The height at the 17th is fine too. I think I’d be looking for a high fret somewhere now. On a rosewood neck they sometimes just need tapping in with a soft hammer rather than filing, on a varnished neck where varnish has crept under the fret they won’t tap in and need a file. Work from the outside in when tapping.

Yep – it’s a coated maple fretboard.

Levelling bar, special files, an some fret rubbers ordered.

Gonna polish those frets good and proper!

Levelling bar, special files, an some fret rubbers ordered.

👌🏼 One thing you might also want to consider is one of the slotted rulers that people like Crimson sell. They fit over the frets so you can check the fretboard level with out the strings on and adjust the truss road accordingly. Checking it with strings on and truss rod tensioned show problems but not necessarily the root cause.In a bad case it could even be a slightly buckled neck.
To save buying one you could just get a cheap 24 inch steel rule and grind out where the frets are.

This was the cheapest I could see:

Oh, just to establish my guitar related problem solving skillset: last night I was working on She Sells Sanctuary. A nice chorusy slightly crunchy guitar sound that cleaned up a treat on the volume knob and a Gretsch 6120 with Filtertrons courtesy of the JTV.
All sounded fine until I kicked in my Flashback 2 delay. The MASH function wasn’t working right and the sound generally seemed ‘wrong’ especially when I had the dotted eighth and quarter notes running. First up I was worried that the oversized and modified pedal topper had damaged the MASH sensor, out with the allen key and off it came. Nope.
Then I was worried that the software had corrupted and so I re-installed the latest firmware. Still didn’t fix it.
So I thought I’d take it off the ‘board and have proper look. It was only when I pulled the lead out of the 2nd stereo out instead of the mono out that I realised I plugged it into the THR wrong and was getting half the panned echo stereo image.
That’s 30 minutes I’m never getting back.
It’s great song though and the guitar tone is NAILED!

Genius 🤣

Ordered a decent 600mm steel ruler. I’ll just Sharpie where the frets are and grind the ruler down. Only Gibson/Epiphone and Fender/Squier in the house, so can have one on each side!

Check the sharpie marks, you may get away with just making wider slots on one side giving you an uncut side for checking the frets/ relief.
It always feels wrong having to cut the rounded end off the rule to get it to fit betwixt nut and bridge.

As part of the PJE Macon deal my Gibson LP DC Special has to go. Now in classifieds, £400 for a USA Gibson is a bargain IMO

@guitarhero – I’ve messaged you.

As part of the PJE Macon deal my Gibson LP DC Special has to go

Hopefully will go to a good home!

I’ve been trying to learn some Soundgarden on my acoustic. Finding it quite tricky but I only started on Saturday evening so will hopefully improve given some more practice 🙂

Oh, my, lord.
Had our first band practice in 7 months last night!
Practice rooms haven’t been open since November. I’m very glad they survived 😊

First 2 hours were ropey as hell and VERY loud. Then we got it out of our system, and the second couple of hours sounded surprisingly good.
My ears are ringing today though 🤘

Ace 🙂

Sanding sealer, primer, and matt black coats nearly done.
Trying to decide whether I can be bothered to put a matt clearcoat over the paint, or leave it so it will ‘relic’ a bit quicker.

Nice colour. matt clear sounds OK.

10% thingy for ivormairants if anyone is feeling spendy 🙂

AZEB10

Sanding sealer, primer, and matt black coats nearly done.

Nice! I’d put a matt clearcoat over it.

I’m trying to run before I can walk so having a go at learning Yellow Ledbetter this evening. I figure that if I try some harder stuff then it’ll improve how I can play easier stuff 🙂

Finished a few coats of matt clear lacquer. Weirdly it came out more satin than matt 🤷‍♂️

Fitted neck and hardware, but pickups and socket aren’t soldered in yet.

Looking quite stealthy.

Nice, @ajantom – I have a body that I ordered last year from guitarbuild.co.uk and was going to do a Candy Apple Red on… manage to cock up the gold middle layer and ended up having to sand it back and re primer it. Just went with plain Dakota red nitro instead. Decided not to bother with a clear coat as I’m bound to just sand through a corner and have to start again, so I’m going to try to bolt it together – though I’m moving house in three weeks, so the clock is ticking… 🙂

Just dug this out of the spare room, thought y’all might like it. I stripped it down a long time ago and somehow it just never got rebuilt, probably something to do with the fact that I’m a completely shit guitarist.

I used to have 2 of these, it’s a MIJ Hot Rod Reissue strat from ’91. The body cracked in the other one (at one of the trem posts, nasty) and this one had a randomly denty neck so I combined the two and swapped all the original silver hardware for black, just because I like the contrast (and the stock machine heads were absolute crap- good enough for a floyd I guess)

The wiring plan was demented. I never actually finished it properly and now I have absolutely no idea what I was doing. Coil taps and phasing on a push/pull, and a kill switch, and I don’t bloody know. It’s all conventionally wired now, the little DPDTs aren’t connected (especially the one that’s vanished) No they’re not all tone pots. I do like the Gibson pickup switch on the bottom horn though, first time I’d ever carved a guitar body and that was some scary shit but it was just fun to use.

These were HSS originally with a pretty nice Dimarzio humbucker (where I got my taste for coil taps) and shitty 90s fender single coils but I got this double fat scratchplate made and swapped it to a Duncan Distortion and a 59. (the 59 is a custom shop- you couldn’t get a 4 wire 59 at the time without special ordering so I had it slightly overwound to match the Distortion better. SD used to do this sort of thing for free- you just had to pay RRP and postage and they’d ship it straight to you like 6 months later with a little certificate.

Nice that it has a proper Floyd.
Some of the MIJ strats had the Fender System bridge which is a Schaller.
They were/are ok bridges, maybe not quite as good as a Floyd. However, parts for them are really hard to get. And the thumbscrew adjusters parts on the bridge body have a bad tendency for disintegrating threads. So you need to helicoil them.
Sadly the pole spacing is different from any other bridge so you can’t put a Floyd on (unless you get a special one from GFS in the States). The headstock end locking mechanism is different too.

That sounds a bit like my first home build guitar I built with my dad some 30 years ago! I’ll try to find a photo!

Random Gibson SG clone body with a random mail order neck (7.5 to 9.5 radius) into a Floyd floating bridge with twin SD trembuckers! Six way rotary switch like a PRS. Oh, and custom paint job too.

Looks amazing but plays like crap. Neck and body were not design for the floating bridge, locking nut never locked, and the action was always comically high given the radius of the neck and the flat bridge.

It’s like the maxed out Vauxhall Nova of the guitar world. But I played the crap out of it regardless (mainly because I didn’t know any better) 🙂

I’ve bought a new Epiphone acoustic in an N+1 sort of way. Too early to say much about it, it needs a few weeks of playing in and a set up to do it justice. But the strings! They sound reasonable but the gauges feel awful. 15, 23, 30, 34, 44, 54. Is it just me and my fingers that think a 23 steel B-string is ridiculous?

at one of the trem posts, nasty

It’s surprising what you can repair with a big drill bit, a suitably carved dowel and some good glue.

Edukator
Free Member

It’s surprising what you can repair with a big drill bit, a suitably carved dowel and some good glue.

The problem was that Fender’d removed too much wood- very thin at the bridge and had gone really deep in the pickup recess, so there just wasn’t much strength in it- it cracked right through the body so there was a loose chunk of wood about an inch across, and some collateral damage in the web, so it needed a bunch of repair but also a lot of strength added.

So we did that- I was working in a guitar shop, our luthier removed the whole broken part, routed a letterbox and put a fat bridge of good wood right across the back of the pickup cavity supported in the strong wings of the body, better than new- but it lost a fair bit of pickup space and needed refinished… so I stuck the second best parts on it and sold it to another maniac, who was planning a single humbucker conversion (I’m guessing this was about 2000 so maybe it was a Delonge thing, never saw the finished built)

This one hadn’t cracked yet so I put more strength into it and switched it to lighter strings to stress it a bit less. Though putting it in a case with no strings on for 15 years made that all a bit irrelevant 🙂

I’ve bought a new Epiphone acoustic in an N+1

An Inspired By Gibson one, with solid woods? My Hummingbird sounds every bit as good as the Gibson Songwriter I have here too. Bonkers good for £800ish

A Peter Frampton Texan with all solid woods. Sound wise I don’t think it’s in quite the same league as current Gibsons and Martins with a comparable body. It’s a jangly strummer rather than super warm sounding. In fact my old plywood Sigma Martin has more bottom end, but that’s been drying out for 40 years and has very light bracing.

I bought it mainly for the neck. It’s a thin C which is very close to my standard Strats and Telecasters, the string spacing is identical at the 41mm nut and 51mm at the bridge, 1mm less than my Teles. It’s Telecaster scale lenght, my podgy fingers don’t fit as well in Gibsons beyond the tenth fret. I wanted the neck, I don’t think I’d have bought it just for the sound, I’d have bought the inspired by Gibson J-45 or Hummingbird as you have, Rickon, if sound were the priority.

I first played a Frampton in a shop in Berlin back to back with a Martin D18 or D28, I can’t remember which, I didn’t know whether to be disappointed by the Martin or impressed by the Epi. Going through the guitars in that shop it struck me that Gibson was deliberately holding the Indonesians back on two points – Nitro and bracing, let them use nitro and lighter bracing and blind tests would get complicated.

Nitro and bracing, let them use nitro and lighter bracing and blind tests would get complicated.

Totally agree. So annoying using poly.

I took home a Inspired By EJ-200, and the bracing and panels were so thick it robbed the high and low end away. You had to play it so hard for it to vibrate enough to sound good. It sounded lovely when strummed hard, but fingerstyle got totally lost.

The Hummingbird is very different, feels light, and you a feel the vibrations at low volumes. I removed all the electrics, which made a good difference too.

Anyone any experience of Rickenbacker bass’
I have the chance to buy a 4003 in jetglow (black & white) for a decent price. My plan is to sell it on if I don’t get on with it, but like a P Bass, it feels like I should at least own one once! I’m a sucker for the case and case candy too.

Fret levelling and crowning done. Plays a lot better. Still one or two minor buzzes, but for my first time levelling im not fussed.

Will be polishing them up this week to a nice shine, and then dropping in my Brandonwound wide range pickups.

Squier to Sire!

Well done. A couple of other possibles:

A string with a slight kink in it.

I’ve a Tele with big vintage brass saddles with no grooves and the Zitar effect sounds like a buzz on some notes.

Anyone played the new Epiphone 339?

Yep. I’ve got one 🙂 What would you like to know?

Finished…soldered all the bits in, set up the neck relief, saddle heights and the intonation.

Little bit of buzz in the low E, so might need to do a bit of fret leveling.

Sounds so nice, the neck P90 has plenty of growl, and the mid position is a good mix.
The bridge pickup is a bit gutless (it’s only a cheapy), might upgrade to something nicer at some point.

Here it is next to it’s sibling (built last year)

Nicely done @ajantom 🙂

I’m still trying to make my fingers make some nice sounds come out of my guitars. It definitely doesn’t come naturally but I’m going to keep trying.

@rickon – what are you thoughts?

I guess my question would be if it feels like a “proper” guitar? That’s quite vague. I’ve generally found standard Epiphones to be a bit plasticky/dead with necks that don’t feel right. Always found the customs to be better – comparable with a standard Gibson

Sorry, I was a bit late to reply!

The new Inspired By series is phenomenal. They feel and play just like the Gibsons.

I’ve always thought Gibsons to be overpriced, and after owning a Gibson SG Standard, and some of the new IBG range I firmly believe it.

The ES-339 feels incredibly well made, the frets are well finished, the pickups sound lovely, clear and like nice humbuckers should.

The setup from the factory was actually spot on, no fret buzz at all, and it was super low.

The real revelation is the rounded C neck. It’s so fast to play. The poly gloss coating feels lovely, totally non-sticky and fast.

Switch and knobs are non-scratchy. And it’s fitted with Grovers that hold tune really well and have no dead space.

If you bought a £2k Gibson, I doubt you’d be able to tell the difference in feel or tone.

Even the Kalamazoo headstock is lovely. And it’s really nice they’re not using the big E on the pick guard.

I’ve tried the Epi ‘Inspired by’ Firebird and it is really sweet – but golly it feels long. Very well made though. If I was in the market for an LP that is definitely the range I’d check first.
On another point Dave Simpson has Blues part 4 up now.
Been steadily working my way through them.

https://shop.fender.com/en-GB/electric-series/american-ultra/american-ultra-stratocaster/0118012790.html

For a significant celebration – any reason not to go for an AMERICAN ULTRA STRATOCASTER®
It seems like a solid no-nonsense choice.

Looks like I’ll need to see if Guitar Guitar has one of those Epi 339s in stock. A pal works there so I generally get £100 off or whatever which makes it a pretty attractive proposition. Though maybe not after Covid…. I’m guessing it just comes with a gig bag?

You mean the Warmoth Stratocaster copy, Oldtennis shoes? Fender have put a Warmoth Shredder neck, the Wizard on here,

https://www.warmoth.com/guitar/necks/backcontours.aspx

on a Strat. And put some noiseless pickups in. I’ve got a Wizard neck on a Tele and quite like it. Comfortable block saddles, two point trem, there’s a lot to like there.

I’m guessing it just comes with a gig bag?

You guess wrong!

It comes with a cardboard box.

If you want a case, you’ll have to shell out that £100 you saved!

Ok quick poll time, where do you get strings and picks etc from -other than Amazon? I’d like to support a UK retailer ideally not an Amazon shop or ebayer.

Ok quick poll time, where do you get strings and picks etc from -other than Amazon? I’d like to support a UK retailer ideally not an Amazon shop or ebayer.

My local (to work) guitar shop, Marvel Guitars in Timperley

http://www.marvelguitars.co.uk/