“Intonation is a social construct.” If you’ve hung around our shop long enough, you’ve probably heard me say this, as it’s one of my favorite aphorisms. What do I mean by this, and what does this have to do with your guitar? Well, your guitar is out of tune. In fact, EVERY fixed pitch instrument …
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Oct 15 2020
Maret Guitars – Reclaimed Wood Custom Guitar
I’ve been intrigued by the sustainability of reclaimed wood as a guitar building material for years, so my interest was piqued when one of our clients, Brian, approached me with an idea regarding some wood that he had come into. He was driving through the French Quarter one day, and as he was passing the …
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Sep 22 2020
Restoring a Vintage Gibson LG-2
We do a lot of vintage acoustic guitar restoration work here at the shop. These guitars fight a ceaseless battle against the ravages of time and the elements, and are essentially in a perpetual state of collapsing in on themselves under their own string tension. New Orleans is particularly rough on guitars due to our …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/restoring-a-vintage-gibson-lg-2/
Aug 18 2020
Making a new bridge for a vintage Martin guitar
A common obstacle for any guitar tech is fixing bad work from a previous repair. Depending on the situation, working around unorthodox or hastily executed repair work can be the biggest challenge of the job – and sometimes that work is impossible to undo. In this article I’m going to explain why I resorted to …
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Jun 29 2020
Relicing a vintage Fender bass neck
Vintage Fender musical instruments are getting more and more valuable, and considerably harder to find, all the time – in part because there’s a “cool factor” in a road-worn and battle-scarred guitar that you simply can’t find in a more recently manufactured counterpart. Modern urethane finishes don’t crack, chip or wear through the way the …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/relicing-a-vintage-fender-bass-neck/
Feb 12 2020
Rebuilding a Shattered Headstock
When this National resonator guitar showed up at our shop the customer initially asked if we could replace the neck because the slotted headstock was destroyed in an accident. It had completely shattered and all of the splintered fragments were in a Ziplock bag ready to be thrown in the trash. We asked if we …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/rebuilding-a-shattered-headstock/
Sep 28 2019
Making a Gretsch pickguard from scratch
The materials used for making binding, tuner buttons, and pickguards on many vintage guitars weren’t the modern plastics that we know so well today – like the polyethylene water bottles and the ubiquitous yellow vinyl rubber ducks that will inhabit the Earth long after we’re gone. One of the common plastics used back then was …
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Aug 31 2019
Acoustic bridge coming off: FIXED!
Acoustic guitars can be designed to sound good, or can be designed to last – it can’t really be both. Most builders try to find a middle ground, and many are very successful at finding a perfect balance. However, guitars are mostly made of wood, and sometimes wood just won’t cooperate. Occasionally we see this …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/acoustic-bridge-coming-off-fixed/
May 16 2019
Installing a Kahler into a PRS
We rarely see Kahler equipped guitars in our shop – I don’t remember seeing any at all in the last seven years. Yet over the last two months we’ve seen at least five (three of which we removed and returned the guitar to stock, like so: http://www.strangeguitarworks.com/filling-a-kahler-route/). A few weeks back our friend Gregg asked …
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Mar 18 2019
Enter the PLEK
The day has finally arrived: we got a Plek machine. As many of you are aware, we always strive for perfection, and invest in tools of the highest quality to ensure that your guitar will be the best it can possibly be. Getting a Plek was the next logical step for us, and let me …
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