Sep 18 2023
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
“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/
Jun 13 2023
Recently, our pal Mike Keller came into the shop with an interesting object accompanied by an interesting request. The object in question was a solid rectangular slab of blue molded epoxy with a fragment of wood suspended within, like an ancient mosquito in amber. He told us the wood was a Native American artifact – …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/bo-diddley-inspired-custom-guitar/
Mar 21 2023
If you’ve ever owned hollow-body jazz guitar with a floating bridge, you know the perils of changing the strings without accidentally moving the bridge placement. Even scarier, the bridge is also able to slide around the top of the guitar under full string tension if bumped, potentially throwing off your string alignment and intonation, causing …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/pinning-a-floating-bridge/
Jan 13 2023
Ten years ago I was fired for the first time in my life. I was blindsided, in complete and utter shock, and I suddenly found myself unemployed and quickly going broke in San Francisco. I had been becoming increasingly disillusioned with San Francisco, and had been yearning to move back to the city that most …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/ten-years/
Nov 07 2022
When you play a Gibson Thunderbird on stage the way it’s supposed to be played, you’re probably going to break it at some point – and that’s okay! That means you’re doing it right and rocking out. This particular bass had the instrument cable stepped on during a gig (always loop your cable around your …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/output-jack-repair-on-a-gibson-thunderbird/
Jun 07 2022
I honestly don’t know how many broken headstocks I’ve repaired over the years. But I can tell you that when I first started doing this 20 some-odd years ago I wasn’t fixing broken headstocks with splines and a backstrap overlay – it was more like a single C-clamp and some wood glue. Boom. Done! Maybe …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/fixing-a-broken-headstock-with-splines-and-a-backstrap-overlay/
Mar 21 2022
Inside nearly every modern guitar and bass neck is a truss rod: a long, adjustable steel rod designed to counteract string tension on the neck. Without it your guitar strings will eventually bend your instrument’s neck into an unplayable banana-shaped object. They are usually pretty sturdy, but if they are abused they can sometimes break. …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/removing-and-replacing-a-broken-truss-rod/
Jan 28 2022
When I was 17 years old, I had already become bored of the same-old, same-old approach to guitar design. My jaded teenage eyes were already sick of seeing Strats and Teles over and over and over again. I thought these were grandpa guitars, and I yearned for something new. Then I discovered the Parker Fly, …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/replacing-the-output-jack-on-a-parker-fly/
Dec 20 2021
Back in the 1980s, guitarists were cutting holes into their instruments for double-locking bridge systems like their Aqua Net was cutting holes into the Ozone layer. A popular choice among them was the Kahler Vibrato System: a stationary-mounted bridge with a cam-operated vibrato arm that allows for all the squeals and dive bombs a Spandex …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/filling-a-kahler-route-on-a-vintage-gibson-flying-v/
