Some Happy Little Repairs

[Music] thank you well hey there gang I'm gonna be doing a couple of quick jobs in this episode hopefully getting some work out the door between the big projects I've been slammed lately and with some contemplation I've realized it's probably because I'm too darn nice four times in the last month I've had people scheduled for a repair and when they show up they bring an extra guitar or two it's just one of those things maybe it's because I'm like a 12th generation Canadian or something but I find it hard to decline and send them away when I really should so in a schedule that's been booked solid for weeks ahead at this point I've been trying to jam another eight or nine hours of work in of course the big jobs always hold a surprise or two as well and they go along so there's no winning I might try and get a bit meaner I'm still working on the lion and Healy I'm waiting for some binding of the appropriate color my antique white is actually two antique so I might get that up next week or I might not I'm going to the fretboard Journal fretboard Summit in Chicago uh next weekend so you know I might try and shoot some shaky handheld footage of that trip I might not we'll see here we have a sterling Mariposa it's a music man product designed with Oscar Rodriguez Lopez from probably best known from The Mars Volta but he's done other projects as well it's kind of a neat design the owner purchased this online and it was apparently new in box but it's got an issue no sound is coming from one of the pickups and rather than send it back he's going to have me try and fix it because shipping and returns can be a big hassle and he wants this guitar so let's plug it in give it a try and see what happens okay plugged in Bridge pickup fine there are two volume controls on this guitar and nothing else the function middle neck nothing not a thing so that's not good that's an interesting way to mount the switch it's got a little plate that screws right down into the wood and there's this little window in the pickguard and under here a neat little package I just have a quick look here to see if there's anything grounding out oh I see something already I think this little white wire is touching nothing um question is where does it go I imagine it goes to the central lug there where this capacitor is hooked up to this black wire the other leg of that so yeah I think that probably has to go down there somewhere broken solder joint and grab it with a pair of tweezers and see if connecting it to that lug does the trick and it does [Music] we'll heat up the soldering iron and suck a little solder off the tip there you probably don't even need the solder sucker and when reconnecting something like this it's always a good idea to add a bit of fresh solder as well just helps the parts go together properly doesn't need much but there has to be a little bit of fresh material [Music] action speaks louder than words in this case we've got about five and a half sixty fourths on the base and about five on the treble it's a bit High the other thing is it seems like excess relief we'll measure that it's about eleven thousandths which can come down slightly this has got one of The Groovy wheeled spoke Adjusters it feels like a lot of play oh hey whoa okay maybe not feel bad about doing that much try maybe just a little bit more it feels snugger than I want it to feel yeah that's about all I've got it down to seven thousandths relief which is okay this product is made in Indonesia so it's basically the music man version of a squire and some of the tolerances might be a little bit less than you'd expect from an American-made Music Man uh there seems to be quite a lot of room for the strings to come down at the nut that's what I'm noticing is playing the lower positions I seem to be really kind of having to push down before I reach the Fret so that's lower than that slots a little bit for nut height if I'm measuring over the first fret with a feeler gauge here the String's not pressed down anywhere I want to see somewhere around 21 22 thousands this is 25 so there's probably you know 26 thousands between the bottom of the string and the top of the first fret which is like two and a half Strokes of the file and so I'll I'll do that I'll lower them the other thing is it seems that this low E string is actually a bit of a tight fit in the slot almost as if it was cut for 42 I think these are probably 46. so knowing if it was tight you want to be careful and sneak up on this this is some really rubbery kind of plastic locking tuners on this model [Music] the rest of these I'll do basically by eye I want to see a little tiny gap between this fret and the string they also do it by feel okay the action came down a little bit not quite enough Okay so we've got four sixty fourths on the base side just over three on the treble which is a nice slow action for this kind of guitar I think pretty sure he'll be happy with that hey Bridge pickup seems a little bit low fretting at the end of the fretboard here I've got three thirty seconds and 16th yeah it's not too bad maybe up a touch on the base side okay so that's all set up ready to go it's brand new I'll let the customer have the singular Joy of peeling the plastic off of pickup covers uh brand new with a maxed out truss rod it sets up okay but there's no future adjustment in this guitar other than that pretty cool [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] [Music] here we have a rather nice laravee co9 model from 1993 that's 30 years ago back when they were making these in Victoria British Columbia the good old days the owner wanted me to lower the action as it was getting pretty high for him and in my initial inspection I noticed that there was quite a bit of extra relief in the neck which isn't uncommon for laravee's because they've always required these weirdly shaped adjustment hex key wrenches that are sort of like a j or an L with a little dog leg in it and those are almost never in the case and without them it's virtually impossible to tighten or loosen the rod it's accessed through the neck block and I guess Sean never wanted to cut a hole into the transverse brace up here like you find on certain other guitars so they came up with this odd wrench system um you can buy those for about 20 bucks from laravee they have a couple of styles though depending on the year and it you know starts adding up so if you're just getting into it and you have to be frugal you might have no money but maybe you do have access to a blowtorch so you fashion something like this and reconcile yourself to the fact that you're going to have to loosen the strings every time you want to do an adjustment just not a big deal so with the adjustment and a little bit off the base side on the bottom of the saddle I now have very nice action for a finger style player but I'm running into something else I think it's had a partial refret at least these little chips here in the ebony beside the Fret I think the top of the bridge has been shaved down a little bit as well but whoever did it did a pretty conscientious job I don't hate it however the main thing is the top of this saddle is very flat now there should be a radius because of course the fingerboard is radiused they have to relate to each other if it's too flat you can lower the action and it'll be great on the outside e strings like you might have four sixty fourths on your upper e but in the center here these strings are too close to the top of the Frets might be only 3 64 in the middle so naturally you start to get buzz and rattle it's no good so unfortunately this saddle is non-functional I'm gonna need to make a new one we'll pull this guy out find this Top's got a little bit of bear claw figure in it it's very nice and I see we have an undersaddle pickup of the braided variety because I'm making a new saddle sometimes it's a good idea to check and see what's under there just in case there are like a bunch of shims or something that we could do without so the radius on this fretboard is well it's probably a compound radius but I think it's around 16 inches and this saddle has been shaped to a radius that is flatter than 20. so there's the problem I've already sanded the bone blank to the appropriate width and here I'm checking the length of the slot I'll transfer that to the blank and we'll cut that off just outside the pencil line I'll file the end into a neat radius with an undersaddle pickup like this I want the fit to be slightly less snug than without a pickup because you can't have this thing hanging up on the side walls of the slot you want all of that energy to go downwards into the pickup that's close I think it needs like three Strokes on some 600 grit paper I'll sand the radius into the top of the blank with the radius sanding block I can gauge the height from the previous saddle adding just a little bit of extra for fine tuning and adjustment reduce it to close to the action height I want I'm using the little bent g string trick here which of the top of the saddle is currently flat and that just lifts it above so that I can fool with the intonation pulling that back and forth until the octaves are pretty sweet and then I just mark it and that gives me a point to file to okay I think we're ready to go here so the action came down about 20 percent from when it arrived and no weird buzzing on the center strings which you know it's amazing how little we're talking in order of like five or six thousands just over the thickness of a sheet of paper makes a difference those are the tolerances anyway I like this guitar it's really nice foreign [Music] foreign [Music] we've got an echo guitar this is a model 290 from I think the early 60s 63 ish later on they called this one the Barracuda typical Thin Line hollow body electric made in Italy the main issue with this is it seems to have taken a fall landed hard on the base here there's a big crack in the side that runs a long way and the top has come loose too from the sides interestingly the brake didn't travel it seems through the tail block area but there is another crack in the region of the jack now these cracks are pretty tight I do want to get some glue into them and obviously that loose top plate is a big deal we need to get that locked down the other thing is the switch it's doing something funny so if I try to move positions there's a jostling sound inside and some wires are visibly moving down here in the f-hole so we need to tell the little man in there to behave now the owner knows these crack repairs aren't going to be pretty there's some delamination of the Finish around them too this sort of ghostly whitish color and this doesn't feel or behave like standard American Nitro lacquer of the time I don't know what's in this coating so you know we're just going to glue it up lock these parts together that's what he wants I'm starting to take off the strings and I thought it'd be a good idea just to plug it in and see what happens [Music] and there's really nothing of anything so [Music] now there is [Music] yeah so I suspect that this switch is really loose and maybe there's a wire that's pulled off or something which is going to be fun but you know what do we expect from these things pull off the tail piece here it might make clamping easier and I don't really want this thing flopping around on the Finish without any string tension on it okay so I thought this finish might have faded over time but it seems like it's always been this kind of iced tea burst foreign and this seems to be don't quite know what's going on with that I hate the idea of taking this whole thing apart but it might come to that get this out of the way this interesting and vintage piece of plastic you can see this front pick up here is missing its ring and also this area seems slightly damaged not unlike that hagstrom which we worked on a couple of weeks back you know sudden compressive damage these pickups look similar to some hoffner's I've seen foreign there is a tiny little route for the wire but there's no access to where the jack is so might as well just put that right back in place [Music] easier said than done we've got the soft jaw pliers here you really I just want to hold it steady tighten the nut up a little bit all right okay still very stiff I'm going to put some penetrating lubricant down here and some contact cleaner trying to get rid of some of the grunge don't know too much about these Echo Arch tops I know the solid bodies have a little bit of a fandom these Frets are quite low 27 thousandths 25 thousandths so like fretless Wonder Frets the neck is quite narrow it's about one in five eighths but the actual playing surface because the Frets don't extend past this rather wide binding they're quite narrow it's less than an inch and a half at the zero fret polishing polishing polishing polishing fun fun fun fun it's Saturday though it echoes down through the decades Mondo music rock and roll Italian style well this seems to be easier to move around now it's interesting this is one of the guitars with a kill switch on the switch which turns off both pickups so it's it's funny in the selections as well because turned all the way down you've got both and then uh Bridge neck and then off so it's not like a Gibson the middle position does not give you both pickups all the way down does the other complication and probably the reason we were having such issues is this switch let me get you around here you can see this switch has a flat on one side which you would expect would made up nicely with something on the inside of the knob but unfortunately this is round so when these go together there's nothing to prevent this from sort of just rotating I don't know what's going on there maybe there was a second part that broke off like maybe it was split like a standard pot or something um but it doesn't function reliably I'm just wondering like to fix this yeah maybe put a little bit of epoxy putty in here a little plastic wrap over this and cast the part in place so that we'll have a recess that matches that and we'll be able to spin because good luck trying to find one of these things at this stage needle in a haystack you know if you fold it over that's two that's four eight sixteen thirty two 64. 128 500 and well I've lost count anyway we're somewhere up around a million Folds so I think we're probably good and mixed so I'm going to put this on the back half turn that all the way forward foreign get that aligned squeeze it down let that sit for about five minutes and it should be hard enough for me to remove the plastic that seems to have worked just a little bit in there I'd like to trim off make it a little bit neater the stuff is like leather hard consistency right now Let It Go for another half hour or so it'll be nice and hard okay all set up at the risk of offending My Italian Friend Nick I know he has a passion for Echoes this doesn't feel like an Italian guitar this feels just like a Harmony rocket to the point where I wonder if they got their hands on one and took it apart and sort of re-engineered it um but yeah no it is it's cool for what it is I wish it had different Frets but that's me [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: twoodfrd

Views: 70,561

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Id: A-lUe2ErJkU

Length: 23min 28sec (1408 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 20 2023