K&K Devinity pickup & new frets :: 1939 Gibson L-7 [5.5 lbs]

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A big and beautiful 1939 L-7 archtop on the bench for a bunch of repairs.  You can see some of the work done here.  These repairs include new frets, new relic Waverly tuners, back binding repairs, side cracks and a K&K Devinity system pickup installation.  I must say that I'm not normally impressed with acoustic pickups but this newer K&K pickup sounds very warm and transparent.  I installed one of the older K&K archtop pickups in a 1940's Epiphone Emperor years ago and found it sounded very hollow and out of phase (even with correcting the phase with a preamp).  Archtops can be difficult to amplify acoustically.  After hearing this pickup I recommend that you give the K&K Devinity a try.

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Bone nut, saddle & pins; K&K Pure Mini pickup :: 2015 Gibson J-15 [4.5 lbs]

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A walnut slope shoulder dread in for a new bone nut, saddle and bridge pins.  The player had attempted to remove the original finished-in nut himself and ended up damaging the finish so we opted to touch up around the nut.  The guitar was also amplified with a K&K Pure Mini installation on the bridge plate.

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Harp guitar pickup install :: 2015 Carruth Harp Guitar "Thumbelina" [6.4 lbs]

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Harp guitar pickup install :: 2015 Carruth Harp Guitar "Thumbelina" [6.4 lbs]

Ken Bonfield stopped by the shop last night to have a K&K pickup installed in his new Alan Carruth harp guitar.  This is an incredible instrument.  The neck and upper harp are both detachable from the main body and fold into a small custom case for travel.

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Video was shot of this pickup installation along with some minor neck angle tweaks and featured on the vlog.

K&K mandolin pickup install :: 2015 June A5 [2.0 lbs]

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K&K mandolin pickup install :: 2015 June A5 [2.0 lbs]

A K&K Mandolin Twin Internal was installed along with some fret work.  The pickup installation involved enlarging the tailpiece bracket hole (Irwin's Unibit / step drill is a life safer for this) along with drilling out the tailblock for the endpin jack.  The two pickup elements are adhered with double stick tape just inside each f-hole near the bridge foot.   The trickiest part of this installation is working through the small f-holes.  Even the internal nuts on the jack had to be installed inside the mandolin ... just giving me a taste of what it's like to build a ship in a bottle.