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You got that right. I had to refret a guitar TWICE last year because I was angry (at something else) the first time and did such a crap job I had to start from scratch. I needed to pull the frets, replane the fingerboard, and then refret it once my mind was clear and calm. Much better the second time.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

After a long hiatus filled with other projects, I cleaned off the electronics bench and pulled out the Princeton Reverb project I started a couple years ago. It's taking a while to familiarize myself with it again and find the various parts and pieces. Poking around Rob Robinette's PR page, I decided to add a couple mods to the build.

Very cool Dan! I just completed my third amp in about 4 months and I have enjoyed the hell out of it. Keep us posted on your progress please?

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Will do, hoping going public both here and on TDPRI's Shock Brothers will keep me at it. This is my fourth project. The first three were a MicroChamp and MicroBassman (both Rob Robinette attenuated versions), and a Harmony H191 that I reverse engineered from an eBay buy.

Very cool you are way ahead of me. I went with StewMac kits (Mojotone) mostly for the documentation aka crutch and it all worked out OK. My Champ worked great the first time. The 15 watt Tweed had a misplaced jumper under..... under the mounted board. So I had to make a tool to grab it and then replace it with a flying jumper topside. Not ideal but it works. The Marshall was a good time too except I melted one of the input jacks but that was my only mistake.

I've learned a lot such as filter caps and draining them with a snuffer stick, rubber soled shoes, one had behind my back type stuff. It was all new to me.

Get this long ago when I was still in college I worked full time at a defense contractor who wanted me to supervise the people assembling some NASA stuff that went into space. So I got sent to NASA soldering school to learn how to do DoD and NASA soldering so I could QC the production of the people I supervised. I never did any soldering except for jacks on guitars after that until now and I really enjoy it.

As soon as some of these places get some transformers back in stock I may build two more Champs one for upstairs and one as a gift for a friend.

There is nothing like plugging into a point to point amp you made yourself and enjoying the great tone.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Just getting settled in, cleaning, calibrating and re-arranging tools. My tools are more traveled:
Started in Corning, NY in 2009
shipped to Fairbanks, Alaska in 2012
shipped back to Corning, NY in 2015
shipped to Farmville, VA in 2015
shipped to Palmetto, FL in 2019
bought a house and moved across town- hopefully that was the final move.

I've got everything set up the way I want. However, in 2020 I suddenly lost central vision in my right eye. Gradually it moved to my left eye as well. Turns out I have a mitochondrial disorder called Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy mutation 14484. It is incredibly rare, in fact you are more likely to win the lottery or get struck by lightening by a factor of 10- lucky me. I do still have good peripheral vision as well as some wearable VR magnification technology to help see on the way. That's the good and the bad news. The best news is that I'll be building full time from now on. No more corporate America! I've spent the past few weeks making visual aids for organization and organizing everything in my shop to a tee. Over the next few weeks I should be stringing up the first guitar since all of this happened. I'm definitely looking forward to that.

Good luck, Mr. Holliday!

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Ready to start final prep and finishing on a X braced O size guitar. Pretty traditional build techniques for me. No CF. It is Koa and sitka.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

My torrified adventure fitted with a simple rosette.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Resetting a neck on a Yamaha 12-string. These ones are tough. As you can see the fret doesn't match up with the pocket and they glue every face of the joint including the back of the tail and the cheeks against the sides. Ultimately decided to remove the FB extension and 5 minutes later it was off.

With the cold weather, I've been getting lots of odds and ends done in the shop. Getting my Howard's Total Vise system in place has been a major focus though. I have a couple of mount points in the shop--one on my bench and one on a Stew Mac pedestal, where I can now quickly and easily mount most of my vises, while keeping them out of the way when I'm not using them. The #7 guitar repair vise is pretty incredible. It can securely, but gently, grab about anything on a guitar. The mounting system lets me put my LMI vacuum holder, my old Versa Vise, my bench vise and my pattern makers vise anywhere I want them, and very easily. I can move the Stew Mac pedestal anywhere in the shop easily. I'll undoubtedly find more uses. But suffice it to say, this is a great system for a tiny shop. Sorry about the pics--I know they're not great. No affiliation with Howard's except that I'm really impressed with his products and his customer service.

It's pretty unique to find a company that caters to gunsmiths, bow hunters, luthiers, carvers, transmission shops and welders....

Dave

Those Howard vices look really really cool. Would solve a couple issues I have with my current work holding setup.

An rare bird in the shop. The owner tells me there were only 25 or so of these made back in the mid 50s. This one was sent back to the manufacturer for a factory refinish in the 90s. That nitro is now beautifully aged in, still glossy but sinking into the soft grain lines of the spruce.






Truss rod adjustment is at the body end of the neck. So you gotta make one of these:

Wow! 70 year old archtop looks amazing!

Great vice set up there too.

I was only familiar with Maton flattops... Super nice archtop! Hubba-hubba. Josh, you are lucky duck!

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Chris, Maton was founded the same year as Fender (1946) and since then they’ve built just about every kind of guitar - flattops, archtops, electrics, basses and both student-grade and more serious classical guitars. For many years, particularly in the 60s, they were as known for their electric guitars as anything else. This one sold at auction for a fortune in recent years - George Harrison had used it for a time in the early days of the Beatles:



They made many different models of electric over the years, one of the most collectible is the FyrByrd from the early 60s:


Most of these were sold domestically or into the United Kingdom. Maton continued making very high quality electric guitars until just a few years ago. Now it’s mainly flattops.

I won’t spam the forum with more Maton history but suffice to say I see as many Matons in my day to day any other brand - there was (and is) a significant sense of national pride for many musicians here that they can buy and play a high quality Australian-made guitar.

Beautiful archtop--I like the double decker peghead overlay a lot. How does it sound?

Dave

Its owner currently has it set up with 10-46 roundwounds and it sounds nice as is, crisp and well balanced. But my impression is that it really needs a heavier set of flatwounds to unlock its full potential.

Just finished an interesting project that is a bit out of the ordinary...
This one is a 30" scale 6-String "Bass" guitar inspired by the Fender VI.
The body is Ash, and the pickguard is flush-mounted Peruvian Walnut.
I used a Schaller Megaswitch-P to provide for some interesting passive tonal options.
The bridge is a standard Fender 55mm through-body, using 24-84 VI strings from Daddario.
Cheers!
Rob

One more to share from this winter's commissions...
This one is interesting due to the story on the top and back woods.
I was approached by a fellow last fall who had taken some guitar building lessons from well-known luthier Frank Gay in Edmonton back in the 70's.
He did not continue in the craft, but had been carting around some tonewood he got from Frank for over 50 years...
Rather than sell the wood, he decided to contact me to build something out of it.
The top wood is some amazingly tight Western Red Cedar, and the back and sides are Sycamore - typically used for Flamenco guitars.
He also had a nice rosewood fingerboard blank and a large chunk of H. Mahogany for the neck.
So... this was the result.
The Sycamore was amazingly easy to work with - it bent and sanded easily.
Tonally it is a bit warmer than my Lutz spruce builds, but I expected that.
Cheers!
Rob

I like the way you removed the extension on that Yamaha at the 12th fret. Should make it a lot easier to reglue than doing it at 14. Did you consider making holes for locating pins before removal to help with alignment?

I just had to remove an extension on an older Gibson that would not release. I have done it a couple of times at 14 and reglue can be tricky.

Nice job.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I can just see in my mind's eye Felix playing this beautiful bass next to Leslie West and his Special. It's got a great vintage vibe.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

In some of the old school repair books they say to remove it at the body fret but I see that as a weak spot so if you give it about an inch and a half (the 12th fret on a 14) then you have a more structural body joint. I did not find it necessary to use placement pins because where is was cut trough left a kind of jigsaw puzzle line where it snapped into place. I use West epoxy to glue it back.

There is a website dedicated to vintage yamaha's and neck resets in particular, https://yamahavintagefg.com/vintage-yam ... procedure/ but I think these guitars vary so much it's hard to get it right. In his instructions he said to drill into the 14th fret but then tilt 10deg towards the heel. That's what I did and as you can see in the pic I should have been 10deg toward the tail block. I'm guessing he either means tail when he says heel or this joint is just different.

Completed a new instrument this week, a koa baritone uke. Link to the build thread and a few pics below:

viewtopic.php?f=10128&t=54119







Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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Gimme sugar!

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince