Custom bridge for an underset neck :: 1961 Guild M-65 3/4 CW [4.7 lbs]

July 31, 2015

A long time ago, someone sat on this guitar at a party and broke the neck joint. The owner decided to repair it himself, but under-set the neck slightly. The bridge I am replacing here is a tuneomatic that was too tall to get the strings down enough for decent action. A new low profile rosewood bridge was fabricated to compenste for the low neck angle. I ended up inlaying a carbon fiber beam though most of the bottom of the new bridge for rigidity. The single P90 on this guy is nasty (i.e. awesome). And yes, another unfortunate casualty of the hardware store refinisher.

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New frets & bone nut :: 1967 Guild Starfire IV [7.6 lbs]

February 23, 2015

New frets & bone nut :: 1967 Guild Starfire IV [7.6 lbs]

Here's an all-mahogany 335-style Hoboken Guild in for new frets and unbleached bone nut. Photos of the fretwork can be seen here and here. This is also the guitar that I dumped kitty litter into in an attempt to take the curse off of a moldy smell.

The Melita Syncro-Sonic bridge radius needed to be adjusted to match the fingerboard's radius. While working on the bridge I found that the foot was double-stick taped to the top. In order to give more range to the action adjustment (and side-to-side), the tape was removed and the underside of the bridge foot was re-fit to the top in order to lower the overall height.

The exposed patches of mahogany on the body were lightly sealed with shellac and the guitar strung with Thomastik flats. This is a great sounding guitar. She will be missed ...

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Bridge radius matches fingerboard :: Melita Syncro-Sonic Bridge on a 1967 Guild Starfire IV

February 20, 2015

Bridge radius matches fingerboard :: Melita Syncro-Sonic Bridge on a 1967 Guild Starfire IV

The bridge had smaller radius than the fingerboard, so the middle strings were higher off of the frets than the outer strings. Correcting this involved filing the middle four string saddles to lower them enough to fall in line with the fingerboard's arch.

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Sunset fingerboard sand :: 1967 Guild Starfire IV

February 16, 2015

Sunset fingerboard sand :: 1967 Guild Starfire IV

Being able to steer this neck jig into the sunset and back light the fingerboard sand is just ridiculous. It makes checking the radius really accurate - incredibly lucky to have this much natural light in the shop.

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