The Myriad Ways...

..in which people and organizations express their love for Gary may include items suitable for framing.

awwwww.  Imagine what the walls of his garden shed must look like.

Tone Candy

Capacitors.......

Among other things they control how much high end gets cut when you turn down your tone control.  They can also help to equalize the tone of your volume control so your tone will not go to mush when you turn your volume down.

The type and value of a capacitor can go a long way to personalize your guitar's tone.

We have a "Decade Box" that allows you to sample what different capacitors will sound like in your circuit.

More photos and tech info on guitar tone applications soon.

"Orange Drop" capacitors & others

New old stock "NOS" Black Cat capacitors. Note cool old box!

NOS Black Cat capacitors, inside same box

Very cool vintage Russian paper in oil (PIO), Teflon & other NOS capacitors

Many were made for Russian Military!!  More paper in oil (PIO), Teflon & other NOS capacitors

Mmmmm...tone candy

Stop by and see what you might be missing from your tone controls!!!

what's going on...

...busy busy busy...

        

Tim Laminates A Flying V

Gary Wrangles A Sustainer Install

Trevor Realigns Bridge Studs

Glade Reattaches An Ovation Rosette

another reason to love your job

Here is Trevor holding two instruments that he is full of love for.

We apologize for ending that sentence with a preposition.

Space is the Place

for bass!

Here Allen is displaying a lovingly custom painted bass. Originally a drab polyester matte-finished bottom of the line Yamaha five string bolt-on and purchased for a song, it's been transformed into the Space Bass, and ready for the world.

paint by: Nicholas del Drago of Vicious Cycles

Our customers like to provide us with information...

...and sometimes this may take the form of a long and involved treatise.

We like to avoid ambiguity.  Who doesn't?  Keep those cards and letters coming!

establishing the scene:

Somebody's got a funky old Fender Musicmaster, well loved and well played, and, late one night maybe everything starts to get to them, the war, their relationship, the way people don't use their turn signals while talking on their cell phones without a headset...and they snap.  They grab a screwdriver and start to repeatedly slam the business end into the red paint on the back of the blameless guitar, again and again.  And after they're done, they play tic-tac-toe. They win.

In the right hands a guitar can express so many facets of a person's character.

Fun stuff at the shop, gluing fingerboards, laminating necks.......

Glued carved and ready for laminate

Tim doing some arm exercises.  That's red hot in there.

Prepped and ready to glue

Many many clamps makes even pressure

See alignment pin

On!

Here are a few in process jobs.  The newish white Gibson Explorer that had a rosewood fingerboard is being rebuilt with an ebony Les Paul Custom style fingerboard.  Along with the large pearl inlays we are putting on black binding to go with the black upcoming finish.  The Gibson V neck has been broken twice.  One great way to fix the neck is to cut away along the break, then laminate nice long grain wood along the area and re-carve the neck back to it's original contour.  Tim is bending the lamination over a wood bender Gary inherited from a luthier he was learning from back around 1976.  Gary was building dulcimers and bending walnut on it for the sides.  We will show the 2 guitars a little more as they get finished.

a Tele fiesta!

Jim Campilongo (noted tele player and sideman for Norah Jones & Martha Wainwright) has been friends with Gary for decades. Here he's testing out a couple of prototype Teles (sent to him by Fender, matching Jim's original 1959 Tele - unique for, among other things, being the only year strings could be threaded through the back edge of the bridge as opposed to all the other years' Teles which thread strings through the body) as Gary removed the treble bleed capacitor and switches the tone control capacitor (Jim favors paper and foil .05). We also cut down the bridge height screws so they do not stick up above the saddle to keep from cutting your palm, and did some slight setup work. The twang is in the house!

bringing the diagnostic

Here Gary is sending signal from Bruce Cockburn's green Linda Manzer guitar to a small ProTools desk (kept upstairs just for small emergencies like these) to test input line level signal. Bruce has been at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley recording an album and the staff engineer suggested our little shop to suss out unwanted noise in the guitar pickup's output.

That Metal Show, with love......

My wife and I are big fans of the weekly talk show on VH-1 Classic, "That Metal Show." The show is hosted by Eddie Trunk with Jim Florentine and Don Jamieson. The show moniker is "All things hard rock & heavy metal." They have alot of knowledge and opinions on the subject and in my opinion deliver with enough guests and sarcasm to keep the interest high. It has been on the air about 4 years and has gotten so much attention that this September the show goes from 30 minutes to a full hour. You can also see all of the episodes on-line at VH-1's website. Fernando who runs the shop part time had a gig at a metal-fest and happened to run into Eddie. Fern knowing our love of the show mentioned it to Eddie and they were nice enough to send us some love..... in a text photo....from the show. That's Fern and Billy from Jet Boy in the photo sending their love with Eddie.

ps:

Also check out Torturing Telemarketers by Jim (a Jerky Boys kind of thing aimed at Telemarketers)

Lots of laughing out loud.

Very cool Guitars come out of fun places

Finding my dishwasher on the fritz I check out Yelp for a few recommendations on who to fix this essential item. I went with Bill who on the phone seemed to know what he was talking about. Of course somehow our conversation turned to music and guitars (I wish I had a recording so I know how that happened) and he mentioned a very unique guitar he had, and offered to bring it by. He came by the house and did his dishwasher whispering thing and fixed it right up with the ease of someone who had done it a million times before. Then we proceeded to check out this guitar. Apparently it was made for the original owner who's band played regularly in the Bay Area. The guitar quotes a few older builders (Bigsby, Moserite,etc..) but still has a thing of its own. The case speaks for itself!!!

hell yeah.

Erich W. is picking up his 62 Tele, repaired and ready to go. All guitar cases should have the Sleeping Bag interior option.

nice people are nice

but even nice people might sometimes forget, so here's a reminder:

Always Bring Your Instrument in a CASE!

thank you.

The Standard Gibson Neck Break (part #47)

Here Tim firmly pulls the headstock back as he injects wood glue deep into the separation prior to clamping the pieces back together. The instrument will come back together very well and sound and play identically to how it was prior to the break. Looks painful but the guitar is an inanimate object and does not feel pain.

Ever wonder what a Brazilian Rosewood log looks like?

I was out and about a few Sundays ago and as usual could not resist a garage sale. Turns out the guy had some Brazilian Rosewood left over from a job a while back. He said he was working with another guy who brought the wood in and he milled it up into guitar wood. Unfortunately it was not at garage sale prices, he knew what he had, and it was nice.

That 1/2 log would make a nice supply of acoustic guitar bridges.

sometimes a little diversion

at the shop is necessary. We found this DVD floating around on a shelf. It holds up, too.

the right tool for the right job

Here Trevor (l) and Kirkwood level their prodigious observational and diagnostic powers to fully apprehend the statistical density of a MOOG guitar. Hacksaws really do serve a purpose when working delicately on oddly shaped circuit boards crammed into tiny cavities in solid wood.

We jest, certainly. There is nothing wrong with the circuitry or functionality of this remarkable instrument. We did a set-up for the owner and, upon plugging it in, came on to a swoon of endless cosmic trance sustain, as well as just about any other sound that can possibly be imagined.

Cool stuff!

Making a new bridge for an old Gibson Acoustic

Last month we performed some restoration work on a Gibson L-OO, a small body acoustic guitar from the 20’s-30’s, popular among blues and country artists. Its features include an Adirondack Spruce top, Mahogany back and sides, and Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard and bridge. The headstock has Gibson’s “stencil” logo which can help to date the guitar.

The first photo shows the condition of the bridge when the guitar was brought in to the shop. The back half of the bridge was cracked off straight across through the bridge pin holes and was almost completely un-glued from the top. We found a suitable piece of quarter sawn Madagascar Rosewood, which has similar characteristics to Brazilian, and set out to replicate the original bridge and fabricate a new bone saddle.

There were several challenges in replicating this old bridge. First off, a third of the bridge was missing so the overall depth of the bridge had to be determined by looking at it’s footprint in the top of the guitar where it had been glued on previously. Secondly, the bridge pin spacing has to match up with the existing holes. We use dividers and calipers to determine these measurements and transfer them to the new bridge blank.
Thirdly, the bridge base has to match the radius of the top of the guitar. The L-OO has a fairly pronounced radius of around 25 feet. If you place a straight edge on the top of the guitar and you will notice that the straight edge will rest on center and there will be space on either edge of the top. Many guitars have a slight radius built in to the top to help eliminate the bellying behind the bridge which can occur over time and is caused by string tension.

Luckily this guitar still had great neck angle and the bridge could be made to almost exactly the same height as the original. After the shaping of the bridge was completed and the bridge pin holes drilled out, we made a clamping caul for the interior of the guitar which has the exact opposite or convex radius to the top. Temporary wood bridge pins help locate the bridge during glue-up and for layout purposes.
Once the bridge is glued in place and we have determined the location for a properly intonated saddle, we use our saddle slotting jig to route for a new saddle. The bridge pin holes are reamed to fit the new pins, a new saddle is made, and the guitar is ready to be strung up. After some fine tuning with the set-up we were very pleased with the results and happy to hear this guitar for the first time. It has a wonderful midrange and a lot of volume.

That pesky falling out Tele Jack, The magic Stewart MacDonald tool.

The kit

The Tool

The Prep

The Install

Bracket in place ready for jack and outer cup.

Modern Replacement

Possibly the worst guitar jack plate idea in guitar construction. The Vintage Telecaster jack is held in place by a bent steel plate with a hole in the center for the jack in it. It is jammed in place by it's 4 corners. The jack goes on the inside and the cup goes on the outside with a nut holding it all in place. When the wedged metal plate comes loose so does the jack. Those fine folks at StewMac have come up with a wonderful tool that collapses the loose plate and then holds the plate in the correct position while compressing it back into place. It is the best way I have seen to re-do an original installation. There are some alternatives like a flat square or football jackplate or even the new inset one the screws in from the outside you see here in the photo.