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2014 Fender American Vintage '65 Stratocaster [7.9 lbs] :: setup

August 17, 2016

A 1965 Strat reissue in to address a few high frets along with a setup. Every once in awhile I find that the saddle spring on the low E does not allow enough room to push the saddle back to it's ideal intonation point. To properly intonate these situations, the spring requires a few coils of this spring to be clipped. Sometime the G string saddle spring needs this too.

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Fender Strat body - Tele neck [8.0 lbs] :: document

August 9, 2016

A client wanted his favorite guitar documented so I pulled it apart, took photos and wrote down some notes for him. It's a 2000 Mexi Strat body with a Tele neck that he put together.

The pickguard is loaded with Fender ’57/‘62 pickups measuring 6.42K (neck), 6.45K (middle non-RWRP), 6.45K (bridge). The middle pickup is non-reverse wound / non-reverse polarity so it is not hum cancelling in positions 2 and 4.

Some details of the audio path components:

Master volume, neck & middle p/u tone, bridge p/u tone, 5-way switch
250K audio taper CTS volume pot “GTR ELEC 250KA CTS 0519”
250K linear taper CTS tone pots “EP4985 250K 0521"
Sprague Vitamin Q 0.033 µf tone cap (shared)

The bridge is a Callaham Mexican Std vibrato bridge and arm.

The MIM Tele neck's details:

Indian Rosewood fingerboard with 9.5"R
0.870" thick, 1-5/8" wide @ 1st fret
0.910" thick, 2" wide @ 12th fret
frets 0.103" wide by 0.048" tall
vintage style locking tuners

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New custom Alembic bridge :: 1999 DeArmond Starfire Bass [9.7 lbs]

August 5, 2016

A 1999 DeArmond Starfire bass in for a custom Alembic-style bridge and tailpiece installation.

The tricky part of this installation requires routing the tone block of the bridge into the arched top. The photo above shows my custom saddle slotting jig modified with guides sized to rout the mating pocket in the top.

You can see the original DeArmond factory routs extending outside of the new bridge. The player and I considered various cosmetic options to hide them. In the end we decided to just let them show as they are not that much of an eyesore and fit the vibe of this player-grade workhorse.

This bass is decked out with a crazy amount of wiring ala Phil Lesh. The pickups are Fred Hammon "Dark Star" pickups that are based on the Hagstrom BiSonics. These pickups are recreations of the originals that were popularized by Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane) and Phil Lesh (Grateful Dead) in the late '60s. Note if you are interested in these pickups, check out Curtis Novak as Fred has stopped producing them.

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2015 Epiphone Les Paul 100 [7.0 lbs] :: setup

August 3, 2016

A bolt on Epi Les Paul with a few high frets in for a setup. After addressing the problematic frets, the rest of the setup was fairly straightforward. But a bolt on Les Paul just feels wrong ...