Month: May 2020

The next in the how-to series is how to deodorise a smelly acoustic. But before we do that, first, we must understand how a guitar gets “smelly”.
Normally, when an acoustic guitar leaves the factory or the maker, it carries that distinctive smell of wood, varnish and paint. But over the years, due to our own bodies – the sweat and grime that get onto the body of the guitar and the areas that we constantly touch, stay there and get layered by more sweat and grime – guitars can start smelling bad.

And then there are habits, like smoking. Cigarette/cigar/cheroot smoke is one such smell which non-smokers (women guitarists particularly) find most offensive.

Playing with dirty hands often lets matter from them drop into the soundhole, which over a period of time, tends to develop a smell, and often, the smell tends to get absorbed into the exposed, raw wood inside a guitar.

Nine times out of 10, when one needs to deodorise an acoustic guitar, it is because the smell has got absorbed into the wood of the guitar from the inside, due to something having fallen in through the soundhole. 

Many times it is not so much the guitar as it is the gig bag or the lining of the hardshell case in which the guitar is housed that transfers the odour to the instrument. Whether it is the case or the guitar itself, there are umpteen number of ways that you can deodorise the item with simple, everyday items that may be present in your house.

1. Baking soda
2. Car air freshner
3. Coffee Beans
4. Apple slices
5. Tea bags
6. lemon slices
7. Pinewood chips
8. Cedar wood chips
9. Rice
10. Old newspapers

1. If it is your case/bag take baking soda and sprinkle liberally inside. Being the excellent deodorant that it is, it should be able to pull all the offensive smell off the bag/case. Later, you could use a vacuum cleaner to lift out the baking soda.
   In case, it is your guitar, you will have to take off the strings and lower a shallow dish full of baking soda into the guitar. Let the guitar lie on its back in a place where it won’t be disturbed and where there won’t be a need to move it. Leave it there for a few hours and then take the dish out. The offensive odour should have been removed by now.

 

2. An ordinary, can-type air freshner should be helpful too – both in the case as well as inside the guitar. Again, you will have to take off the strings for this.

 

3. Coffee beans are the biggest natural deodorants that you can lay your hands on. Remember, they keep a little jar of coffee beans in perfume stores to clear your nose?

Keep coffee beans in a small open container in the bag/case or inside the guitar. Leave it for a few hours and the job will be done.

 

4. Half an apple cut into quarters and dropped into the bag/case, or, left inside a guitar for a few hours will also do the trick

 

5. If you don’t have apples at home, lemon slices will do the same job, maybe better. However, you will have to be careful not to leave the slices lying on bare case material or inside the guitar. You will have to keep it in a container of some sort.

 

6. Few tea bags dropped into the case or left hanging from the strings into the guitar, should also do the trick

 

7) Chips of pinewood will also work, only you have to be careful to use ‘chips’. Pinewood dust should work but I don’t think blocks will work

 

8) If you can lay your hands on cedar wood chips, that should be great too

 

9. Rice is known to work wonders in removing offensive odours from inside a guitar. Drop in a cupful or two of uncooked rice and then give an almighty shake to your guitar. Rice with its absorbent properties will take away any bad smells residing in your instrument.

 

10. There is nothing quite like old, yellowing newspapers that work better as deodorant. But be sure to find old normal newspapers and not the glossy variety.

Crumple the newspaper into balls and stuff them inside the guitar (Naturally you will have to take the strings off to do this). Leave the guitar like this for a few days. Pull out the newspapers and the with the newspapers, you would be pulling out the bad smell too.

 

Having described all these tricks, I would like to add that prevention is always better than cure. So, stop drying your clothes on your guitar, or even using it as a clothes hanger, and don’t eat French fries and play the guitar at the same time!    

A young customer, a student, recently messaged me asking me to teach him how to restring a guitar.

While I thought about how to explain to him, I also wondered that often, we talk about big issues, leaving the simplest and the most essential things unexplained. So, I decided that in this blog post, I will describe how ‘I’ restring a guitar.

It is essential to understand here that there are many ways in which people string up guitars. As long as the strings don’t slip out of the tuning post, or lose tuning, all those methods are correct.

But first a little look at guitar anatomy.

To take off the old strings, loosen the tuning keys (machine heads) enough and then using the notch in your string-winder, pull out the bridgepins. Do be careful about keeping the bridgepins in order, remembering which pin came out of which hole because not all strings are of similar diameter. Once a pin becomes used to a certain string size, it will not seat properly with any other string size.

Pix courtesy: tabs4acousticBefore you keep away those pins, I urge you to take a look at them.

If they look anything like the bridgepin on the top, you need to file it, at say, a 45° angle – like the lower of the two bridgepins. A simple hobby file will help you accomplish the task. And why should you do this?
Filing the bridgepin like this will help seat the ball-end of the string right against the bridge-plate (which is right under the top, under the bridge), as it should be, rather than it getting caught at the end of the pin. The ball-end of the string stuck on the end of the bridgepin can makes a huge difference in sound transfer. It can also move while you tune/ untune a string, making it slam against the bridge-plate, damaging it.

Here is a diagram to understand it better:

With the old strings off, now is the best time to give a good cleaning and rub to your guitar – especially those areas that become inaccessible with strings around – the headstock and the area between the soundhole and the bridge that comes right under the strings.

With everything dust-free and clean and with the hardware at the headstock given a little tightening, it’s time to string ‘er up!

Pull out your strings and right at the ball-end of each, pinch between the forefinger and thumb and bend it 90°. You don’t have to measure with a protractor, even a small bend will do.

This done, put each string in its hole – say a couple of inches – and close it by pushing in its respective bridgepin. Remember the groove in the bridgepin is to accommodate the string. So, when you are putting in the pin, the groove should be facing the string.

As you push down on the pin, pull up on the string. Keep pulling up till the string stops coming up. This means that is seated against the bridge-plate.

With all six strings pinned in the bridge, one end of the problem is tackled. Now to look at the headstock. Remember, you have to thread the strings from inside the tuning post, not the outside – as shown in the diagram below.

Then turn the tuning machines in such a manner that the hole in them faces the general direction from which the string will come into them.

At the headstock, I divide the strings into sets of three. So, I have three thick strings – E, A, D – and three thin strings – G, B, e. For the two sets of strings, I follow two different methods to wind.

 

The bass strings (E, A, D)

These being thick and pretty stiff, I just measure up to the next post and snip it off. So, for example, I am winding the E string, I will measure till the A-string tuning post and cut it off there, as shown in the screenshot below.

Slip in the string into the E-string machine post and just let a mm or two stick out. Then, using your string winder, start winding, even as you hold on firmly to the string. As it winds and starts getting tight to hold, place it in its slot in the nut and tighten – not too much, but just enough to keep it from slipping out of its slot on the nut.

Follow the same procedure with the A and D strings.
But why cut off the strings? Why not let them be?
Because when they look like this

you know that you are looking at a monster!!!!
Do me a favour. Go to Google, and type ‘acoustic guitar headstock’. Find me one photograph that looks like this. My guess is that you won’t find one!
Now go, right on the top of this post and look at the main photograph. That is taken from the Gibson website. THAT is how acoustic guitar headstocks are supposed to look.

 

The treble strings (G, B, e)

For the treble strings, I start with the ‘e’ string. Here, I don’t measure and cut before hand but just slip the string in the tuning post.

1. Then with your right hand, pull back about 5″ of string.

2) Turn the free end inwards towards the ‘E’ string

3) Lifting the string with your right hand (the one over the fretboard), pull the free end under it

4) So, what you should have, is the string running over the fretboard in your right hand, and its end, turned inwards and under it and over it.

 

5) Pull the string across as shown by the arrow. What this does, is to lock the string in place.

6) Now, you can take your string winder and wind the string completely. Do not forget to ensure that it sits in its slot on the nut.

Likewise, wind the B string. All photos to demonstrate the treble strings’ winding are screenshots of a YouTube video by ‘Acoustic Life’.

For the G string, I follow this method or what I do with the bass strings – depending upon my mood at that time. You too, are free to do as you please.

But whether it is the bass strings or the treble strings, string winds on the tuning machine post should come from the top to the bottom. The angle that creates, helps in excellent sound transfer.

Once the strings have been wound, tune up the guitar. After you have tuned it up, hold each string between your thumb and forefinger around the 12th fret and give it a healthy pull. Don’t worry! Except for the G string and the ‘e’ string, there is no fear of them breaking.

You may hold it at the nut as shown in the picture below.

Strings are not used to the tension they are put under. When you first tune up your guitar with new strings, the tendency of the strings is to try and return to their original position. AND THAT IS WHY new strings go out of tune and you end up thinking that there is something wrong with your guitar!!!

Once you have done that, tune up your guitar again. Again give the strings a good tug. It will go out of tune again. Tune it up again. Again give them a tug and tune up again!!

Once you have done this exercise at least four times – properly – I doubt if your strings will go out of tune again, just standing.

SO, THERE YOU GO, SHUBHAM! THAT IS HOW I CHANGE STRINGS ON MY GUITARS!

This is the second of the ‘clean-up’ jobs and the guitar was ironically labelled ‘Pleasure’. I was in half a mind to ask the chief minister to get me PPE for this – exactly the type that our Covid-19 warriors don. 

Take a look at what state this was brought to me in.

Why do people buy an instrument or keep a pet if they can’t take care of it? That is the question I asked myself repeatedly as I went about cleaning this guitar.

Admittedly, this is hardly a good or an expensive guitar but that is no reason to leave it standing in the corner of the room even as you have it white-washed!  

I was in half a mind to just dust it with a rag, change the strings and hand it back saying ‘It looks good like this’, but then I decided not to be mean to the guitar and to the owner.

As I looked it over, there were a few problem areas that I could see plainly. 

As you might notice, the tuning machines were missing a couple of screws, and as the tuning machine was wound fixed just to one screw, the one that was attached had really chewed into the wood of the headstock.

The remaining screws on the tuning machines were too loose. The screws on the ‘G’ string tuning machine were not completely seated. Consequently, they had not only chewed into the headstock but had, in fact, managed to crack it!

Enlarged screw holes needed to be filled and re-drilled. These are just toothpicks jammed along with glue and then shaved off level with the headstock. 

If you look closely enough, you will notice that a drop of machine oil has already been fed to each tuning machine so that they function that much smoother.

However, the main problem remained this:

The nut had broken and dropped off from the ‘B’ string at some time during the eventful journey of this guitar. Replacing it with a new one involved shimming it with material from an old credit card, so that it would stand at the same height as the old one. Good old plastic under a plastic nut never hurt anybody!

With that done, and as the glue dried on the new nut, I turned my attention to the fretboard. It required no less than an hour’s elbow grease to get the drops of splattered paint off it. 

After it was cleaned, a healthy coat of boiled linseed oil was put and left there for some 20 minutes. The already dry fretboard, after being put through all that soap-water and toothbrush needed that drink of oil, but ideally to condition rosewood/ebony fretboards just an application of the oil and its immediate removal is recommended.

What remained was the toughest job: cleaning the body of the distemper! For three hours I toiled with the soap water and toothbrush before the thing resembled a guitar again.

And while I was at it, I took off the pickguard. The white area that you see in the photograph on the right is all, pure dust!

So, everything was cleaned screwed back on, strung up and the guitar makes a noise!!!

ADVICE: If you have convinced yourself that learning to play an instrument is not your cup of tea and you have decided to give up your “new hobby”, instead of leaving the guitar standing in a corner, give it to a younger cousin/nephew/niece. Maybe, he/she will be able to apply himself/herself more than you did. 

Learning to play a musical instrument is all about application. It is not as if you were learning to ride a bicycle. That you can learn in a moment: as soon as you learn to balance yourself.

While learning a musical instrument one needs to be dedicated to the thought of learning. If you’re influenced by Brad Paisley or Arjit Singh, remember that they did not learn to play the way they do, overnight. It is after months of dedicated effort that one learns to just change chords without losing beat. But one needn’t put in eight hours a day practising how to play (some people are able to do that too), but 15-20 minutes daily, without fail should be enough.

It will come, later or sooner!

Do you believe in fate? I have begun to, after last Sunday!

Remember, last Sunday, I talked about how you can clean and maintain your acoustic guitar with household items/products?

Around noon, a person landed at my doorstep with not one but two guitars that looked as if they had been excavated from under years of debris! And no, he had not read my post. He didn’t even know I wrote a blog!

Never one to refuse a guitar that comes to me, I took one look at them and thought to myself, ‘Now, what have you got yourself into?’ There was a truck-full of muck on them that would take decent time and effort to take off. Strangely, the photograph on top does not quite depict the state it was in.

Here are some more for you to relish the job I had on my hands.

Short of completely dismantling the guitar, I did almost everything. There were loose tuning machines because they had lost the little holding screws behind the headstock of the guitar; the strings in them, probably Adam had put in. Now, Adam managed to tie knots into the strings to hold them in the tuning posts, while the extra length of string had been coiled into modern art at the headstock (my favourite peeve)!

If that was not all, it was an instrument with a floating bridge. Look at the photograph of the bridge. A floating bridge, as the name suggests, is not fixed but floating. It just sits on the top of the guitar and is held in place by the strings running over it. Usually they are adjustable, but the problem with such bridges is that their position is everything; a fraction of a millimetre difference left or right, or up and down on the top can play havoc with the intonation of the guitar.

So, the first thing I did was to mark exactly where the bridge would go once the guitar top had been cleaned up. I used tape to mark the bridge area and then set about cleaning the guitar.

I decided that there was no place better than the headstock to start from. So, off came the remnants of strings and in came the mug of hot water in which a few drops of household dish-washing liquid had been mixed. An old toothbrush and lots of elbow grease was also used in the cleaning of this contraption.

With the dust and grime finally off the headstock and the body, it was time to turn my attention to the fretboard of the guitar. The problem with fretboards – all fretboards – is that while the body and the rest of the guitar is protected by paint, or at least a thin layer of varnish, the fretboard and bridge are made of bare wood, and thus, need careful handling.

It took me over an hour to clean just the fretboard, all the frets and the fretmarkers. Different grits of sandpaper were used to clean, polish and shine the frets before coating the fretboard and bridge with boiled linseed oil.

The sad part is that I got so engrossed with the job at hand that I forgot to take photographs. This one shows the body cleaned and polished but not the fretboard.

Then, as I put everything together, I decided to give the bushings on the headstock a little extra care. A chrome polish did the trick nicely.

A wait of 5 – 10 minutes and the bushings buffed out just fine.

The owner had also wanted Elixir coated strings to go on this guitar, and so, Elixir strings it was. Looking at the nut, my initial reading was that the slots in it were too low and the strings would buzz. But, thanks to the zero fret (the very first fret almost stuck to the nut) there were no buzzes, while the action was amazingly low.

I wish I had taken photographs of the finished job!!!!!

 

 

 

 

What makes you go, ‘Wowwww!!!’ when you see a car or a motorcycle? For me, it is when the vehicle is without a speck of dust and grime on it, looks polished, and gives that general look that it is well-cared for. It shows the character of the person driving it too.

Of the many, many guitars that I have fixed in the 10 years of me repairing acoustic instruments, seldom have I come across a guitar that had been well cared for; I mean kept spic and span. 

Each time I have told the owner to keep the guitar clean but it dawned on me only yesterday – when I repeated my words to another customer – that I had never told anybody HOW to clean your guitar and keep it in ship shape!!  

So, here is how I would advise you to clean your guitar. Please understand that this is not how I do it but this is how I am asking YOU to do it, so that you don’t break the bank on products while doing it. 

Know also that for each job that I will talk about here, there is more than one product available in the market. They are certainly not bad for your guitar but if you can get the job done for much less, why not?

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

1. Two worn out COTTON t-shirts cut up so that the back and front form two pieces. You should have four halves of good, soft cotton.
2. One unused , SOFT toothbrush
3. One unused, HARD toothbrush
4.  Scotch Brite pad  Yes, the same thing used to clean utensils with
5. Glass cleaner (Colin)  It comes as a spray
6. Waxpol car wax tin You will get this at any car accessories shop and is probably the most expensive item in this list. But don’t worry. It should last you a lifetime. What you are looking for is solid wax not the liquid variety.
7. White vinegar Your corner grocer should have this. A half-a-litre bottle costs under Rs 30
8. Dish washing liquid just a drop or two
9. Warm water in a bowl
10. Usha sewing machine oil If mother does not have it, buy it. This too will last a lifetime.
11. Ear buds and toothpicks 

All set? Here we go! 

For you to be able to do all that I am about to tell you, the strings will need to come off the guitar. So, it will be best that you save this exercise for when you are ready to change strings. For the sake of making your cleaning job easier and also to make explanations more understandable, we will break up the guitar cleaning according to area and into three parts: i) The fretboard and bridge, ii) The Body, and iii) The headstock and hardware.

 

1.  The fretboard and bridge

If your fretboard looks like this, you have work to do, so roll up your sleeves. In that bowl of warm water, put in a few drops of the dish-washing liquid ( a drop or two is enough for 100 ml water). Take the HARD toothbrush, dip it in the water and start stirring till you see the soap mix with the water.

Now, take out the toothbrush and go to work on your fretboard in circular motions. You can apply as much force as you want. Start at one end and go to the other, paying attention to each fret.

After you are through with this step, take one of the halves of a worn out, pure cotton t-shirt and wipe your fretboard dry. Inspect it. If you are satisfied with the result, wonderful.

If you feel that you have removed most of the deposition from your fretboard, but not all of it, take the Scotch Brite – DRY –  and go to work on the fretboard. Rub briskly, concentrating on problem areas but not leaving any part of the fretboard unattended.

After you are done, take the SOFT toothbrush and brush away whatever remnants of the Scotch Brite pad are left. Inspect. What do you see? Clean fretboard, shiny fretwire? 

You’re welcome! 

Moving to the bridge, remove the saddle and the bridgepins and with your SOFT toothbrush, give the bridge a brisk brush. You will need to be careful if you have an under-saddle pick-up in your guitar. 

If left uncleaned for long periods of time, dust tends to cake in areas that is hard to reach (like in between bridgepin holes and on either side of the saddle). If you are able to brush it off, excellent. Otherwise, it’s back to the warm water, HARD toothbrush and the piece of t-shirt to dry off things.

till your bridge looks something like this:

 

ii) The body 

There are different processes to be followed if your guitar cost you under Rs 6.5 – 7K and over it. Why? Because of the material used in each is the reason for its price. 

For less-expensive guitars, take one of the t-shirt pieces and properly dust the front, back and sides. Do pay special attention to the shoulders of the guitar (the area of the body on either side of the neck, where it meets the body) and the area between the soundhole and the bridge, over which the strings run, because all the dust seems to settle in those two areas. 

Then take the end of another t-shirt, dip into the soap-warm water solution, squeeze it as dry as you can get it and simply give the front, sides and back of your guitar a healthy rub – in circular motions.

On more expensive guitars, you do all of the above and then follow up with Waxpol. Take a fresh piece of cotton t-shirt and ‘moisten’ a corner with ONLY WARM WATER. With this corner, wipe out a little bit of the wax from the container. You will notice that it is as hard as candle wax. Please don’t try and take out a whole load of the wax, only as much as you would take out shoe polish on a brush from a tin of polish.  

Go over the front, back and sides in circular motions. I would advise you to do one portion at a time. For example, you wax both the sides. The side that you applied the wax on first, return to it and with a fresh t-shirt piece, give it a good buffing till there is a healthy sheen to it. Next, turn your attention to the side that you applied the wax on last.

Next, go to the back, do half first and then the other half, and then the top, exactly how you did the back. The wax not only protects your guitar from minor scratches  but it even hides smaller ones. What’s more, it gives it a nice sheen and makes it smell good too!

EXCEPTION: No wax should be put on guitars with satin finishes. Just a wipe with warm water is enough.

 

iii) The headstock and hardware

Does your headstock and tuning machines look anything like this? They should not. And yes, I know one of those photographs is that of an electric guitar and the other one of a bass, but you get the point, don’t you? 

Now that you have the strings out of the way, clean the headstock front and back. If you need to use your moistened rag, so be it. You will notice that it is difficult to clean areas very close to the tuning machine. Take a ear bud and try getting into these spots. If you still can’t use a toothpick with a corner of the t-shirt wrapped around it.

If your tuning machines are beginning to rust, take a bit of the white vinegar in small container (the cap of the vinegar bottle will do) and dip a earbud in it. Next dab the rusty area with the vinegar and leave for some time. After waiting 15-20 minutes, bring back the Scotch Brite pad and give those tuning machines a good rub.

Now is also the time to check if any of the tuning machines or your strap buttons are loose. Tighten them and then drop a single drop of Usha oil into each tuning machine – if they are open like the one in the photograph.

If they are closed, see if they have a hole in them. If they do have a hole, dip a toothpick in the oil and touch it to the hole.  

 

ADDITIONAL NOTE: String cleaning liquids, sprays, polishes are another waste of money. In a t-shirt, just pinch a string between your thumb and forefinger and pull up and down the neck. Do this before and after playing and you can come and thank me later.

However, one implement that I have found particularly helpful, for it is time saving, is this:

Slide it under the string, shut it, and pull up and down the neck. All six strings cleaned at one go! I have a few of these things. Next time you’re here, remember to pick up one of these handy-dandy tools.