Month: April 2024

There come moments in everyone’s life which test a man’s patience and abilities. I think this instrument brought along with it one of those moments for me.

This guitar –  a Fender CD140 – was good-looking, well-kept and clean,

and came in with the complaint of a buzz on the B string on the 13th fret. By experience I have learned that once it gets that specific, there’s bound to be a raised fretwire somewhere.

Still, following due process, I first checked neck straightness. It was straight enough with the right amount of relief, and true enough, there was a God Almighty buzz on the 13th fret.

The owner had informed me that the guitar had been standing for a few years, and I guessed that by standing uselessly, there would be more frets than just one creating problems. As I went about checking higher fretwires, I counted six – one which got tapped in and five that required the ‘full treatment’.

Now, fret-levelling, as you might know is probably the most painstakingly-repetitive and tedious work in guitar repair. Level the fretwires and then individually crown them and then individually polish them.

It began with levelling them with this, concentrating on the higher frets.

Underneath the beam is sandpaper stuck which does all the hard labour. I just put in the elbow grease. However, one has to be very careful about how hard and how long one is going on the fretboard. A little extra effort and the fretwires have gone much lower than where you need them to be.

After the beam has done its work, this is what the ground looks like – silver dust all around.

And then follows the crowning process, which again one has to execute very carefully so as not to overshoot the mark. More often than not, it is experience which tells you when to stop crowning a fretwire. More silver dust.

Then came the polishing of the fretwires that were worked upon. The polishing removes file marks from the levelling and crowning, making the fretwires nice and slick. This step in the entire process is the most tedious because you work through five or six grits of sandpaper on every fretwire that you have levelled and crowned. If there are more than five or six fretwires that you need to work on, the digits on your fingers start complaining (at least mine do)!

That done, it was time to clean the fretboard for the last time, give it a drink of the elixir, and while you’re at it, show some love to the bridge as well.

 

Strings came next and the owner chose these ones

As I tuned up the instrument and played it – horror of horrors – the buzz was still there, and if anything, more robust than before. This meant that there were other raised fretwires that I had missed, or those that ‘got raised’ due to the work done on their neighbours.

The strings were loosened enough and out came the Fretrocker

and carefully, all the fretwires 11th fret onwards were tested. Three more truant ones were found. Carefully (now with the strings on), the entire process described up till now was repeated and the strings were again tuned to pitch.

I tried loosening the truss rod and the action went up dramatically. I tried tightening the truss rod and the buzz screamed at me.

Again when I tried to check for the buzz, it seemed to have moved from the original string to a different string, different fret, but still in the same zone! Again, the strings were loosened, again spot-levelling, crowning and polishing of the fretwires took place.

And this process went on for a few times more, but it took its toll on the strings and just as I apprehended, first the ‘B’ string broke and then the ‘A’ string. Meanwhile, the ‘G’ string was looking so frayed that I was afraid to breathe over it! But it could not be helped and so, I replaced the entire set of strings.

Finally, when the guitar was done, I was exhausted both physically and mentally, but happy that I had exorcised the buzz.

When the owner came to collect the instrument I related my effort to him. Along with the effort, the time taken to complete the job had also to be taken into consideration. I also told him about me putting on a fresh set of strings and gave him the option to pay for the second set of strings, or not. After all, the strings had broken while I was working on the instrument!

A thorough gentleman, he suggested that we split the cost of the second set. Fair enough, I said, and we shook hands on that.

He was happy with the work done on his guitar, and when I called him a week later to check how the instrument was doing, the ‘all is well’ reply was most comforting.

 

 

This guitar was brought in by an apprehensive young lady and it belonged to an elder sibling, who had since moved to foreign shores for better academic prospects.

If you did not look at the headstock, it looked much like the guitar from a couple of weeks ago, brought in by a father, who’s girl was to return shortly from the US.

Guitar repair – It’s not always the instrument…sometimes it’s the sentiment attached!

Only, this one also had no label to it – a nameless creation.

Like that one, it had all the tell-tale signs of not enough love being shown to it and some more. The young lady had brought in the guitar for just a change of strings but then, I had to point out this to her.

Just looking at the state of the instrument, I knew it was desperately in need of a drink of water, and that was the major reason for the bridge splitting.

Work began with taking off the crusty old strings and the bridgepins – one black one and all – and storing them in the order they came out.

I worked my magic, and like I had promised her, the crack disappeared like it had never been there. The guitar was thoroughly cleaned and polished, fretboard and bridge were given a double drink of elixir after which I put on new strings, and all was good.

The guitar was returned, but not before I replaced that black bridgepin with a white one. I just could not bear the eyesore. Additionally, like I often do, I forgot to take a final photograph. I called up the girl and asked for the photograph and she dutifully obliged.

To my horror, I saw this

Look carefully, there’s a crack appearing where there was one originally.

I had the girl bring in the guitar again, and thinking that maybe, the bridgepin holes were a little too small, I tried reaming the holes. However, except for the E string, which was a little too snug (expectedly so), the other holes were just right for their pins.

Anyway, the job was done all over again and returned to the owner with apologies.

Hope it stays intact!

 

So, this one returned. It was kind of embarrassing because I could not remember the instrument for the life of me. I was even more embarrassed when the owner was positively convinced that I did something to it akin to bringing it back from the dead!!

Incidentally, it was a trans-acoustic guitar – it was one of those things that not only carries its own equaliser but even its own speaker in its belly.

Any recollections? None!

Now? None, whatsoever! 

Maybe, I’m growing old!

Anyway, the problem (this time) was that it was buzzing under amplification and the action made playing lead a pain. The owner confirmed that when played without amplification, there was no problem.

I told the young man that many times, when guitar tops are braced and sounded, they tend to acquire a resonant frequency, and when this frequency matches that of an outside, nearby source, there is an odd buzz that occurs, one that you can go on a wild goose chase and never actually find.

To cut a long story short, this was a situation which would not get solved unless you took the top off or the back off the guitar, work and trim those braces till that pairing of frequencies stopped raising a buzz storm!

The action correction, though, was not that convoluted. In fact, it was a breeze!

And that ended the work on this one.

Strangely, when the owner came to pick up the instrument, the so-called buzz was all gone. He played it over and over again but no buzz. Maybe, the saddle-shave did something to pick-up or something. I’m yet to work that one out.

He was thrilled by the action on his guitar, though!  

And that statement is as true as the sun will rise tomorrow!

In this line of work, not often do I get the opportunity to interact with people my own age, unless it is a mother accompanying the son to ensure that I do not fleece him, or a father chaperoning his daughter, guarding her against the ‘evil eye’.

The other day, however, in walked a genial gentleman with a guitar that had certainly seen better days. He wished to have it ready for his daughter who was returning from the US of A.

It was in a gig bag but the bag itself was falling to pieces, remnants of which were seen stuck to the headstock. The adhesive holding the cheap transducer pickup had since dried over the summers and the transducer had fallen into the soundbox, the bridge was lifting, the wood of the fretboard was tinder dry and the fretwires were tarnished with time.

However, the gentleman assured me that the instrument had not been touched in half a dozen years or so. I believed him, for the guitar carried enough dust and mildew on the body.

However, what caught my eye was this:

a name slip stuck with scotch tape. I asked the man if the guitar had ever been repaired but he was sure that it hadn’t.

I let it go and began work. First came off the crusty strings. But as I removed the bridgepins, I noticed that they were not seated fully.

I tried pushing them in but they would not budge: the holes were too small for the pins. Another job to be done.

Next began a three-step deep clean of the guitar body. I was a little sceptical whether I would be able to get all that muck off the instrument, but fortunately for me, I was.

Next, the bridge needed to be taken off. For that the screws holding the bridge down had to removed first. If you hadn’t noticed, look at the photograph of the bridge again.

There are two plastic dots flanking the six bridgepins. Hiding under those are screws, put in there by the manufacturer in the mistaken belief that these will keep the bridge from lifting. For a period of time they do succeed in their intended work, but when the screws fail to hold out against the tension of the strings, they not only rip the bridge off but also a good section of the top too.

Why manufacturers insist on continuing with decades old thought and technology doesn’t fail to irk me, and is, in fact, one of my favourite rants!

With the screws removed, I tried to get my knives to go under it, but it was impossible. So, I pulled out the hair dryer and put it to work. Even with that heat, the knives refused to go under. Each time I tried to force the issue, there was a strange crackling sound.

The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that at some point in the life of the instrument, the bridge had come off and it had been reglued using epoxy resin. What sealed the argument was this stain.

It was a glue residue, left behind in the clean up after a bridge reglue. While it is very apparent on painted and sunburst finishes, it is harder to spot on natural colour finishes.

With the bridge refusing to move, I decided that it was best to let sleeping dogs lie. The little that it was lifting would not increase, at least for some time, I surmised.

What remained were superficial jobs. I began with reaming the bridgepin holes so that the pins sat better in them.

The tansducer pickup was stuck in place so that it didn’t flop around and a second cleaning of the body was undertaken to remove whatever fingerprints the guitar may have collected till now.

Then the fretboard was cleaned and the fretwires shone up, and the fretboard was given some love and a drink of oil.

When everything was squeaky clean, I proceeded to put on these strings on it

However, the action was not very desirable, though not unplayable by any standards.

I leave you with some final images

P.S.: The little plastic packet you see stuck on the shoulder of the guitar contains the screws that came out of it.