This guitar had quite noticeable fret buzz around the 9th fret. The owner thought it might need some fret levelling.
I spotted that the action was very low for an acoustic guitar, but also that there was a marked S shape in the neck, with the dip being between the 5th fret and the neck/body joint. Truss rod adjustments improved the neck relief considerably, but lowered the action even more. I temporarily shimmed the saddle, to raise the action and then confirmed that the fret buzz was fixed. At this point the saddle was sitting on far too many shims, so after consulting with the owner, I ordered a new saddle, which I then shaved to the correct height for a reasonable action with no fret buzz. Problem solved.
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This early 70s P bass was producing a very weak and very noisy signal. The challenges started with simply trying to get the scratchplate off - the screws were choked with rust, both in their threads and heads.
The wiring had been replaced at some point, but had been done by someone without great soldering skills - there were some poor solder joints in there. The pickup also had a problem - one coil showed very high DC resistance when measured on the multi-meter. I don't have the experience or equipment to start digging into a vintage pickup, so after consulting the owner I sent it off to Armstrong pickups in Kent. They rewound the coil and got it back to me in just over a week. I replaced all the wiring again and put the bass back together. All the scratchplate screws had a cleanup, apart from three that I replaced with new, aged screws. This bass had obviously had a life, with quite a bit of natural wear, and also some corrosion to metal parts. It was very satisfying to see it working properly again. A customer brought a Harley Benton acoustic guitar for setup. He hadn't played much for a few years, but his son had just started to learn guitar and he wanted to be able to strum along with the youngster. He wanted a bit of ease-of-use out of the Harley Benton. I gave the truss rod a tweak, shaved down the saddle and took some material out of the nut slots to give a comfortable playing action.
Its been a while since I put anything in this blog. But then it was 2020 and all that entailed. Lets all hope that 2021 brings some improvement.......
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