Big Changes Coming! New Web Site

The BIG News......

We are slowly working on a new web site and blog.

Even bigger news is that the web store will be open soon.

Not only some of your favorite brands of guitar parts and accessories but selections from

35 years of guitar parts collecting will be coming up for sale too.

From now on please visit us at

Brawer.com

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We want to say thank you for bringing in all your guitars for us to work on.

We are so grateful to be able to do what we love and look forward to more in 2011.

Have a safe, happy and healthy New Year,

Gary, Liz, Allen, Fern, Tim, Leo, Kirkwood, Glade, Trevor, Rob, Robert,

And of course the Bassets, Primo aka "Killer" and  Jo-Jo aka "Bonkers"

Copper Shielding a Stratocaster

There are many ways to shield and ground a guitar.  I could write a book, (hummmmmm) Or did I..
I'll get into more details in the future.  For now here is a nice photo of a copper shielded guitar and pickguard.  Notice the seams are soldiered and it is burnished down in the cavity very clean and tight.   There is a wire connecting the copper to the jack ground.
The most important thing about any shielding job is to ground what ever material you use as a shield otherwise it will act as an antenna and the noise you are trying to keep out.
I can't tell you how many times I have seen aluminum foil stuffed into the cavity of a guitar.  If the guitar is luckily enough to even work it is very noisy.  Another odd thing I see more often than that you would think is manufactures using shielding paint in pickup and tremolo cavities, sometimes even for cosmetic reasons with no ground attached.  The pickups are a set of  J. M. Rolph very authentic vintage Stratocaster pickups.  We are also installing his proprietary noise reduction system (not in the photo)

Fantasy Studio, James, and his mid size amp collection, Great or Greatest amps.

Gary, James and his flock.

     I recently went on a house call to the beautiful Fantasy Recording Studio to do some guitar work.   I always enjoy stopping there for work.  While I was there I spent some time visiting my old pal James.  Not only does he keep all that cool recording gear in tip-top shape he has a little collection of amps the studio keeps around for artists to rent.  Here is a not so good photo of a few of the amps....and us.
     There was a serious case of amp envy going on.

Upgrading a Floyd Rose Bridge

     Our friend Adam at Floyd Upgrades has made a great go of it building and selling custom made components to upgrade your Floyd Rose Tremolo.   He makes things like trem sustain blocks made of brass and titanium,  titanium stringlock inserts, custom trem arms, saddles and more.
     Here we are swapping out the stock trem block with one of the brass sustain blocks.  Some things make more of a tonal difference than others.  We defiantly got a thicker fuller sound with this brass block.  Check out his website Floyd Upgrades and see if you get inspired.  We can help you decide and put it all together.

Here you can see the difference of the 2 blocks

Bits and Pieces

All ready to go!

Hopping up a Humbucking Pickups by Adding Wire 7.7K up to 9K

Here is a early patten # Gibson Humbucking Pickup, very similar 

if not exactly the same as an actual  PAF.  

Typical DC resistance on something like this is between 7K and 8K.

In short, the larger the resistance the more output, Midrange and Fatter the tone.

In exchange for that you have less clarity and high end.

I will get into winding and magnetics in a later post.

We wanted to turn this average 7.4k pickup into one of those rare higher output 9K's

Maybe a little muddy for the neck but a great fat sounding bridge pickup.

Taking the pickup apart and getting the tape off without damaging the coil is the tricky part.

Then splice on some of the same type of magnetic wire and wind it up.

Oddly enough on neck pickups we have removed coil wire to make the pickup cleaner and brighter.

Adding a 22nd Fret to a 21 Fret Strat, Getting to "D" on the high E

This is a trick we used to do a-lot more back in the days before the 22 fret strat became more the norm.

The hard part is matching the finish on a maple neck.  On a rosewood fingerboard you can hide it even better.

Here is a basic 21 fret vintage style Strat neck.

Removing the 21st fret and adding the wood for the extra fret.

Here is the finished 22nd fret addition.

Alen Whitman on the road with Joe Satriani, As posted on BoingBoing

See the original here on BoingBoing

Rocket to Russia: "Feel 10 - Show 1"

Allen Whitman at 11:53 AM Monday, Nov 8, 2010 

Guest blogger Allen Whitman, is the founding bassist of the instrumental trio The Mermen. He also writes about Internet audio with Jon Luini (Chime Interactive) as The Fezguys. When not on the road he manages Gary Brawer's Stringed Instrument Repair.

Encore (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) 

As bassist for electric guitar icon (and extremely nice person) Joe Satriani on a European tour I thought to regale you, dear Boing Boing reader, with the exploits of an American rock band touring in Russia.

(Dateline: St. Petersburg. Local time: 11pm. Weather: raining and cold.) Despite (or possibly because of) a soundcheck rife with technical challenges, the show in St. Petersburg comes off swimmingly. Though stiffly seated for the first several songs of the set the crowd maniacally rushes the stage as soon as the block-shouldered and packing security agents (complete with tiny coiled earbuds) usher the photographers out of the way.

The rest of the set (a total of two hours and twenty five minutes) is a joy, with audience members singing along to well memorized guitar melodies, head-banging furiously or doing the dark Russian poet thing: standing motionless with a maniacal intensity, a sort of "Feel 10 - Show 1" approach to existentialism. After the show the promoter, resplendent in groovy bling, treats us to dinner at his Italian restaurant nearby, and I marvel as our waitress (there is no other word that can most accurately be used to describe her) and our cook bicker animatedly but quietly into the face of each other about opening wine bottles and the timing of serving our meals. The food is very good but I can't finish the mountain of spaghetti carbonara on the plate. It's 1am.

During the day prior to soundcheck a group of us walk to The Hermitage, a world destination museum with over 1000 rooms and 3,000,000 paintings (not all of which are open or on display at any given time) but, as it's a holiday of some kind here (the name of which we're unable to divine) the lines across the wind-swept central square are pushing the length of three football fields. Russians apparently are very good at queuing and not always for a good purpose. Naturally we walk right up and offer tickets to those in front* to let us take their place, to no avail. We return to the hotel only slightly disappointed. Like traveling to Paris, having one day for the Louvre and, it being a Tuesday, the museum is closed, I name the experience of not getting in to The Hermitage as proof that I will return. For a transcendent cinematic experience of this place see the movie, Russian Ark with the subtitles on.

The cook (L) and the waitress (social archetypes of a Higher Order) are obviously interpreting a request with different levels of understanding which they will argue about momentarily. (Sardinia Restaurant - St. Petersburg) 

Lindsay Long (chief logistician and tour humanist) displays her fabulous Russian tchoches 

Our voluable St. Petersburg promoter (L) w/ his friend and his cook. "Slade? Uriah Heep? Elton John? Those are all my shows!" (Sardinia Restaurant - St. Petersburg) 

Catering is uniformed! Arthur Rosato (R) - (former ass't. to Bob Dylan for ten years and now our overqualified drum tech) chooses wisely. 

Tech room graffiti, St. Petersburg style (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) 

Thank the Maker for these signs posted by our crew. We'd still be wandering the halls, Spinal Tap style, otherwise (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) 

Mike Keneally (L) keyboardist extraordinaire and Mike Manning, Joe's longtime stage right guitar tech suss out yet more audio anomalies during soundcheck. (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) 

Galen Henson (L), rhythm guitar & tour manager and Jason Cook, stage left tech, attempt to root out sonic gremlins from the Kremlin during soundcheck. (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) 

The red phone, backstage (St. Petersburg - BKZ Oktyaborsky) 

One last shot from St. Petersburg -- walking down the street we notice this advert which we immediately examine for anatomical accuracy.

We do Dulcimers, well Trevor did.

Not only did the end of the peghead break off but it also used old style friction, or violin tuning heads. The client asked us to repair the peghead and if we could improve on the tuners while we were at it.

We happened to have some tuners that Schaller made for Ovation slot peghead guitars.

The difference being that the hole for the string it not at the end of the tuning post but in the middle.

To repair the wood we squared up the rough, splintered break so we could have a clean glue joint with a new piece. The new piece is also not open at the end, the space to string up the last string was made by chiseling out a hollow. This makes the piece we are adding stronger.

Also notice the ferrule that the end of the tuner post fits into.  This piece you would normally see on the top of a guitar peghead. It supports the tuner and keeps it from tilting forward.  In the same respect here it supports the end of the tuning post and keeps it from leaning forward.  This is a very important addition in that it keeps the tuner post square to the housing and gear for smooth operation.

This could be the easiest dulcimer to tune anywhere.

What I believe is a 1965 Supro Martinique, with a pickup problem

Back together ready for strings

This is a very unique pickups system built right into the bridge and bridge base of the guitar.  Looking at the bottom of the bridge base you can see 2 small squares with a small hole in the center.  These are 2 coils wound with the same thin pickup wire you would see on a strat or humbucking pickup, just a little smaller.

The 2 coils are connected in series with each other, wax holds it all in place and a single conductor shielded wire comes out to be connected to the controls.  Coming out from the bottom of the bridge top are 2 magnetic rods that when assembled to the bridge base slip freely through the 2 holes in the coils.  When the bridge vibrates, the magnets vibrate and breaks the field that the coils make and out comes the sound.

        One of the coils were broken, we had to melt the wax that held it all in place, rebuild and rewind the coil and get it all back in there.

There was also an intermittent short on the bridge side magnetic pickup.  I took off the cover and saw a loose coil wrap hanging our over the coil.  When you press down on the cover it shorted out.  Lucky enough it did not break.  I carefully tapped and waxed it to protect the wire and solidered the cover back on.  Worked great!

The 3 pairs of controls are unique, the neck pickups has a standard volume and tone control, the pickup near the bridge has a volume control and a bass cut for a tone control.  As you turn down that tone control the sound gets thinner.  This is what you see on many G & L guitars with passive tone circuitry, one treble cut and one bass cut.  The pickup that is built into the bridge has a standard volume and tone.  This pickup sounds best and is very usable with some of the tone rolled off.  The down side is there is no pickup blending.  At this point we just wanted to get the guitar to works as it would of stock.  Next time in I would recommend adding a way to blend combinations of the pickups, converting the magnetic pickup near the bridge to a standard vol and tone control and changing the values of the bridge pickup controls to give a little less attenuation.  There is a series wiring trick that I bet would work very well with this guitar.  That will be for next time.  Very glad to get it up and running in its stock configuration.

Empty Bobbin with the old coil wire removed

Funny movie on making a circle

Lining up the back of the coil form

Winding, slow and careful not to pull apart the coil

Ready to go back in

Those are the bottom of the 2 coils held in with wax

The 2 holes in the bridge line up with the center of the coils
The 2 pins coming out of the bottom of the bridge top are actually magnets