Pro Guitar Tech's Most LOVED Things (and how to use them)

okay so I'm back down here at Big House guitars in Atlanta Georgia with my friend Ben Calhoun and we're doing a follow-up to the most recent video we did down here which was things a pro guitar tech hates so today I thought I would show you some things that Pro guitar tech been loves these are tools techniques ideas things you should have around to work on and maintain and keep your guitars in great shape we've done things that you hate as a pro guitar tech what are some things you actually like I've got some favorites for sure something that everybody should probably have and probably already does have is just a capo but I use it all the time and this is a great example of a guitar that I would use it on I don't think it's a 52 Custom Shop the truss rod adjustment is right there which everybody loves so to get to it you got to take the neck off because I usually just Capo up right there so I just loosen these guys up and I'm pulling on them as I loosen it down here these are vintage stealth inner keys so those strings want to pop out now strings are loose I can pull on them and now I can take that neck off without having to mess with the strings so it seems crazy but just a simple Capo is going to save the day on this one and make this a lot quicker and why isn't that coming off this one well on a old school Fender and some other guitars the truss rod adjustment is actually right there at the butt of the neck at the heel of the neck so in order to access that taking the neck off is really necessary instead of having these strings all come out and me not being able to get them back in because I might have to make multiple adjustments this allows me to keep the strings attached to the guitar while I take this neck off so I can access that screw right there and you would do that just by taking the bolts off our techs don't use power tools on guitars really except for me so neck is off now and the strings are still attached so I don't have to worry about it so the Capo made my life easier that's how you adjust the truss rod on this now what a lot of people do is they'll use a Phillips head screwdriver for that I've found that a flathead is actually the right tool you can get right into it and now you're not going to get that chewed up look that you see on so many old school fenders it's the same rules righty toddy Lefty Loosey so then I can put it back on and I don't recommend using a power tool for this because you can bend that neck plate pretty easily be careful you can also use the Capo as a way to check the neck relief power check relief too so let's assume it's in tune right now I'll keep it with the first fret hold down the 12th fret now the string is made a straight line but the neck's going to be wherever it is so if I want to check the relief I can tap the string and I can actually see how much curvature is in the neck I think we talked about this in the last video but I go for from Friday the 12th fret that's how I do it you can do it from here you can do it from 15th so what I'm looking for is right in the middle on the sixth fret I'm looking for five thousandths inch clearance which is about what that is if I don't see any movement like this I know that the neck is back bowed so I will loosen the truss rod and use a simple set of feeler gauges for that so that's the Capo I use it on almost every guitar I touch any Capo look I know there's a billion different types I'm not picky as long as it'll just keep the strings in place and actually hold it against the first front cool Capo Capo yeah I do think soldering is a tool and a skill that every guitar player should have I think so too I mean you run into issues like your input jack or your output Jack I guess technically you know it gets loose and then you try to tighten it and then the thing pops off people come in every day for that and it's takes 30 seconds to fix it you know you could do it at home and you can make your own cables you can repair cables yeah you can repair cables you can make your own pedalboard cables to the right size and if they're soldered they're not going to wear out as quick as like an unsoldered unit would and it's honestly a lot cheaper too yeah yeah so I love soldering I love doing Electronics work it's just enjoyable next is our old buddy deoxa D5 so I use this in conjunction with another product they make called fader lube and I will use this to clean things like a pot so let's say my tone pot's scratchy all I'm going to do is take a little this deoxite and see the little hole there do that turn it back over and literally just turn the knob a few times all right now it's not more than likely it's not going to be scratchy at that point the fader Lube is to put the lubrication back into the knob so that stays right so use those two in conjunction deoxite makes both of them there's D5 there's gold there's fader Lube I use D5 and fader Lube which is a kind of a green label it is magical for pedals amps guitars all kinds of stuff Frozen Saddles it's kind of a little Wonder Miracle Worker type of thing it's really really good stuff it's kind of expensive but it lasts a long time and I would recommend every guitar player have it because we've all had dirty pots I've got a can of this with me in my uh my road kit because it works on everything like it's ridiculous your pedals your amp your board it's really really useful stuff Awesome everything all right let's say if you're an idiot and you're using a drill on your guitar and you're putting screws in with it and you strip a hole definitely never done never done that myself yeah so like the pickguard screws for example like these little three one better could be my guitar maybe maybe my guitar you can either confirm or deny oh I definitely confirm it's mine um so look these guys always get loose right strap buttons they always get loose and everybody just tightens them back up right you know you get in there and you just kind of screw back and you're like okay cool all right I'm good for a minute this is kind of a guilty admission of mine this has been this way for like three years and I just keep re-tightening it so we'll just fix it the next thing that is really a favorite thing of mine are toothpicks so a little wooden stick right all I do to fix this is stick that in the hole until it goes down break it off put this back in that'll expand and this will hold that's how I do it the other way you can do it is one of my other favorite tools which is tight Bond wood glue dip your toothpick in that then stick it in the hole that's another way to do it I don't do it that way you're just going to thread the screw in there and it's going to friction fit against that you got it it's going to expand and it's going to be all good always use the right size screwdriver wrench whatever not close but the right size that fits it otherwise you'll strip your screws out or your parts out and that's no fun having the right size bit though is really important to getting a to not tearing your stuff up now it's solid I don't have to worry about it for a pretty long time and because you didn't glue it in you just pull the old toothpick out drop a new one in yep and it will last for a couple years I use this stuff all the time too but it has to be a fresh razor blade I go through tons of these every day I buy them by The 100 once they start losing their Edge which is pretty quickly I'm done but these razor blades you can use them for so many different things whether it's just you know obviously cutting things but you can also use them for cleaning up really gnarly fingerboards you can use them for finish work and I've done this a lot recently on guitars that don't have lacquer finishes so they have it like a polyurethane finish so I'll put a piece of Scotch tape on either side so now when I go and I put a new bead of super glue let's say to fill a little ding it's going to be above the surface right well I can take this and it will scrape it right down to the surface but not actually scratch anything because it's got that spacer in it see interesting so what we're going to do is just pick one I don't know let's say that one right there so I'm just going to draw a little circle around that so we can come back to it we're going to be using thin super glue for this okay thin super glue is a nightmare it's a huge mess so to prevent me making a mess I'll take an old guitar string and make a little Loop like this if they sell these but you can just we're guitarists right we have strings I'll take this little Loop that I made and then here's some Thin so I would normally just spill this all over myself because it is when I say thin I mean it's like oh yeah it's like water so what I can do is drop it onto the little Loop okay see how it's it's resting in the loop now I can go here and drop it right where I want it so that and that way I was able to get a little bead in there and I can even move it around just a little bit now we'll let that dry it won't take too long and then I'll show you how to do this uh razor blade trick you see it coming off see the little stuff how it's taking it off notice around it is not getting scratched up at all I'm just listening for it to stop making sound I'm pretty much 90 degrees yeah and I'm not pushing down on it very hard I'm just kind of dragging it across what you don't want to do is apply too much pressure because you are dealing with a razor blade it'll cut through that Scotch tape in a heartbeat yeah right really quickly so you can't put too much pressure on it or you will go through and scratch the guitar and then when you stop hearing the sound you know you're done yeah pretty much to take it down I just grabbed a piece of 800 grit sandpaper I'm just going to kind of go around a little bit and then I'll flat block it specifically you have to use that pedal right yep which bottle Is that ah it's a broken musky audio all right check Weaver yeah Silver Horse they're going for like nine million dollars now yeah notice I'm not even really taking off the black marker much this is where your next trick comes in the almighty nap though that's permanent marker so that'll take it off and it won't damage the guitar at this point you know you can use a big buffer you can use whatever as far as compounds go this is like a swirl remover it's nothing special at all and this is also nothing special it's just like a foam wheel that's the ding if I sand a little bit more I can get the lip to go away but now it's flat and I can keep going and get it even better than that when I when I catch it and the light when I catch the reflection I can't see it in the finish I can only see it in the metallic yeah you see it in the metallic so if it's not a metallic finish it's way easier but yeah you could keep going and you can eventually get that to be perfectly flat and you won't be able to tell that it was there if it's got a figure top or something it isn't easier it just it hides everything your best friend and sounds crazy is naphtha also known as lighter fluid okay it's like Zippo fluid man it's the same stuff so the cool thing about naphtha is the flash point is so high that it evaporates almost instantly that means that you can use it on lacquers you can use it on polys you can use it on the Fret you can use it anywhere on a guitar it's not going to damage anything and it will take stubborn junk off the guitar so there's like like look you see that I don't even know what that is but I can feel it it's gnarly yeah I don't know what it is there's all kinds of stuff here right and just like gross right I could spend a bunch of time wiping that off polishing polishing polishing but if I just pop a little map though on here what [Music] I have to mess with it it's gone oh yeah see what I mean and also it's just clean now that is not I never would have thought yeah I'm not saying you should use Zippo I just grabbed that in a pinch but naphtha is lighter it's Zippo fluid it's the same stuff so it works great it's like at the top of the distillation of fuel products you know it's right up there with liquid petroleum I think I use it on everything man I mean some people may disagree with me that's fine I've been doing it for 20 plus years and it works wonders on everything I mean it's just a it's like a Miracle Solution so it's great so like I can even use a little drop here like pickups stubborn pickups okay like look at that Gunk that stuff that's Gunk from you playing it yeah you see the Ring of dirt or whatever sweat comes right off dude it's great yeah wow so I use it for all kinds of stuff it works great it's super cheap and you can use it on any kind of finish it's safe for everything so you don't have to worry about it doesn't have any waxy weird stuff in it that's going to damage like a Gibson finish or Martin you know whatever it's safe on everything works great it's like Frank's Red Hot I mean let's think about this got a bottle of lighter fluid yeah five ten bucks they're cheap bottle of tight Bond I know for a fact these are about 10 bucks and this will last you forever as long as you don't do like I do and leave the lid open and they don't last very long you got some deoxin this is maybe the most expensive thing on the list yeah now it's like what 18 bucks yeah 20 bucks okay maybe this okay five bucks probably for some razor blades Scotch tape is cheap super glue is cheap and the soldering iron I think it's a wp45 yep it's less than 50 yeah it doesn't have a little button who cares and then all this with a few basic tools some bits that fit your specific guitar yeah yeah always use the right fitting bit so you don't strip anything out oh in a capo yeah that's it so our whole list of tools for this little stuff we did today is 70 bucks 80 bucks I don't know yeah and it's totally DIY type of stuff you know that you can do yourself nice and all of it will last a pretty long time so those are a few things that been our Pro guitar tech loves huge thanks to Ben and big house guitars for letting us come down and film here love links to everything in the description box we talked about down below some of those will be affiliate links which are a great way to support the channel if you like what I'm doing here also give Ben a follow on social media he's running the big house guitars account now and if you're in the Atlanta area come check out the shop quickly becoming one of my favorite shops here in town be sure to leave a like And subscribe if you haven't done so already and let me know what you thought about today's video in the comments

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 290,993

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Id: SqyMHizrLOw

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 01 2023