All music is out of tune – it’s a mathematical impossibility for any three notes to be perfectly in tune with each other at the same time. That’s just science. We all …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/gibson-frets-in-the-wrong-place-fixed/
