323 RSW ES359 Custom The Guitar Gibson Gave Up On

[Music] well friends I'm gonna interrupt this video to introduce mr. David Taylor he came all the way from New York there he is he had to duck down to get into the shot there and he brought me a wonderful gift a whole box full of deer antler and I mean a full box it's very heavy and I appreciate that David Thank You Jerry thank you very much from upstate New York David Dunn and his wife is here and it looks like she's got some friends to break them on in camera here she's got some friends on camera too what's your name Suzy so we got David and Suzy and my wife's name is school by the way yeah that happens out here we we have sort of free-range here in this big Valley almost nothing can get out anyway really it takes it takes they got to go quite an effort to get out of business yeah to get out on the highway or anything as you know by driving in here and then you brought me something here to the work on it looks like is that right David yes sir that's uh Gibson that I shot back to Gibson for neck repair and they said they couldn't fix it all I remember this story I remember you tell me about it this is gonna be a fun one folks go ahead and tell them the story well the story is I bought this guitar from a fall in California I had it for about six months and it was in the neck bro for whatever reason so I took it the one for our local guitar repairman and he said he could probably fix it and I called Gibson and Gibson said we can fix it better than new so I returned the guitar to Gibson and they had it for a long or to years and in the meantime they said they couldn't fix it they tried replacing the neck three times and he couldn't get the angles right I ended up buying the guitar from Gibson that factory cost and they sent me this one back and in the meantime I've been watching Jerry's videos and very impressed with his work and we're on our way to Kanab Utah and I got contacted Jerry about dropping it off and see if he would take a look at it and try to tackle this no stunts I haven't a pile of broken wood so well you know at the risk of sounding smug I'm sure I can fix it that I reel that's not the issue it's just this is gonna be worth the cost no it's the only question I have it's worth nothing no okay all right because I don't know you know what it's gonna take until I get into it obviously but you know you know I've said this before on camera and I'm not bragging but there's pretty much anything that walks through the door can be fixed if you want to fix it you know what it doesn't matter of a tank ran over it yeah you know if you really want to fix it you can put it back together if you really want to regulate I paid $2,500 for the instruments and like I said it's worth nothing now you know you can fix it the cost $1,000 I have a thousand dollar instrument okay all right well I'll tell you what we're gonna do we're going to shut the camera off unbox it here and then we'll give you a look at it well we've got a run box tear and David said this was a either a 359 or a 359 we're not really sure and I know there's a lot of Gibson experts out there that will know so you can look at it and figure that out probably as I've mentioned many many times before I don't study the models I get so many instruments in here I'd have to be a computer brain to remember all the different models and different things so I don't even give that a try I don't know that much about electric instruments and be perfectly honest with you so I don't know call the bridges on this thing once you get it on here but what we'll do is we'll just put the bridge on here and get it set just like it should be then we'll figure out what this angle should be I've never taken one of these apart to be perfectly honest with you I 99 percent acoustic instruments so that'll be a new experience but it's all wood so that means it's all good we'll figure it out well David I appreciate you bring it to me this is certainly gonna be a challenge and it'll be a future video it'll be way down the road folks cuz I got a whole bunch of instruments in front of this one unfortunately but so it'll be a while before we get to it but one of these days we'll tackle this monster and put it back into good shape this is a Gibson custom es 359 and there is a certificate here Gibson custom certificate of authenticity there's a serial number here CS zero five zero eight nine one their same serial numbers on the inside by the light he sent this one back to the customer all in pieces here's some of the other parts and pieces in here the electronics and everything are in the box apparently has a new neck on it anyway the bottom line is the customer wants it playable he wants it buffed out you know apparently they've done some sort of sanding on it here to dull the finish I'm not exactly sure why they did that I don't know it's just is what it is as I say it you know it's got a lot of issues it was missing this screw here for the bridge just sit on I made this screw this morning I put the post back in here and I put the thumb wheels on here and I set this on here and when I look down this I gotta tell ya let me put that on the right way when I look down this I don't see a problem I mean you know I could be wrong but when I look down this it's just about exactly the right height now granted this is still a hair high from this but and I've got these adjusters all the way down so you know we may have a little problem there but you know what I'm thinking of doing if the if it's just a slight problem and it may just be a very slight problem but based on what I'm seeing let's just mill these suckers off of here you know I mean it will just mill it a little thinner drop it down just a little bit more if that's what we need to do and we're good to go I mean you know reset in the neck on something like this is not an easy job because this is in there and it's in there to stay as far as I can tell I think I can set it up just like it is I may get fooled Gibson may know something that I don't know about this but you know you and of course let's just back up and give you the caveat I know almost nothing about electric guitars to be perfectly honest with you I'm not gonna try to blow any smoke up anybody's dress here I know nothing about electric guitars now having said that I've had a few electric guitars apart ivory soldered parts I've put parts in and etc and so forth so I mean I'm not without having a little bit of experience with it but almost everybody watching this video probably has more experience with electric guitars than I do so just know that going in you don't have to hate on me because I do the wrong thing with an electric guitar because I don't know any better I'm just gonna do the best I can we're gonna set this thing up and make it real playable and hopefully make it look real good again the customer is decided he doesn't want to finish on the neck so we will leave the neck unfinished we probably will oil it lightly and call it good otherwise we're gonna try to make it look as nice as we can make it look within reason I mean we're not going to I don't think we're going to repaint the whole thing or anything like that but we are gonna try to buff it out and make it look as nice as we can make it look come along for the ride it could be a very bumpy one well the first thing I decided to do is just to see if this finish is gonna buff out and I just took good strength to the buffer I didn't do any sanding or anything and you know while it's not perfect there's still a little bit of swirl sanding marks in here that's not too dadgum bad you know maybe I just spend a little bit of time with a little bit of polishes first or you know like either the flux or the simichrome and we'll just buff it out by hand first and then we'll take it to the buffer and or maybe we won't even need to take it to the buffer so we'll just try that see what that does but this is right off of the buffer I think that looks pretty good it's kind of you know he said he wants it to my typical byline which is you know it looks like a well care for old instrument and he said that's all he's looking for here if we could just make it look you know pretty decent so to me that already looks like that but you know I'm thinking we could do a little bit better so let's just see what happens once again I thought I had the camera on I just took the Flitz metal polish and I did this other side here use the tunnel Bowl grease on it just as a side-by-side comparison to see what the buffer did and what this did there's not a huge difference but the buffer side looks better so I'm just gonna take it to the buffer and work it out real good and we'll see how it turns out I've spent about 3540 minutes or so on the buffing wheel and it's looking pretty darn good there's an area up here where apparently they sanded the neck to the black and they used a fairly rough sandpaper so I'm going I've got some 1200 here and I'm trying to smooth this out I can still see some marks in this right up close to the wood that's the hardest part to get to is right there next to the wood once again I'm using my little holders provided by one of my viewers wonderful I cut this one down for detail work and it works really nice giving into these tight spots like this I can get the sandpaper right up against the wood looks pretty good I can see down deep I can still see a little tiny bit of scratch and maybe just a little bit go over a little bit more won't hurt nothing yeah get back to the buffer now let's see if we can blend it into the rest of it but you can see there we've got kind of an area there but I believe that'll buff now where it wouldn't buff before as I look at this I see some scratching in this area it looks like so I'll just go ahead and get that - while we're here the customer had asked me if I could put this serial number on the back of the peghead on this guitar keep in mind the neck has been replaced I said well I can give it a shot you know I have never done that before I have a number stamp here but these are pretty small I don't know if they're going to be big enough to really work on wood or not they're a 5/32 set so they're a little bigger than 1/8 of an inch but not much I've just got some practice wood here I you know the peghead is mahogany so I have a piece of mahogany laying down there I thought I would try first to just heat it heat this and see what that does about the time when I don't think I can hold it that's about the time I think it look terrible it's just really small I think these numbers are going to just be too small I'll try another letter see here in another spot how should get pretty hot there well it actually made a pretty decent imprint and it didn't really burn it I think I don't know how well you'll be able to see it it'll be upside down to you of course but but right I got a different one here right there there's the letter C there's I did it twice and I'm not impressed I I don't I think they're too small for the what we need to do here I think we need letters that are almost twice this big quarter-inch letters or you know maybe not quite that big but three sixteenths for sure I don't think eighth inch is big enough and these are technically 5/32 as I said but I just don't think they're quite big enough due to all kinds of other issues it's been over a month since I've been able to work on this Gibson I buffed it out real well it looks pretty good I don't really see any point in going much further with the buffing it's not perfect but you know a person could hand rub it for a while and do a little better I suppose I'm not sure how far he really wants to take it I'm turning my ideas here to getting this thing done and getting it out of the out of the way because I've got so many other things to get done so I'm trying to figure out the wiring I noticed this was taped across here there was a piece of scotch tape across here and this little piece was broken off and was just you know taped on there basically I don't think it's important because it doesn't appear that anything was ever soldered to that terminal and it's just the terminal that's broke off you know to be perfectly honest with you I'm not that good on this wiring stuff on these electric guitars I've done it a few times but in those cases I was the one that took it apart I didn't take this one apart it was already apart when it got here so I don't really know exactly how it goes my guess is this unsoldered wire probably goes here so that's what my guess is that this probably goes here and then this was probably soldered back here like this this shielding was probably soldered like this that's probably how that went but that's a guess as far as this broken off piece goes I don't see much point in worrying about it I'm gonna I'll just gonna save it in the box for now I don't know if that's gonna create a problem or not I didn't create the problem I've just inherited it that's all I can tell you there's also a grounding wire and here it looks like which was probably soldered to something and I don't know specifically what it was soldered to other than probably in the same place this was soldered best I can come with up with at the moment that's what it looks like you know trying to figure it all out now I don't know which holes all of these things go in you know and I don't even know what they do for sure I mean like I don't know I'm sure one of them's tone and volume and those kinds of things but without having you know a diagram or anything I'm pretty much just guessing and I'm probably gonna be you know just more or less figuring it out how it fits like I would say this goes right like this because those three things line up and I'm pretty sure the switch goes here this goes out the outside that makes sense so these two obviously would have to go in here and my assumption is they go like that because I don't think they'd fit the other way although they might I don't know and I'm not sure which one of these goes top and bottom but my guess would be kind of like this although maybe not maybe if this one goes here because of this soldering although they're soldering on this one too so I don't know it's a total guess at this point but I think I'm close I'm gonna look it up and see if I can come up with any clues as to you know does it matter which pickup goes where I would imagine it does I know all you people out there that electric guitar experts are cringing right at the moment but you know I've never professed to be an electric guitar expert I don't know much about it I'm pretty good with soldering and working on electrical items done it my whole life just not electric guitars I'm sure we'll figure it out well I'm gonna try folding this stuff down in here it's not gonna be easy [Music] [Music] well I got the jack installed down here without any real issue and now I'm working on installing these pots you know if I had seen how it came out of here but it made a lot easier but I didn't so and I've looked for diagrams online couldn't find anything quickly and I'm just gonna pull a whole mess back out and start again once again I thought I had the camera on and I didn't but I got the jack Ian I got these two lower ones in I got the middle one in here it's really not working too bad I was a little awkward at the beginning but I think I'm getting my stride now and figuring it out how it goes these little deals here are very helpful for holding these ends of these while you're screwing them up putting little nuts on so they don't fall back down through the hole this one here what the switch might be a little bit more of a challenge because it's so darn tall so long I'm sure you could tie strings and things on to them and that's probably the way the professionals that do this all the time do it but I'm not a professional at this as I mentioned but I do think I'm getting it [Music] we're 3/4 of the way there I believe now we've got the grounding to deal with and this front pickup to deal with [Music] well after just doing some logical thinking I think I figured out how these screws go the plastic is taller on the edge on this edge and on this edge over here so those would take the longer screws the shorter screws go in the shorter pieces of plastic is the way I'm interpreting it [Music] I don't know if this wire was just soldered to this because if something was soldered here so I'm assuming it was this soldered here because of this coming up through this hole but I have a feeling this one was soldered down here and I knew that earlier and I forgot I'm hoping it was this pot I think it was but I'm not sure about it and whether I can get it up to a place where I can solder it through the hole I don't know doggone it well I had to take it all back apart because I couldn't remember which pot this needed to be soldered to and I and I probably wouldn't have been able to get it out to where I could solder it anyway so you know it's a learning experience had I taken it apart to begin with had it been more aware of this although I'm kind of a winner of it anyway I should have known better you know hindsight's the old 20/20 gag I've got a little hemostat clamp on here to hold it while I'm soldering this back and it's pretty much soldered already but I'm gonna add a little extra okay that's the ground to the body of the pot where it was that's where it was soldered before I can tell and then we've got to go through the little hole here but the holes full of solder so I'm just gonna open up the hole first [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right well we're living and learning here as I said I'm no expert on this stuff now it's gonna be a bummer getting it all back down in there again and keeping the pot straight and all that I don't think I showed my technique for lining up this jack but it's actually fairly simple and I know a lot of people would put a wire or string or something on it but but this actually works pretty good I've done it a couple of times now I just take this stick and poke it up there pretty close to where the hole is and then I just take the other I had another stick I can't find it and I just go in from this end and just go through the through the jack I just stick that stick through the jack then I just run it up to the hole with this other stick and poke it through the hole it's actually working pretty well like I said any time you do it on camera it's never gonna work as easy as it does when it's off camera okay it's through there now I can just hold it there with this stick and put the washer on first then put the nut on [Music] you beginning to think this is turned around backwards because this one's pointed the other way maybe it goes this way yeah it looks flatter that way it's it's not perfectly flat but it's flatter but I don't know well I got to be honest I don't know I'm gonna look at a diagram or a picture or something I'm sure a million people were out there cringing because I had this one turned around wrong but after turning it around it doesn't look like it fits well this way I mean I look you know online and I saw how the pickups were mounted on most of these guitars and they've got this one turned this way this one turned this way and both of them look backwards to me now and the reason is the thick plastic looks like it should go here to me because now this is slanted down where before when I had it the pickup was mounted pretty level but now it's slanted down quite a bit I don't think that looks right and this one's slanted down quite a bit and it to me it it's making it so high in the back that we're gonna have to raise this bridge up pretty high and I don't think this neck angles gonna handle that Wow it just doesn't look good to me but I don't know if somebody took the plastic off and turned it around in both on both of them or if that's the way they're intended to be the tall plastic is in the back now on both of these and in my opinion the tall plastic should be in the front on both of them just by looking at it I'm just going by looks guys I know nothing about it I'm gonna go ahead and mount it this way because that's the way it came to me and I'm just gonna mount it this way and see what happens but it just don't look right I've been wrong many times in my life so this could be another one well we'll move on to the next step well you can see I've started installing some of the hardware and you know I needed to do that too you know this guitar originally came in because the neck angle was bad well I couldn't tell how bad it was because they didn't have all this on here and it didn't come with this on here so I have to put it back but we're gonna have to string it up at least and see how bad the problem is and try to do some measurements and stuff before I can really diagnose what to do [Music] [Music] obviously I don't need the truss rod cover on here to do this but might as well since we're in this area and get it done get it over with I got the first two strings up on this I was able to lower this pickup down a little bit and it clears there the action here is pretty darn tight really I don't know it doesn't look too terribly bad the only thing I don't like is I've got this up in the air a little bit because of the severe angle of this because this is has to be high I didn't want to have it down real low I mean I'm sure I can lower it a little bit it's not quite touching this but it's about right I mean it's not cool this action is not that bad at all I mean it's definitely lower than I would put it on an acoustic right now the worst thing I see and it's not horrible is the neck is slightly crooked the neck let's see here it's got to be it's got to be leaned in that way a little bit because this side this string is near the edge this string is a little further from the edge so that the neck has crooked a little bit compared to where these you know we're the bridge and saddle are but we can probably adjust the saddle a little bit on this side here and that would straighten it up a lot you know it's not like it has to be perfectly in the center of this little adjuster right here it could be moved over like that wouldn't really hurt anything that's and that makes it look better it's not still not perfect but it makes it look better I think I think it might be playable just the way it is I really don't know for sure I gonna have to do some more I think I'm just gonna go ahead and string the whole thing up and then we'll render a real opinion here in a minute guys I don't know what to tell you on this it seems fine to me I don't know why Gibson gave up on it the action is incredibly low it's about seventy thousand s here on the twelfth fret on the big E and on the little E is cash it's about fifty five thousands I mean that's pretty darn low I wouldn't set an acoustic near that low in fact you could almost double those numbers well certainly add thirty thousands to each number for no no problem there the the biggest problem I see to me is these pickups are angled they're angled I'm exaggerating but they're angled like this down to me this black plastic should be turned around this black plastic should be turned around leave the pickups the way they are but turn the stick around they would fit better in my opinion the only other thing I see wrong is that this is you know a little bit high back here but that's just to keep it from riding on the back of the saddle the these bolts aren't in deep enough but they can go deeper I just didn't put them down there this was just a quick and dirty setup just to see where we're at I tell you for my money I think I'd live with it like it is you know I don't think I tried to do a neck reset in that whole bit because this is a difficult instrument to put a neck Reed a new neck in I don't know to me it's not bad I think I'd live with it just like it is I'm gonna talk to the customer and see what he says send him some pictures and show him what it looks like you know and see you see what he wants to do as luck would have it I'm not getting any sound out of it at all I've got it plugged into the end and it's not making any sound in the amp I've tweaked everything every direction tried all the switch combinations I've just getting absolutely nothing I touch the pickups I don't get anything I'm pretty sure it's wired up right at least as far as I know anything about it I didn't disconnect anything I only connected to wires and one of those was a ground one of them went to the one pot I don't think that would keep it from making any sound I mean it makes no sound at all so I don't know what the problem is well days gone by I took the strings back off of here I'm very satisfied with the setup I mean it's good enough I talked to the customer the customer just said hey look it's just gonna be my practice guitar you know whatever you think is good enough is good enough so in my opinion it was good enough if the action was incredibly low lower than I would set any acoustic instrument by far but as you know the electronics were not working so either I wired something wrong or there's a foul component I sent Randy an email and he sent back a reply with a wiring diagram for this guitar so I'm going to take it disassemble it again compare how its wired to the wiring diagram to make sure it is wired correctly if it's wired correctly randy says the only thing that can be a problem then is the actual pickups so I don't know we'll see I have no idea like I said this is not my expertise I just know how to do almost anything like this if I have the wiring diagram it shouldn't be a problem so here we go I'm going through the diagram and looking at it but then I started noticing problems that I really didn't even need the diagram for now that I look at it closer let me show you what I found the wires on this switch were all cross connected so that was shorting it out I would assume that seemed to be the problem the biggest problem right there is like several of these wires were touching in places they shouldn't be touching there there's a lot of wires stripped off here that probably is too much that shouldn't be stripped off that's probably part of the problem so I think what I'll do is I'll put some you know insulating tape in between all these connections when I put it back in there because when I after I separated that and I hooked the ground back up here to this to here and anyway it's it's all wired up just like I wired it I didn't change any of the wiring at all when I turn the amp on now I do get and the switch seems to be working now both pickups you can hear are hitting hitting and if I turn it to the back then the back pickup works but the top front one doesn't if I turn it to the front then the front pickup ones and the back one doesn't so at least not very much there's a little bit of sound coming through them both but but very little so it does seem to be working correctly now I think it was just simply the wires were shorted out that's why I couldn't get any sound out of it at all so we're going to take a little more care when we put it back in here and make sure these wires stay separated and I think we're good to go I've reassembled the guitar tested the electronics now I've got it plugged in and with the switch in the center location you can see it picks up it picks up both pickups with the switch in the front it only picks up the front it and with the switch in the back it only picks up the back so everything's good I think we're ready to lock this down [Music] ah this board airs on I'm sorry about that but you can see a little fine line across there and almost looks like a crack it's showing up in your video or not but it's right right here I don't think it's an actual crack but it kind of looks like it kind of a line right here too flex it a little bit and see if I can see anything I know I'm flexing as much as I can flex it really and I don't really see anything going on it does kind of look like some kind of a little fine line crack though don't think it's any kind of a issue I'm going to go ahead and oil this with some linseed oil I think I'm gonna cover this top with the varnish that I made the oil varnish [Music] [Music] so I'm gonna say that for the last but I am gonna coat the top of this with the oil varnish just to give it a nice look the rest of this I'm just gonna oil it with linseed oil he said just do what I would do if it were mine and that's what I would do a little linseed oil on the rag gonna wipe it down the way I do the linseed oil thing is basically put it on and take it off or rub it into the grain as much as you possibly can we're not really putting a finish on this that you would call a finish but technically it is a finish and it's it's just soaking into the wood and it's gonna just be rubbed out by hand to the wood level and the neck is very slick to play this way when you do this instead of your hand sticking to a finish your hand is really rubbing on wood for the most part this is really making it look nice much nicer than it looks without the bear you can see there's the bear wood and there's what it looks like with the rub oil that looks so much nicer the other thing that's nice about this is if you get it on the body up here you wipe it right off it's not a problem so I just take a dry rag now and wipe it where it touches the body and it comes right off and it's not a problem at all and then I'll wipe it on I'm wiping it with the dry rag - more or less dry it off everywhere but I haven't got it spread everywhere yet so got a little more spreading to do I don't think you could get it to look too much nicer than that as far as the peghead goes we'll put the oil varnish on there but i'm gonna do that after I finish the fretboard and when we can just hang it up and let it set so let's work on the fretboard now I've already gone over it with this leveling file Whiteley I can tell that from Gibson they had levelled the frets they're very flat through the middle here and then they taper off a little bit on the ends I'm just gonna double check to make sure I don't feel anything grabbing my file it really feels pretty good what I'm gonna do now is just round three crown all the five all the frets because they haven't memory crowned [Music] cuz the breathe guard the place where she's 40 years ago my dad please that looks real nice now of course there's still a little bit on the rough side for most electric guitar players especially but they're not bad but we will clean that up too and I'll show you how I've got some 1200 paper here you notice I've got the post-it notes on both sides of the fret and then I'm ordinarily I would just go this like I do on the acoustics but this fretboard is brand new from Gibson and I don't see any point and having to clean that up I mean it's already perfect so I'm just going to take the 1200 and go over each fret like this takes a little bit longer but on a brand new neck like this this will be a great way to do it really pretty perhaps you can see the difference between the first two frets and the third one there kind of rotate it back and forth maybe you can see the difference they're really slick and then these here haven't been touched yet you can see they're not quite as slick and smooth [Music] that one there had a little bit more marking going on than the others these ones in the middle had been filed an awful lot [Music] [Applause] [Music] we want to we can't stay here cuz things just didn't and I'm rubbing it down with some linseed oil this is the linseed oil that I rubbed the back side of the neck down with it's this rags pretty oily so you don't need a lot on something like this I don't really want to put excess on there so I'm just using this and rubbing it in and you it should cover it just fine so that's what the fretboard looks like up close you can see the frets there they're really nice so now let's just go ahead and boil up the peghead here with the oil varnish well I thought I had the camera on but obviously I didn't I just finished the fretboard it looks super super nice the fretboard with linseed oil and now I've just coated this peghead with the oil varnish that I made and it looks really nice it's gonna be beautiful we're gonna let it hang up and drive for a couple of days the old Gibson's been sitting for three or four days with this oil varnish drying on here maybe even longer than that actually Mabon five days and it feels completely dry to the touch now I did not use any UV on this at all now I do have LED lighting here in the shop and maybe that does it for curing our helps the curing I don't know but it feels completely dry and that's what the oil varnish I made and put on there and you can see it's it's really perfectly white it's it didn't have any yellow tint to it at all which I'm really kind of amazed that to be honest but it really turned out nice now it's you know the first coat and I just put this on raw so the first coats came to sunk in a little bit so this would be my first experience sanding my own varnish here so here we go I've got some 320 wet or dry I'm gonna use it dry at first just to see how it does and you know because I don't know if this finish is gonna sand well or not 320 would be a little rough if this was your final sanding but this is the intermediate sanding and we're gonna put another coat over the top of this so I think 320 is pretty good I just kind of curious to see how bad it builds up on the sandpaper which I can't think it'll build up pretty bad actually so I was reading on a lot of different forums and things and one of the suggestions was that you sand it with use some linseed oil as your lubricant so I might try that but I thought I just tried this dry first just to see what it does it's not doing too bad dry but it is building up on the sandpaper you can see no that's not doing too bad but you know what I'm gonna I am gonna try a little bit of linseed oil and see what that does just to see if it works you know I got my doubts about that but we might as well try it can't really say if it's building up on the sand paper yet or not it does see it still seems like it's still building up on the sand paper so it didn't seem to help that much but it does it did slide real nice and easy just looking at that it looks pretty good thank I'll go down to 400 now and try a little bit of 400 on there I wiped off the oil just to give me a clean start with the 400 here 400 seems to be a little stickier to the surface the 320 glided much easier this is kinda sluggish on the glide a lot of people get on me because I don't use a sanding block that often I feel like I have a great technique with my fingers and I don't honestly feel like I need a sanding block and you know if something's working for you if it ain't broke then don't fix it you know and I don't feel like I have any problems doing this by hand I've done it first 30-some years this way and and I've been very pleased with my results I like the finger control better than the block control I can I can feel I can actually feel the problems with my fingers where I can't feel them with the block well I say that got a lot stickier when maybe it's because it was the second application I don't know but that got a lot stickier was a lot harder to move around but it did move I really think that's good enough to put another coat on there now we'll try another coat of my own harness on there now and see what that looks like then try to put on just as light a coat as I can by using the linseed oil as a lubricant I think that might even help this go on even better although this goes on really easy this I got to tell you I you know it's not just because I made it but I'm telling you this oil varnish flows on the easiest of any oil varnish I've ever used maybe that's because I thinned it a little bit more maybe then I should've even but it just goes on so easy and flows out so nice and easy hopefully you can see that it just goes on it goes on it almost looks like it was sprayed on it so smooth and clear I can see a little bit of streaking down through there but that'll go away and just a minute or so and it's very little very minimal I'm just gonna wipe around here with my hand just to make sure there's nothing coming over the edges I'm pretty good with that so we're just gonna let that set now and see what happens touches mama in the board does the trees guard the place where she's a 40 years ago [Music] [Applause] I've used 320 400 600 1200 now here's 2000 [Music] I think that may be good enough I'm gonna use the semi chrome polish now and some wax [Music] I ended up with a roll of these quilted shop towels these quilted ones I don't like them nearly nearly as well as the smooth ones I'm gonna call that good enough and we're gonna try a little bit of wax and see what that does [Music] well for whatever reason that it's not shining across there as well as I expected so I think I'm just gonna sand it completely back off and start over because it's just not looking the way I wanted it to look sometimes you win sometimes you lose it just I mean it looks ok it just doesn't look that great so I don't know it's aggravating but I don't know what else to do so I'm gonna take that off I have this deal ground flat on the bottom edge that's what I'm gonna use to more or less level this as afraid it was gonna build up really fast and it did with that especially with the wax on there [Music] zoomy eight years of age but his legs just get stronger with a sturdy as in place the yellow rose I don't know it just seemed that the other finish just soaked in in places or something and didn't in other places I'm not sure what the problem is I'll probably have the same problem with the lacquer the lacquer dries fast at least so we can get this thing over with that's the goal Franza finally got this thing up to snuff you can see how pretty the peghead turned out there got the tuning keys on it got it strung up the neck another time I willed the fretboard another time wiped it all dry started setting it up here and it's coming out really nice the action is gonna be very low and I think everything's going to be just fine on it I'm just checking the action right now show you what I'm doing I mentioned this tool in another video and people were so amazed at how expensive this as well yeah and precision tools are expensive if you get into machining you'll understand that very quickly anything that you're using to measure in thousands typically is going to be expensive not necessarily I mean you can buy knockoffs and cheap stuff but the but the good quality tools are expensive just like good quality instruments and right now the actions pretty darn low I'd say it's forty five thousandths so we need to bring this up quite a bit and it's a little hard to get to with the pickup and tail piece there let me take a little bit of tension off the strings to help raise it some that strings are not up to pitch they're just barely tight anyway but we're just gonna raise this up some more now I'll put a little more tension back on it just to be able to measure it a little better and of course it'll change a little bit when you get it up to full tension but not hardly enough to matter on an electric guitar that's still pretty slow it's about 60,000 right there right now that maybe about riot on an electric guitar I'm no expert on electric then I'm gonna raise it a little bit more you can always go down with it pretty easily that's about still about 60 thousandths right about there I'm gonna leave it right there for now we'll see how it plays and let's just check the other side and see where rata it's quite a bit higher I believe well maybe not it's not a lot higher it's about 85 thousands which is probably pretty close to right on the bass string 85 to 60 we'll just go with that for right now just to see how it is and we'll tune it up plug it in and see what we get just doing the little final detailee stuff I noticed this strap button was put on right here they have another one on the end down here of course but for me I mean I'll put it there because that's where it was but I would much rather see that up here it would be a much better way to hang the guitar this is just asking for trouble in my opinion for a lot of reasons but I'm gonna go ahead and put it back here because that's where it was if I were the customer I would consider drilling a hole up here and putting it up there or maybe just inside just on the bottom side of that even like right about here so that the strap comes around hangs or hangs on like this and pulls that would be the way I would prefer to see it done but you know I didn't do it originally so I'm just gonna go ahead and put it back here you don't need to over crank them either just get them snug and now we've got to put the pickguard on and I think we're finished here's a final look at this Gibson Custom 359 and it's up in pretty good shape I'll try to show you a before picture so you can remember what it looked like just really turned out pretty decent but the only negative I can see and maybe the reason Gibson gave up on it I don't know was that the neck is just slightly at an angle there's a little bit more room here than there is here a guy could possibly fix that down here by monkeying with a lot of this stuff but it's not off that much it's only off about a sixteenth of an inch you know and the worst and most people Bend strings going up this way anyway so that just gives you a little bit more bending room man this so I don't think that that's a big deal I really don't I don't think it's gonna change how it plays that much the intonation on it head I had to adjust a little bit but it's up in real good intonation so I don't see any real issues the neck looks really beautiful now that I've oiled it a couple times slick slicker than snot on a doorknob some lip and you know it you know as far as being super glossy a guy could have spent more hours on it you know I spent quite a bit of time buffing it but I mean if you spent more time buffing it it could look even better but you know it looks like a good well cared for instrument now that's what it really looks like doesn't look like you know a brand brand new instrument off the shelf but it doesn't look like it's been abused either so I think the customers going to be very happy with this because he was just wanting a good playable kind of like this would be as a beater second instrument if you will and so because apparently Gibson must have gave him a pretty good deal on a on a upgraded model or something I'm not really sure what he ended up with but this will be a second guitar and at least it's back in service now where it was just sitting in the case for quite a few years apparently of course I've mentioned many times I'm not a guitar player I'm even less of an electric guitar player [Music] I don't I don't have it turned up very loud I've that dials are about four and a half and six and a half on the two volumes and they're the switch works you can that's you know forwards and backwards pickups and stuff the front pickup seems to be a little bit more sensitive picks up a little bit better for some reason so I have it turned down a little bit more than the other one [Music] so let's since I can't really pick it to an honor and I'll just have to sing something here I can't be your fool it's just not right to treat my heart this way I came me [Music] man the fool is what I'd be a man snake I can't crime for you [Music] it's just not right to treat my eyes this way I can't cry for you [Music] it never made a difference anyway I can bear for anymore just not right to treat my heart this way therefore any more garden and the food is what I'd be if I stay yes a fool is what I'd be if I stay [Music] well I hope you've enjoyed a look at this Gibson 359 custom guitar the one that Gibson gave up on thanks for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: Rosa String Works

Views: 248,036

Keywords: Rosa String Works, instrument repair, Jerry Rosa, setup, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, violin, luthier, Martin, Gibson, Taylor, Alvarez, Kay, Bluegrass, music, hand carved, top crack, fret job, fretboard, handmade, ES359, Custom Guitar, Electric Guitar, installing pickups, rewiring electric guitar, buffing guitar, hand polishing, homemade varnish, neck reset, installing new neck

Id: Q5zQi0_lzfU

Length: 61min 24sec (3684 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 16 2019