I have spent the last couple of days rescuing guitars that needed some love. The first is a G&L Asat tribute that needed a new nut. I had shimmed it previously but Steve decided that he would like an LSR nut. This is a Fender product and the tribute neck is a 9 inch radius so the LSR is a perfect option in my opinion. For those who may be interested, the Fender string spacing is a bit wider at the nut than G&L so if you have larger fingers, this works very well. It requires widening the nut groove and I used a file to do this. I am extremely happy with the results and here are some before and after pictures. I have not put the screws in yet, but the drills will arrive tomorrow. This thing really plays sweet and I do notice the difference in the string spacing. What G&L projects have you done recently?
Before
After
Now for a non G&L rescue. Our drummer bought a Fender 62 reissue Strat from a pawn shop cheap thinking it was worth quite a bit of money. It was for his son. He brought it to me and it was virtually unplayable. The low E string would not stay on the neck higher up and it had buckets of harmonics coming off it and a tuner could not pick up the fundamental frequency. It had what looks like graphtech saddles on it and the string alignment was way off. This is one where you have to start from scratch and he told me the original saddles were in the case. The screws were all rusted so they were unusable. I ordered new saddles for it.
String alignment
And saddles
I installed the new saddles on Monday and the low E still had harmonics but the string alignment was good. The saddles hat to be too low and the neck needed a shim. I removed the neck and the neck pocket area was all chipped for neck removal and tightening back up. There is evidence that this neck has been overtightened as there is a bit of ski slope on the low E side where the neck is bolted. I decided to continue and shimmed the neck. I now adjusted the saddles again the the low E worked fine. I set everything and this guitar actually plays quite nice. The slight ski slope could be fixed with a fret level. I am not going to do that as it now plays quite well. I suspect that this guitar has never been right for many years as it had been worked on so much. I suspect the lower frets have been relaced by someone who did it right as the frets look new. The bridgeplate has holes in it where the two different saddles from the past have been sitting. Would you waste you time on something like this as it is a true relic and would you buy it??? This one was a tough one to straighten out. Have a great day everyone and I have rescued enough guitars for this week.-- Darwin
Here is the after photo.
. We will be going home on Monday/Tuesday on a late flight. We started off in Shanghai, ( crazy city ) , relaxed for two days in Yangshang lake , did a few day trips and then took the high speed train to Beijing arriving yesterday. The Hutong we are in is about 600 years old and is one the protected list. The whole area we are in has protected Hutongs, but sadly you are correct, most of them have been torn down. The whole country is one giant construction site. I've been taking photos of "chinglish " anywhere I encounter it , there still appears to be some fine examples. I counted about eight or nine guitar stores within about g