make a cheap acoustic guitar play like an expensive guitar

[Music] [Applause] [Music] how to make a 40 pound guitar feel and play like a 400 pound guitar during this video I'll be using the Glary GT 501 that I reviewed last week and the reasons I'm using that one is one because it's available to me and two because it's a reasonably good cheap guitar that you could improve with a little bit of effort let's have a look at some of the issues we'll be trying to repair or at least improve firstly there's the finish at the end of the frets each of the frets should be beveled slightly so you don't get any sharp edges which you can catch your fingers on and the glory was quite poor on this the frets needed finishing off better than they were however there may be problems with this because if you look carefully at this neck you'll notice that they're actually out of line some of them are already set back so you can't really angle the frets whereas some of them are sticking out further which is going to make the job a little bit more difficult and it means we won't be able to quite get a perfect finish on another job that will really improve the way the guitar plays is adjusting the action which is the height of the strings and looking at the guitar the action around the top of the neck ie from the twelfth fret above is quite high and could suffer some considerable lowering however near the nut in the 1st 2nd 3rd fret around there the action is pretty much perfect so we don't need to adjust the option at this end thankfully the bridge stands quite proud so there's lots of adjustment we can do there which means this job should be fairly easy as in order to adjust the action I have to take the bridge out and sand it down and lower it at the same time I might as well fit a Paizo pickle because for myself this would make the guitar infinitely more useful so I've a supposedly Fishman preamp and pickup that I can fit at the same time the reason I say supposedly Fishman is because I bought this preamp and pickup off eBay for around ten pounds which is an absolute bargain but it really does look genuine so hopefully it is right let's open the pickup and preamp and take a look at it first [Applause] the Fishman came packaged with an instruction manual a little bag of bits and the actual pickup and preamp itself right let's take a closer look the preamp looks okay it's got lots of features on it which means theoretically you should have a loss of control over the sound the pickup is the new flexible type and the output socket is one that replaces the strap button at the end of the guitar right let's take a look at what you get in the little bag in the back we have a Fishman onboard label we have four mounting screws and a sticky backed cable tidy with a rip tie and two mounting backings so you don't have to screw the preamp straight into the wood and finally we have the instructions which is just the instructions on how to use the preamp once it's fitted it's interesting that there aren't any separate instructions to show you how to fit the preamp which is probably where this video will be useful to people and because of this I'll probably upload a separate video with just the fitting the preamp for people who need that alright let's take a closer look at the preamp itself the preamp itself is just made of plastic but this isn't a problem because it's gonna live inside the guitar and you can see we've got some sort of micro pot or micro variable resistor I don't know what that's about and we've got a microphone actually built into the unit and where the battery goes in the back of the preamp itself there the pickup itself is one of these new flexible types that I don't really like the look off but we'll see how it sounds when it's fitted and how easy it is to fit before I make a final judgment on that the output socket is an end pin type so you remove your end pin and replace it with this which are quite liked and I think that'll look quite neat when it's done before doing anything to the guitar I'm going to test the preamp obviously I don't want to cut the guitar to pieces and find I've got a faulty Graham I need to test it first before I start doing anything to the guitar so I'll put a battery in it and do a few little tests so as a simple test I'll just plug the preamp into my amplifier and then just drop my fingers against the microphone and the pickup and see if it makes any noise that sounds fine but I'll just hire it a bit so you can hear it more clearly well this test confirms it's working okay so I can go ahead with fitting it to the guitar in order to do any of the jobs we need to do to this guitar the first thing we need to do is remove all the strings so I'll go ahead and do that to save moving the cameras back and forward I'll remove all the strings at the machine head end before moving down to the bridge whereas normally I do them one by one if I was intending to keep the strings I'll speed this bit up [Music] right as I've removed all the strings from the machine heads I'll move down to the other end thicket our to the bridge and remove the pegs the pegs can be quite awkward because they can be stiff and difficult to remove I'm using here a tool that comes with the string winder however you can actually get a peg remover otherwise I tend to use wire cutters but you don't put any force on the pegs you have to keep tear open or just use it to grip the end and that works nicely I'm guessing you could also use pliers or anything that will help you get a firm grip on the end of the pegs another trick I've also used in the past I'll show you now is to actually bang the peg from the other side if you stick your hand inside the hole you can feel the backside of the pegs and if you use the edge of something metal like say the edge of these wire cutters or pliers or a very small hammer or something you can actually tap the peg from the underside bringing it out that way this is quite a good way because pulling it from the top you can break them whereas doing it this way they tend not to break once you've removed the strings you can either put the pegs back in the holes so you know where they are or you can remove them completely and put them away somewhere safe in a bag or something I'll put them back in the hole so I know where they are and then we can start the work on the guitar if you saw my review on this guitar you'll remember I pointed out that the finish on the hole was pretty poor and I've just found now putting my hand inside the guitar that it's quite splintery so the first thing I'll do is tidy that up we'll use a very fine sandpaper all wet and dry paper it has to be very fine though whilst you clinic top it's worth noting that if you do open down movements with it being plywood you can cause its delaminate and that will runic itself really so do it side to side and also keep the sandpaper at an angle inside the guitar so that you're rounding off the edge on the inside of the guitar and not on the outside to get off again just so you get a clean finish when you've done right I'm happy with that it's not perfect but it's a lot better than it was now let's take a look at the neck you'll remember at the beginning of this video I mentioned the fact that the edges of the frets weren't finished up very well they're different lengths and they have sharp edges and that they should be angled slightly so what we'll do is we'll do that first using a special tool and this is a fret bevel and it has two diamond files on it one which is at 90 degrees which we don't need for this job and the other one which is about 60 degrees which puts an edge on the frets and angles them so that you don't cut yourself and the guitar feels nice when you're playing it you don't need the special tool to do this you can do it with a file as long as you're careful and obviously you'd have to do it one fret at a time however for the sake of this video and to show how I would normally do it I'll use this tool because it's a lot quicker and more accurate if you try to do it at a reasonable speed you'll notice that as well as filing the frets I'm slightly filing the edge of the fingerboard and this isn't the perfect scenario if you'd fitted the fret yourself you wouldn't allow this to happen however I don't have much choice in this instance so I'll continue with that I'm striking a balance here between catching the edge of the fingerboard and getting the frets as angled and well finished as possible so I'm they're not going to be perfectly finished frets or I'm not gonna ruin the fingerboard either before attempting to use the fret leveler anywhere near the body of the guitar you need to make sure you've got enough clearance from the frets to the body because obviously if you start firing wildly you could end up scratching water quite badly once I feel I've done enough with the phret beveler I'll finish each fret one by one using a fret crowning file and this is a file with a bevel in it so that you couldn't shape the curve on the top of her fret so they're all the same however I'm just using this to take the sharp edges and the harsh edges off the edge of the frets using a crowning file it means I can file quite safely without damaging the fingerboard the trick to doing a really good job of leveling the end of your frets is to inspect a lot and file a little you need to find the jagged edges of the frets and then file a little and re inspect them and repeat this until you've got the frets as smooth as you want them don't go over the top and look for absolute perfection because you'll take too much metal off the frets you want to take the minimum amount of metal off to get a reasonably smooth finish at this point I just want to demonstrate a really useful to however this guitar didn't actually need it which is a real surprise for a guitar at the price that this cost and the two I want to demonstrate is a fret rocker now you use a fret rocker to make sure your frets are perfectly level if you find you've got a burst on one particular fret and one particular fret only then what you'll find is that you've got a fret standing proud and this is what we use a fret rocker for we can find the proud fret and bring it down to the same level as all the other frets and you do this by using it a little like a seesaw the fret rocker has four sides on it each one of a different length and you find the length that will allow you to cover three frets and you place it on the three frets and then try to rock it back and forward if it rocks like a seesaw then you know the fret in the middle is proud and needs to be lowered slightly again though you have to take the absolute minimum off the fret and then retest it over and over again because if you take too much metal off the fret you'll have to either replace that fret or re level all the frets on the guitar and this could take hours so it's a really careful process but the fret rocker shows you where you've got a problem after you've finished working on the frets you want to make sure any debris is removed make sure you get rid of any metal burrs and any metal flakes because you can get nasty metal splinters or if they're dragged across the surface of the guitar they'll leave a scratch at this point I'll also treat the neck with almond oil and this is because I've got the strings off and it's far easier and I'll probably do it again before I put the strings back on again the reason I treat the neck with almond oil is because it seals the wood from any grease and grime that Lendl they're from your fingertips and this was the particular oil that was recommended to me by a really skilled violin maker so I take his advice above everyone else because I know lots of people use lots of different oils to treat their neck but this is one he recommended to me so I stick to that one and you can see by the state of the bottle I've been using this type of oil for years without an issue I also put a little bit of almond oil on the saddle as that wood is also open I'll speed this bit up so it's less boring once the fingerboard and the saddle have been treated they actually look a lot nicer than they did it makes the wood go darker and it brings out the grain the next steps in improving this guitar are to lower the action and fit the pickup and preamplifier the reason I brought these two steps together is when you fit the pickup you have to take two millimeters off the bottom of the bridge however in order to lower the action we also need to take a couple of millimeters off the bottom of the bridge so I'll bring these two things together and I'll take four millimeters off the bottom in the bridge the first thing I need to do then is mark the area of the bridge that we'll be removing and I'll do this with an indelible marker so it doesn't get rubbed off whilst I'm working on it obviously double check and triple check your measurements to make sure you're not taking too much off the bottom of the bridge if you've never done this before it might be worth you getting a spare cause they'll literally only a couple of quid off eBay and it's good to have a spare one lying around before you start just in case you make a real mess of it I'll be using an aluminium block within a brace it takes stuck to it this is because I know it's completely flat now it's really important that the bottom of the bridge is kept as flat as possible so you need to find something that's really flat and put some abrasive paper on top of it and use that to make sure that the bottom of the bridge comes out flat having an uneven bottom to the bridge will affect the sound especially if you're using a PI so pick up where the bottom of the bridge doesn't make proper contact with the PI's of pickup you'll lose the sound being transmitted to it so you could even end up with very quiet strings to get a flat bottom to the bridge hold it this flat as possible whilst you're sanding it and obviously keep checking it so you don't go over the light and you don't take too much off I'll speed this bit up again so it doesn't get too boring and I couldn't get a decent camera and also you can see what I was doing once you send it down the bridge to the correct height put it aside somewhere safe for the time being until we're ready to fit it after we fitted the pickle right let's fit the preamplifier and the first thing we need to do is decide where are we going to fit it and then mask off the entire area with masking tape it doesn't matter if you put too much on because you'll be protecting all of that part of the guitar so it doesn't get scratched whilst you're working on it and whilst it's a good idea to use the masking tape there's protection for your guitar the main reason we're putting it on is so we can mark out where we want to cut before we start once you finish putting the masking tape on and you're happy with it the first thing you need to do is put the center line down the area of the guitar where you're going to put the preamp and this is because quite often the guitars aren't actually of a uniform width so you need to make sure it's following a center line to make an accurate center line you need to measure at various points along the width the guitar and mark off the center points where you're measuring so that you end up with a series of dots and then you need to join the dots together to create the center line how many dots you do isn't that important however it's probably better to do too many rather than too few because then you'll be more likely to catch any mistakes remember the old rule as well measure twice cut once or as I often do measure at least twice if you got a template for your prayer it's very easy now you just line up the center of the template with the line on your guitar and stick it down where you want to put the preamp unfortunately I don't have a template so I'm going to have to work out where I'll be cutting with careful measurements once I've marked up the center line and I'm happy with it I'll use the mounting plate for the preamp in order to decide where I'm going to fit it so I'll slide it along the center line and so I'm happy with how it looks and now roughly Mark one edge then I'll mark it properly using a ruler try to get the final line as close as possible to 90 degrees from the edge of the guitar because we'll be using this line now to find it the other edge of the preamp to mark the long edge of the prayer we go from the center line and this way we can measure from the center line to the edge of the preamp on both sides but also to confirm our measurements right and it is dead center we can measure from the edge of the guitar to that line again and this gives us a double check to make sure we've got it right it's important to remember that the two edges of the preamp frame we measured earlier are the outside edges we now need to measure the width of the frame so we know where the edge of the hole is we need to cut in the guitar as you're marking the edge of the hole it's worthwhile marking the fact that this is the piece of wood you'll be cutting away by doing parallel lines or something similar to make it obvious that's the area you'll be cutting away what you think you've done marking off the area you're going to be cutting away before you do anything take the preamp frame and hold it over the area you want to cut and double and triple-check it's the correct size once you're a hundred percent sure you've got it right now you can start to cook I'm using a rotary tool with the carborundum response to cut the hole in the guitar and you'll notice I had to change it halfway through the job because the thinner ones were breaking so I put some thicker woman and this finish the job off beautifully and I could even use it to some some of the finer work at the end what you use to cut the hole really isn't important as long as you're comfortable with it I know some people use a standard drill under still lots of holes and then you join them together I know other people use a sauce pan some big huge jigsaw and I know one person who uses is felling up and just cuts over the same bit again and again to go through I've used the rotary tools before and I've never had a problem so this is my tool of choice when cutting a hole like this I always do it in three stages firstly I cut a hole out that's just inside the marked area and then foul sundown using the power tool box to the line and then finally I'll start checking with the actual preamp through and sanding down manually so that get all the details and get it to fit perfectly at the end it's well worth doing it manually with a file because then you can get a far more accurate finish and also it'll be cleaner than most dog food [Music] with this particular crown there's a notch at the end which is for the latch to fit into where you open the preamps put a battery in this part would have had to be done by hand anyway and when you do it by hand you get to Farney to finish and it fits in with the frame really nicely once you finish cutting the hole for the preamp place the preamp or the preamp frame into the hole and fit it down as it should be then you can mark off the points where you want to drill the holes for the screws and by doing this way you'll get it bang-on accurate once you happy with the job and you've drilled the holes you can remove the masking tape and start actually fitting the preamp into place you can see here the reason I use masking tape is because it comes off so easily and doesn't leave any residue you can also see here that the final hole for the preamp isn't a uniform rectangle whilst I was finishing it off with the file I've cut a couple of slots for the hinges and a slot for the latch this particular pre-owned has plates that fit on the back of the screws inside the guitar so obviously I can't show you this being done clearly but you have to put your hand inside the guitar and feel for the end of the screws and then make sure these plates screw onto the end of the screw fortunately the way this preamp opens up before replacing the battery you can see a little bit of the backing plate and a little bit of the screws so it does help you to some degree get those into place accurately but these plates are important so even if it's fidgety do the job properly ah you've mounted the preamp in place you can start getting a real sense of satisfaction in your work because it looks really nice and obviously any rough edges of the wood is hidden by the frame of the preamp and it looks very professional unlike a factory job now I'll move on to fitting the output look and to do this firstly I remove the end pin or the strap button from the end of the guitar and I slightly enlarge the hole this doesn't need to be done but I like to do it anyway before I put a drill bit so anywhere near the guitar cause I'm always paranoid about it skipping off across the surface once you're happy you've got somewhere to keep the drill bits into it just drill the hole using the recommended drill bit for the size of jackpot socket of the kitchen unfortunately I can't really show you the fitting off the output socket because it's done from the inside of the guitar but you just take the nuts and bolts off the output socket from the one side then you push it through from the inside which is very fidgety and it can be very awkward and finally just put the nuts back on to the end and tighten it up once you've fitted the preamp and the output socket you need to now move on to the final thing which is the pickup itself before you fit the pickle just check the bottom of the slot where the bridge sits and check the ward at the bottom is as smooth as possible and as flat as possible if there's any lumps or factory debris make sure it's cleaned out first now you drew a small hole at the very end of the bridge slot near where the bottom E string says then push the pickup through from the other side and bring it over so that it sits right to the edge of the bridge slot near where the top E string is so that the whole bottom of the bridge slot is filled with the pickup then if you can place the bridge on top of it however with this type of pickup you tend to find it pushes the bridge back out again so you need to put the strings on to hold it in place she put the strings on the guitar and puts a battery in the preamp you're ready to go and you can see it's made this guitar look very nice and we'll see in a minute just how it sounds but before we do that there was something else I didn't like about this guitar that I'm going to improve to my tastes however this isn't everyone's tastes and that's the back of the neck I find this matte finish is very slow so to give it a shiny finish I'm going to use t coat and you literally just put some tea core on a cloth and rub and rub and then polish it off and repeat this until you happy with just how shiny it is however take a look at the cloth because it actually takes the lacquer off the guitar so you could don't want to overdo this otherwise you might end up down to the wood how I decide we're not polished enough is I polish a little clean it off dry the neck polish again clean it off try the neck and repeat this until I'm happy with the finish I've got and the way it feels once you finished polishing with the teak off you should then finish it off with a bit of wood polish or furniture polish and this will really bring out the shine and help protect the back of the neck so here's a summary of what I've done to this guitar to make it as good as I possibly could get it firstly I've cambered and cleaned off the edge of the frets so the fingerboard feels good under your fingers secondly I've treated the fingerboard thirdly I've lowered the action and installed a preamp and pickup and finally I've polished the back of the neck so it feels faster to play right now I'm going to do some tests and you can hear how it sounds using the Priya I've already tuned a guitar using the new inbuilt tuner which is really handy and it seems to work fine before I do anything else I'll just go through each of the strings one by one with an oscilloscope [Music] whilst this looks very technical it's not really I'm just looking for three things the first thing and the most obvious thing is that the preamp is producing the right amount of power it should produce not too much and not too little the second thing I'm looking for is that it's not clipping the waveform in other words it goes flat on the topic this is happened and this can happen is producing too much power or if the battery's got a fault in it and the third thing I'm looking for is that none of the strings produce a lot more power than the surrounding strings you do get more power anyway from the bottom strings than from the top whilst this isn't an exact science because it's affected by things like how hard you pluck the string it does give you a good idea of any issues with the installation or setup of the prayer and this setup is well within acceptable limits I'll just play a little bit of the troubled heart my sad fantasy just to see what you think of the sound [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I haven't actually finished working on this guitar but this video was getting very long so if you'd like to see more done to this guitar or you'd like to see more videos on how to play the guitar please like and subscribe thank you for watching

Channel: GCH Guitar Academy

Views: 594,110

Rating: 4.8361068 out of 5

Keywords: how to make a cheap guitar play like an expensive one, improve an acoustic guitar, upgrade an acoustic guitar, acoustic guitar upgrades, how to make a cheap guitar, Make a cheap guitar better, how to make a cheap guitar sound good, make a cheap guitar sound great, cheap acoustic guitar, cheap guitar, cheap guitar upgrade, Glarry GT501, Glarry acoustic guitar, Fishman Presys Blend 301, lower acoustic guitar action, lower guitar action, acoustic guitar, how to make a guitar

Id: IMqIjo9gJCA

Length: 37min 36sec (2256 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 19 2019