All Blog Posts

Remember the sound of your guitar when you first brought it home. Over time, changing geometries on that guitar due to string tension, fluctuating weather conditions, and some bad habits cause that sound to disappear. Now that it has lost its mojo, you would be forgiven to believe that your guitar is past its prime and it is time to find a replacement. WAIT! Is there something you can do, or not do, to get your old guitar's mojo back? There most certainly is! The following list has been compiled in order of priority. Get a good set-up You need ...
Read More

Those grooves/notches/divots/pits that you see in the fretwire of your guitar is a natural consequence of you playing it. There are reasons why they may appear sooner on your guitar and not as soon on your friend's guitar, and there are ways in which you can delay them forming. The following post is an effort to explain what these indentations do, how they are caused and some remedies so that you are able to delay them forming. WHY THEY APPEAR #Type of fretwire used The material of the fretwire, naturally, plays a huge role in determining how soon divots appear ...
Read More

As I had predicted earlier, the humidity is possibly at the lowest at which you will see it the whole year through - at least here, in North India. Guitar repair – NOW is the time for those glue-up jobs! This is the best time to work with wood and build whatever you've been planning, for the weather is very dry and the glue will cure super fast, giving you a super strong bond. Instrument repair is no different. Also, this is also the time to give a little drink of water to your 'parched' instrument. You may not feel ...
Read More

If BB King can call his favourite guitar 'Lucielle' and Willie Nelson can call his 'Trigger', why should not a young man in Lucknow, India, call his acoustic guitar 'Sundari' (Beauty)? Whatever that might convey to you, to me it shows a stronger attachment to the instrument. And why shouldn't the attachment be stronger? This was a Squier Fender sporting a handsome sunburst. But more importantly, Sundari had a lot of character: booming lows, clear ringing highs and overall some excellent sustain. Now, I must tell you that the Squier Fender is not a very high-value instrument, yet, as a ...
Read More

It's been two months since our last rendezvous, what with the annual monthly closing of the Lucknow Guitar Garage getting extended by a month and me getting tied up with the household. However, guitar repair did not stop for so long, and I began working from the day after New Year. In the interim, the world is a poorer place having lost Jeff Beck and Lisa Marie Presley. RIP wherever you are! And getting down to brass tacks, you have heard me deride cheap, local - made in Indian factories - guitars often enough! But there are exceptions to every ...
Read More

Recently, I got to work on a GCE guitar. Now, the brand was new to me and so I studied it. It seemed another one of those inexpensive China-made guitars in the price range of Rs 8 - 10K but its construction was not too bad - except for the bridgeplate. More on that later. Whatever else, it wasn't the cleanest guitar ever! and the way strings had been wound around the tuning post, I doubt if it played very correctly. NOTE: Ladies, gentlemen, we need just 2.5 to 3 turns on the wound strings and 5 to 6 turns ...
Read More

Thank god for patrons who feel I can also do justice to electric guitars! One young man came in with his electric swearing that he would not let anyone else touch his guitar!! Thankfully for me, there wasn't anything majorly wrong with the guitar. There was a buzz up the neck, past the 12th fret and the fretwires were tarnished and needed some love and attention. As I began work, the young man taught me how to take the strings off the guitar (so, I'm getting there)!  With strings off, I found there were more than a couple of fretwires ...
Read More

Just a quick heads up, people. The humidity is down to 58%, here, in Lucknow, North India, and should drop further in the coming week. Till mid-December rolls around, it will remain cold and dry and thereafter, cold and wet! Now is the perfect time to get all those glue jobs done - whether it is the bridge lifting, or the binding peeling, or the fretboard coming loose, or the heel separating from the body... Just about any glue-up job that you can think of getting done on your acoustic guitar, now is the time to get it done. Why? ...
Read More

Wonder if you all remember me saying that instruments come to me in twos or threes. Either two or three of the same brand, or, two or three with the same problem. After I finished working on two instruments with a belly bulge and lifting bridge, I thought it was time to talk about the whys and wherefores, guitar anatomy, strings and all that good stuff. In the last two posts, I have touched upon the issue, causes and remedies but a detailed post was in order. So, here goes! The second photo shows you a bridgeplate and where it ...
Read More

Recently, I had the pleasure of working on a Fender auditorium-style guitar (all-laminate construction) sporting a spalted maple top. It had the same beautiful spalted maple as headplate. For those interested in these things, the model no. was FA-345CE SP MPL FSR LR and the serial no. was IWA1913137. I'll talk about its problems later but first the appointments on this baby. It had laminated Lacewood back and sides, a cutaway and some very pretty tortoiseshell binding. The fretboard and bridge were Indian Laurel while the neck was Nato. And while the Viking bridge lent it character, the Fishman electronics ...
Read More

I have said this before but I will say it again: wood has a memory. Once it attains a shape, it likes to stay in that shape. You can give it all the heat and moisture that you want and try to bend it the other way but soon after the external factors (heat, moisture, clamping pressure) are removed, it returns to its original position. This could be a warped table top, cupboard door, arm rest on your favourite chair and just about anything made of wood. In the case of acoustic guitars, try and think of a twisted neck ...
Read More

It is always such a pleasure to know that not all people owning classical guitars (slotted headstocks and nylon strings) bought the instrument by mistake. 90% of classical guitars that come to me are people wanting an 'upgrade' - steel strings instead of nylon and other such. They wish to sling the guitar over their shoulders and rock out. It takes a lot of patient talking for them to realise that what they own is an altogether different beast from the one they were dreaming of owning. And so, it is a pleasure when a person comes along who knows ...
Read More

The process of my blog posts is basically through photographs that I take of the job at hand and then try to spin a story out of them, trying my best to remember what happened and how. It had worked for me till now. I must confess that in the best of times, recalling events, sometimes from two months ago, is no mean task. Today is Saturday, dinner time, and the fever I ran through the week has impaired my thought process terribly. As I sit down to look at the photographs, I am scratching my head - 'Was it ...
Read More

The angle that the strings make coming out of the bridgepin holes and as they pass over the saddle is referred to as break angle. The bigger the break angle, better is the sound quality, for the strings exert greater pressure on the saddle, driving it into its slot, providing greater/better contact. Consequently, there is minimal loss of energy (sound) and the sustain and volume get amplified. All this happens if there is a tall saddle installed in the guitar. But as most of us know, the height of the saddle is directly proportional to the action: more the height, ...
Read More

The owner brought me this relatively new instrument for an initial set-up and some snazzy bone bridgepins. When he pulled it out of the bag  - headstock first - I thought to myself, 'Taylor' but when it was out on my workbench, it seemed like an instrument in identity crisis. The headstock made it look like a Taylor The binding reminded one of CF Martin while the pickguard made it look as if a child had made a poor effort at cutting out the very distinctive Hummingbird style The bridge reminded me of another manufacturer, one on whom I can't ...
Read More

This is a bit of an anti-climax, but it is what it is! Humpty Dumpty had no will to be 'put together again'! Jokes aside, as I mentioned in my last post, the main thing governing that this glue-up job went properly was removing the already existing Araldite somehow. Though I laboured more than I have ever on a job, I knew that there was always a possibility that there remained remnants of glue that I had been unable to reach. So I glued up the parts with dowels thrown in for good measure, clamped it all up good and ...
Read More

Humpty Dumpty...er...this Epiphone DR-100 VS came to me like this 'Some of the king's horses and some of the king's men' (with apologies to Lewis Carroll), had tried to put 'Humpty together again' (four times, according to the owner) but had failed in making the fix a permanent one. And so, it finally landed on my counter. The owner said that he was willing to give it one last shot at trying to save the instrument, and I had my work cut out for me. No repair would be possible without first removing the old glue. This was no mean ...
Read More

Here's a perfect example of why I keep stressing upon guitar players to de-tune their instruments if they know that they will not be playing it for three weeks or more. String tension is a very bad thing for the health of the guitar but when a guitar is being played, some of that stress is counteracted by the movement of the various parts of the instrument (top, neck and back). However, if left standing with nothing to counter that force, string tension can have disastrous effects, as this owner learned. Let me begin by congratulating Kadence for building the ...
Read More

Yes! That is a thing, a dangerous thing, and now is exactly the time (here in North India) when over-humidification symptoms begin to surface. Over a period of a month, I am expecting a lot of ailing guitars. Just like an exposed acoustic guitar (not so much solid-body electrics) can lose moisture, become dehydrated and show symptoms thereof, an instrument can absorb moisture from the surroundings and get over humidified. Also, if one notices that his/her guitar has dried out and the consequent humidification process goes too far, over humidification can happen, causing all sorts of problems, which may or ...
Read More

I have stalled writing this post for weeks.  It is about an instrument that came to me having suffered severe trauma after a dumbbell (no less) fell on it! The extent of the damage made the repair cost spiral out of the owner's comfort level and he decided not to get it repaired (at least not from me!). I'm sure thought that he will hunt out wannabe repair persons in the lanes and by-lanes of Aminabad who will probably fix the guitar with super glue - quick and dirty - at 1/10 the cost I quoted. Photographs of the damage ...
Read More

Pitting of fretwires, also referred to as formation of divots, is as common a wear-and-tear problem as the disappearance of tread from your car's tyres. Irrespective of how much or how little you play, sooner or later, divots will form on the fretwires and it is pretty normal. Interestingly, you would have noticed that pitting takes place primarily on the thinner three strings. Why? Try cutting an apple with a knife and then try cutting it with a butter knife. The thinner the point of contact, the easier it is to cut through. The same principle applies to guitar (acoustic ...
Read More

It is now 1 AM on Sunday, June 19th, as I begin to write this post. Till now I had been searching! I had worked on this guitar some time back. It was an Epiphone Dove. No matter how hard I have tried searching my blog, I haven't been able to find a post detailing what I had done to it before.  My idea was that I would share the link here and then with three or four fresh photographs, recount what was happening now. And so, this post has just three photographs! I even called up the owner asking ...
Read More

Long time back, I had heard that guitarists often keep two saddles for each of their (acoustic) guitars, which they swap when the action became too low or high due to the rise and ebb of humidity. Though theoretically I understood the concept, practically I couldn't get my head round it because I had never experienced it. I own a few acoustic guitars and they are well-made, solid wood instruments which I play on a monthly rotation basis. Now, because they belong to me, they are set up well, are well looked after, and are provided enough protection. Around a ...
Read More

I get daily calls asking me the cost of repairing this and repairing that on an acoustic guitar. Many times I am able to put a figure to it and many times I tell the caller that I would have to take a look at the instrument before giving a figure. But almost every week I receive a phone call asking me what the repair cost would be for a lifting bridge. Some of the more inquisitive ones even ask me how I propose to tackle it, what glue will I use, etc, etc. I have to explain that not ...
Read More

This Yamaha came to me a few months ago in a great deal of distress. In between came a host of instruments with various humidity-related issues which leapfrogged this one. This too is partly a result of the lack of humidity as you will discover. A 3/4 guitar, it belonged to a lanky, soft-spoken recording/performing artist. As I inspected the guitar he told me that this guitar had been lying with his brother for two years. The young man was attached to this instrument and wanted it fixed proper. I don't think that it was cared for very much during ...
Read More