The Official Guitar Thread

That DeoxIT stuff is great. The coil tap in the tone switch works great now. No more scratchiness or neck pickup cutting out. Dosed everything with the stuff, let it set for 10 minutes then took my 90 cfm computer duster and blew everything out.

Single cut guitars with humbuckers have always been my favorite. I bought a Thomann house brand b-stock single cut to serve as a base for modding since I gave away my epi LP sunburst years ago. The Yamaha I have I'd kept for sentimental value and I really never liked playing it, even though there's nothing wrong with it. I'd been looking for a hobby besides gaming I can really geek out on and I think I found it in learning guitar/keys, music theory and gear.

More adventures is amateur guitar repair. China post arrived the other day with my screws. The head is hex and it has no taper but besides that it fits pretty well. Works a lot better than the tin screw someone had stuck in it to keep the pickup cover from popping out. Almost makes me want to finish cleaning it up and restring it but I'm going to wait till I get some cleaners for the fret board, and I'm not going to be playing this one anytime soon. It took me a while of adjusting with the bridge to get the E string to stop buzzing around the 5th-7th fret.



Moved on to trying to fix my acoustic. The last time I tried to restring it the saddle kept popping out so I just put it away since I wasn't really interested in playing at the time. Between then and now I'd lost the original saddle and pegs so I had to order those. I also notice that the saddle slot was rounded out pretty bad, kinda like figure 1. The only solution I could find that made sense online was to square it out with a chisel (fig 2). So I did that and it doesn't looks like it's moved in two weeks, even though it has what looks to me like a slight lean. If it looks too indented when I change the strings next I'll order a saddle that's a little larger and sand it down till it's really snug. Can see where it's chipped from popping out. I don't think the guitar is worth having a pro put a new bridge on it. It's an Alvarez Artist 5020m that they only sold for a couple years in the mid 90's. It was new when I got it.

Had a little jam session with a buddy of mine at work, maybe 40 minutes. Hadn't played with anyone in a couple years, so it was pretty nice to get back to it. Will probably make it a fairly regular Friday thing. Only shitty thing is hauling my bass amp around, need to get a decent little 1x12 or 2 x 10 combo to replace the 1x15.

Does anyone use a looper pedal? I'm looking for something to more easily practice improv/solo parts. I can already record through my computer and play back, but a looper seems like a good Idea. I've also seen people practice using an EHX freeze as a drone that they'll use to practice different scale patterns over.


Did some some basic maintenance on my Yamaha and Alvarez. Both had some dents in the frets and the fret boards were pretty gunked up. The fret boards cleaned up very nicely using the dunlop lemon oil stuff. The kit also came with a body polish that worked pretty well. I had to take some 0000 steel wool to the fret board to get some of it out. I also sanded the divots and dents out of the frets then re crowned & polished them. Didn't end up taking much material off since the fret levels were still fine. All in all a pretty fun experience. They feel much better with new strings and polished frets. I think I want to roll the edges of my new guitar(last image). The jatoba fretboard was pretty thirsty and looks a lot better with some lemon oil it it. It doesn't feel too bad but I want to see what it feels like with rounder edges and a little better fret end work. The frets were already in great shape but I put a little polish on it since I was doing the others.

I've got a few loopers, my favorite for features and ease of use is the Electro Harmonix 720. The Boss loopers are all pretty solid, the only downside is that The RC-1 is a bit clunky to use live but it doesn't sound like that'd be an issue for what you're wanting to use it for