Firefly FF338: Unpack to Intonation

so right out of the box this guitar is in tone ated very very well [Music] these double box nuke Firefly alright girls it's red band off warning away from young children do we have an opening here we do okay here it is in living color get over here by the light beautiful I mean wow I didn't expect there to be any grain but there is from this angle you can really see you can really see the scarf joint made in China at least you're honest there we go I see the action here there's a little high for me so the first thing I'll do is I'm gonna take off the truss rod cover and tighten the rod okay I've turned these ten half turns and move the strings off to the side the inner strings and took the truss rod cover off and this is quite quite loose and I'm glad I'm really glad about that okay so I do count these one two three four five six seven eight nine ten and I did that with these as well now why do I do that it's just faster if you remember ten loose ten tight you're gonna get your strings pretty much in the neighborhood now did not put this the truss rod cover back on yet because I want to play it and see how this neck angle feels I move these down five turns now this is already it's far down this is going to go so five this was up a little higher than from the factory that means and that's okay okay by the tournament half and I do you know eight turns quarter turns 3/8 1/2 5/8 recorders diffractions raise up the stopwatch oh I gotta loosen the strings to do that not a lot because I don't want these to fall off just give them some slack you may you may remember this from other videos I've taken a stirrer you can find in most coffee shops I've cut this one so it looks this way usually they're very long and I want to raise this so let me go half a turn one turn half a turn one turn feeling it do have more and do about half more on this one I'm feeling it feeling the depth with my fingertip okay so now you can see there is some clearance here if you're getting buzzes on the second fret here it's you're not getting it let's say elsewhere remember doing this one-handed so no no real buzz there right down here second fret especially there you'll really notice it here in the c-sharp the B string second fret that nine times out of ten is because your truss rod is too far too tight it's too far back yeah I loosen the truss rod about Oh a quarter turn may be very slim all buzz here but not like it was and then adjust this a little bit more now this could also be you know that the frets aren't quite high level so I'm going to level the frets as well take these strings off these are tens on here I prefer nines and I'll set the guitar up with nods I'll intonate it with nines on and I'll adjust the truss rod again with nines on and in between those that string change I'm going to polish and level the frets I'm going to put writ knobs and red pickup rings on here and we'll see how that looks and I'm going to see if I can take this off we'll just try a couple things here today whenever I remove strings off of these style of bridges and stop ours I like to secure them so they don't come off when you loosen the strings next and it's going to be to take these strings off very well strings are loose what I'd like to do is go up here around the twelfth fret with my diagonals next I like to pull all the strings through and keeping them in a bunch and have them in a bunch and then roll them so when complete it will look like this I do that with the the other end also now important keep these strings away from your eyes better yet wear eye protection when you're changing strings while I have the strings off I'm just gonna Snug these up and again key word is snug they're pretty good actually they're pretty good the way they are I'm not tightening these a lot you don't want to over tighten generally you don't want to over tighten things anyway that's certainly not on a guitar sometimes you find some guitars not this one yet at least haven't discovered it yet I mean try that last and last one first sometimes you find guitars that just they just hand tighten these I guess they're gonna rush that day that's not the case here which is very good by the way I want to mention at the hardware on this guitar is metric I know let's get the pickup rings off I genuinely don't like to take them out on the first pass I like to loosen them up almost out maybe cuz I don't want to be why do I do that well because the screws can come out and I don't want to be chasing screws around this saves me time actually doing it this way as you can see screws are all loosened okay remove the screws here from the pickup neck pickup and wires tight don't yank do not yank there we go while I have the pickup ring off just don't wipe off this area around the ring as some of you know this white kind of powdery substance is the polish that's used in a factory I want to do one pickup ring change at a time loosen these remove these actually while the pickup is still in the body I'm doing this because there's Springs under here and I don't want them popping out or flying all over the place they are contained here and here's a better shot see that spring and it fell in so I want to use this I want to use the screw and the spring again here's where the spring fell over and let's look at the other side - what kind of focus here sorry about that there it is alright so if I'm careful with this should be able to just prop this up magnetized screwdriver very helpful now let's get the other one out beautiful put the screw through here and put the spring on underneath sometimes you can put both screws in and have them it's rare though have them catch the hole for the screw very rare and that may take you a couple of passes because the pickup will have a tendency to just drop down out of reach so what I'm gonna do here is do one side at a time and I want to put a rag down right here so I don't scratch the guitar no I put this this one's down now when you find the hole for the screw just put just do a couple of turns just maybe two threads cuz you'll need some slack room to get over here I'll put this screw in here and let's put the spring on now you'll have to hold the screw and the spring at the same time and I'm going to fasten this down here here we go we've got some success here now as I go clockwise the pickup I relative to the ring will raise and it has when putting most screws in guitar or otherwise go in reverse and oftentimes you'll there you go you probably saw that but oftentimes you'll feel see maybe even hear the thread kind of click and that's when you know it's lined up and don't tighten these down just leave them loose if you find the screws are a little tight going in you could just put a little beeswax on the screw don't use oil beeswax is the best so I don't want to go through a whole list of products not to use all right the screws have been removed from the rear pick up the ring and let's again do not yank it's a little tight and that's just the way to do it just like that I did not pull this wire and you don't want to pull it either I'm gonna take a moment here to let you know that these pick up rings are curved upward so this one is on correctly this one is not this one is pointing down right so I have to take this apart turn the pickup ring around just a note if you do this job yourself just be mindful of which way the pickup rings are going to go a little thing that is helpful I have this block of wood by the way to polish the frets but it's also useful for this okay here they are finished the angle correct pickup height needs to be adjusted after the strings get on one thing I did notice and you may notice on some of your guitars - I did take the pickguard off this guitar there's the screw hole and there's another one on this side is this little indentation right here that that is from the screw in the pickguard so your guitars may have something like that - that did not come from there the finishing work on this guitar so that means if I ever put the pickguard back on I'm going to put maybe a piece of tape or something over that the end of the the screw that's in the pickguard all right so to prepare the fretboard for polishing the frets I have laid out about I don't know 20 or so pieces of about 4 inches of tape makes the job a little bit easier I don't have to be yanking the tape off the Roll in the middle of doing stuff just grab one of them I also made this template out of a piece of cardboard I'm going to keep this for future jobs and that'll help protect the surface with the guitar as I'm rubbing back and forth now each space in between the frets gets two pieces of tape I've started with this once I can secure the cardboard at the same time as putting down two pieces of tape now I'll do the rest of them now when you get up to about the fourth fret on cue 3/4 not the fifth fret space right here it's one tape width then they start to get a little bit smaller so you have to trim them off taping is complete as you may have seen on some of my other videos I have a block with a groove in it I made that groove by pressing this down on top of her fret that had a piece of sandpaper fat-face up so that way I know that the depth of the groove is the same as the fret of course I did tape off the fingerboard which I always do before I put anything on there so now this is 320 grit paper I'm gonna cut a piece out and tape it over here and here's what it looks like I folded it over on each side and taped it down I didn't have to use too much as a matter of fact I'd prefer to keep some of the the sides not covered with the sandpaper and this is pretty simple see seat the block of wood in the groove back and forth now rather than believe with the point because you probably have seen this on my other videos or video eventually the tape is going to start to wear a little bit here that's when you stop this tape that's when you know that you've you've hit you know the maximum you want to go and then you move on to the next one just continue the process all the way down the fretboard and check your check your sandpaper periodically it does have a tendency to wear out I check out about every five frets you might even want to change it about every five frets it's up to you but the point is you want to do what you can on your end to keep these two more assure that these frets are going to be at the same height alright just want to show you the speed that I'm doing this at I'm light to moderate pressure and I usually hold the guitar down because it's shaking right now but one-handed with the camera I'm gonna do so much and this is why I have the cardboard down here worry free rubbing you could see what would happen if I slipped with sandpaper and it hit the finish with the guitar I did slip here's a close-up of the lighter marks these are scrape marks from the sandpaper and that's how I know that it's hot enough now I do tend to count how many rubs I do and this particular time was about twenty rubs just to finish it off I'm taking a piece of 2,000 grit sandpaper on a sponge very very very lightly like I don't want to wind up flattening the tops of these brats before moving on I just want to wipe off the excess nickel we get some some of this dark metallic gray dark gray matter that's the nickel at the fret and some guitar players when you change strings or you use a nickel string that's been not played for a while your fingertips can and likely will turn black that will go away you're just wearing off the some of the nickel in the oxidation and it's going on to your fingers that's it now to do the nut slots it's a quick and easy way to do the height of your or the depth of your slots I have 14 layers of tape here because I've counted them and I'm not saying yours will be 14 because it's gonna be different I use the height of the first fret as a guide as soon as I feel that paper rise above not even with but above the height of that first fret then I'm unfinished finished with the layers in this case it was 14 I take this off and I move the entire hunk of tape up here against the nut this is going to determine my slot that's now what you want to do is protect your headstock I use a piece of cardboard now again using 320 grit paper I have crease this pretty pretty hard very hard crease and now I don't have far to go you see how this paper is see the sand paper is cut almost almost laying on top of the blue tape painters tape this is a very very deep crease as I just mentioned and I want to go back and forth and kind of a angle like this and when the paper gets kind of worn on that edge just fold it over in another spot and continue and do this for each of the slots okay my paper was kind of long so I ripped it in half here so it's a little bit more manageable you want to tape up this too I'm gonna do that just a moment I don't want to keep I don't want to take a chance I'm gonna come back and hit the fretboard anyway this this I'm gonna stop here I only took I don't know maybe 10 or 15 slides with this not not many and I just wanted to show you this is what it looks like when it starts to hit the tape so this this height is okay very well the a-string is complete this depth or height however you want to say it looks good now there's the D string and the D string had a lot more to do we move you can see the the large white area was from the d-string now I move on of course you can see how increasing the paper increasing the paper along the way just so I get fresh sandpaper per slot here's what it looks like before I wipe off the excess for all the strings so you can see you just do it where it just where the sandpaper just touches the tape and if you want to double-check them just put your tape down and is it level with you just put your sandpaper down and is it level with the tape and the answer is I've already checked these the answer is yes it is this is how I've checked it not even any pressure just this is just to check it let's wipe this off all right let's remove the tape and I need two hands for this because some of these are pretty attached to the back of the neck all the tape removed and for those of you who have used painters tapes tape before you'll know it leaves a bit of a residue I think most tapes do and I'm going to take that off with some polish in a moment but first in anticipation of wanting access to the truss rod while everything is off I'm gonna remove the cover and because I have all this cleared up I'm gonna add a little polish here take a look here I'm gonna add some lemon oil here to the fretboard so this is the before picture and here's the after picture now I will share this with you there is so little on here it's I mean it's probably half a drop on a cloth and just spread it around it looks like a lot it is not what will happen is this shine will fade and likely because the oil gets absorbed into the wood for one of the final steps almost final I'm going to put on new strings I'm also gonna change out these knobs here too now what I like to do he's lying the holes up before I get started line up these peg holes the right to in here gonna be better all right so we put these at a slight angle like this not not like this like this so I can get the string in there pretty easy it just goes faster okay here's what they look like you're in the hole here and of course on the other side as well often times what I'll do is I'll pull off down here so that this boland is bowing to the string or the end of the strength of that where it's not bouncing a little to finish at the guitar and let's see how you beat this through here did that hole lined up like that just makes it so much easier once the string is fed through here what I like to do is just pull the string back to about just at the top of the first fret or so that gives me enough string here to wrap around the post without overdoing it or under doing it you know this is your basic way of wrapping a string around a post I just stuck it through the hole and turn the key and doing it where you pull the string down here could have pulled it down a little bit more but to about here gives you about one-and-a-half wraps maybe he might give you two into the a string now because the strings get progressively more thin you can pull it down a a little more each time so this time I'm pulling it down to here no once it gets it fed through I'm just prior to clipping this piece off I like to yank on this a bit or polygyny to take up any slack in here so there you go it's about two wraps there okay for the D string and I'm pulling it down to about the middle of the second fret area and here's your finished result now I like to put more wraps on the thinner strings because they take more of a beating in bending especially the g-string wellhow because the strings tension is holding these down I can go ahead and remove this tape now in the time it took me to put the strings on you can see that the lemon oil is disappearing or being absorbed or drying I think it's being absorbed into the fretboard wood and pretty soon it'll look like that now what I want to do is tune the guitar to pitch and check on this action okay and checking this out I'm getting a buzz right in here truss rod is too far back we're gonna loosen it very well the buzz is now gone it was particularly bad happened to be on the second fret of the d-string as I may have mentioned oftentimes it's the C sharp on the B string but well every guitar is different okay now the action feels very good to me last thing I'm going to do is check the height here and what I'm gonna do is bring the height down until the strings are buzzing and then bring it up just a little bit okay I wish I could share with you how much fun and easy this guitar is to play it seems every time I I don't know what do you want to call a Polish two frets file the frets down level them off whatever you say because sometimes you know frankly they may be level but me just doing the block with the sandpaper just takes the edge off and it just feels like there's no frets on this guitar which I love I think it takes a little bit of a edge off the sides of the frets but anyway guitar plays beautifully I like to have my action this is a fender extra heavy pick extra heavy not heavy kind of fine you gotta look around for those and I'd like to have my pick just right there that's light it just buzzes on top of that pick and that's the height I typically will go for but the neck feels good no buzzes the the height of the bridge I just did and what I may have mentioned elsewhere as well is the slightest movement of these in this particular case these are screws here they're not thumb wheels on this particular bridge the slightest movement will make a big difference in the action on the guitar as well the nuts lot depth will make a difference to I have some very high-end guitars and that nut slots are not cut properly and thinking erroneously that the people that the factory you know and they its factory specs you know right you know big phrase doesn't mean it's made for you I don't want to say it's incorrect because some people might might like it that way but I find that the the water can I say better that this is adjusted the slot depths the certainly the better in tune the guitar is especially in this first position here because the higher these strings are off the fretboard the sharper the pitch will be when you press down on the string to Fred it so that's not an issue for my guitars once I get that not taken care of and I and I address these frets but I try to do this in a manner on these videos so you know you could consider doing this yourself just be have patience work slowly take your time if you get tired stop walk away come back to it a couple of days later even if you want but when you're in the mood do it don't do it when you're trying to rush that's almost like the worst thing you can do so right now I'll just finish this up and change these knobs well I realized I have a few things to do before wrapping this up certainly polishing is the last step and I will be doing that I want to get this truss rod cover back on and what I'll do is I'll need to because of the way these screws are positioned here it's right behind the strings so I'm going to need two hands it would be more convenient for me to use two two hands loosen the strings separate and put the truss rod cover back on okay when you're putting your trust ride cover on do not tighten these really tight do not these will actually be good you had some some screws are a little more difficult to get in then other ones are just move these screws so they just touch just touch the top of the truss rod cover at the bottom of the screws touched at the top you don't want to screw these down tight this cover happens to be on the thick side some of them many of them if not most of them are thin and when you tighten these they will split so just enough to hold it that's it alright now let's get these knobs off sometimes these come off I thought these sometimes they come off pretty easy not these so what i'm gonna do is i'm taking my extra heavy pick and i'm gonna use it as a pry and i'm going to turn this as a exerting upward pressure on the pick and they should pop out i bought this guitar to kind of experiment with it so the first thing i'm experimenting with is some cosmetic things but I plan on swapping out some of the electronics here anyway so I will get to that eventually all right I want to see if I can get this so-called poker chip off this is pretty tight on here I can't do it by hand get it by hand and with a cloth it didn't work so now I go to this this is not the optimal tool to use I'm trying to get the ring in the center here and I have it on the wide setting okay double Loeb with a rag and watch your tool here it's got two sides but the smooth side down here by the guitar again double this over don't really press down into the guitar you don't want to indent it I've done that and there we go dang without going any further because this is all done already you see the ring is off switches loose the ring is off this is not turning this is glued apparently it's glued down to the body so there's no removing this today or maybe ever and here is it the guitar with the red knob is put on let's check the intonation first can I handle on what does that mean intonation is basically is it in tune is it in tune with itself that sounds like an odd thing but let's just stick with a guitar of course it has six strings each string has a halfway point between the nut and the saddle on the bridge where the string is resting now the halfway point on guitars is the twelfth fret so what we want to do is play the twelfth fret now I fretted that by tapping on it let's hear the open string that's pretty good that's an octave but you can also do it by putting a finger on the edge or just tap or just putting a finger across the top of the string and stroke the string and you'll get something called a harmonic and that needs to match the respective twelfth fret and if that pitch matches as they do on this guitar right out of the box by the way they did a good job you don't have to adjust anything here with the bridge but let's say that let's say that this is flat so this is in pitch and this is flat which this is it but let's just pretend it's flat that means that the string is too long so what we have to do well we have to shorten the string and that's why these saddles on this particular type of bridge is adjustable and you would move this saddle right here this way when you turn this screw clockwise the opposite is true too if the string is sharp the string is too short you need to lengthen it so you will go counterclockwise and you'll see this saddle move backward and you keep checking trial and error against the harmonic pitch and make sure that they match and make sure that you tune your guitar after you move the saddle because the string may and likely will be out of tune so you want to again hit the string hit the harmonic hit the frat make the adjustment and then tune the string back up to pitch and you do that for each of the string as you check the pitch at the 12th fret compare it now this is right out of the box this guitar so perfect very good so right out of the box this guitar is in turn ated very very well so again although I didn't show you the exact I didn't make an adjustment here today because I don't have to I've explained it to you so you can do this on your own last step is polishing that guitar getting the gunk off the back of the neck and I'm gonna call that a day hope you enjoyed this video and I hope this helps you out [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Guitar How To's

Views: 30,238

Keywords: GUITAR, REPAIR, FIREFLY FF338, SET UP, NUT SLOT, STRING CHANGE, PICK UP RING, KNOB, FRET DRESS, LOW QUICK FAST ACTION, INTONATION, BRIDGE HEIGHT, TRUSS ROD, TUNERS, STOP BAR, DIY

Id: EThQlDq4ROc

Length: 40min 54sec (2454 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 19 2019