Guitar Nerds Anonymous

Been holding off installing my new Tele bridge pickup just because I can't bear to snip off yet another set of nearly new strings. ended up taking the neck off last time to avoid it being three sets in two days and i'm not doing that again either. Just going to leave it until I have a clear day to myself at some point in the next month or so.

Do you have to cut them off? Can't you just undo them and remove them from the tuner end?

I fricken love those StewMac videos. It's like guitar nerd slow TV.

It's like Guitar tech ASMR.

Possible I suppose but fiddly as all fuck with modern style tuners, plus I snap the excess off flush with the tuning peg so there's no margin for error.

Been thinking about getting vintage style slotted tuners for this among other less practical reasons.

Top strings are a bit of a pain in the arse on vintage tuners... I'm a super shit guitar tech tho'...

Thanks for the recommendation for JPF amps all those years back. I got my Holy Grail fixed for £28 with less than 24 hour turnaround.

Has anyone used Stairway to Kevin, the guitar service guy based at the same place? My Breezysound has some fucked wiring and I can't even remember if I have a soldering iron, let alone whether I can trust myself to sort it.

No but that's a great name!

Such a good name, makes me want to go there. nice website too

https://www.stairwaytokevin.com

Sweet website. Decent prices too. Perhaps i'll give him my tele to sort out rather than spend days of trial and error myself.

Those prices are fantastic, anyone ever used him?

I've met Kevin and co-worker when visiting JPF though not tried them, seem like good folks, nice clean set up, I'd say deffo safe hands for fucked wiring...

The other Denmark St guy IMO is Andy Gibson. He fixed a twisted bass neck for me by doing a partial de-fret, planing the board and then putting the same frets back, rather remarkable and only £80. Not sure where his workshop is at the moment though... upstairs at Sixty Sixty Sounds, possibly.

I'm doing a guitar making course at London Met at the moment. Photos might be of interest to some of you nerds. Click on the "luthiery" story at the top: https://www.instagram.com/mattsparkes/

Not been to Demmark St for ages. I understand that the north side got routed. I know that Hackett's inventory went over to Regent Sounds. Think he's just going to exist online from here on. Shame.

Of course I meant Vintage & Rare not Regent Sounds.

Did I? WTF happened to Vintage and Rare? Did it move to Bath?

Want this bad. https://reverb.com/uk/item/19194561-fender-deluxe-reverb-1980-silver

Nice! What course is that?

Guitar building evening course at the Met. Should take me about a year to make my 00 "Martin".

Lush!

I'm going to sell my THR10 and get a proper amp, thinking a cheaper fender combo, maybe a Princeton or a hotrod deville - any tips? under £400 single driver small footprint big enough to sit on will never be used for gigs

I've got a Fender Champ which is tiny but ridiculously loud.

I love it.

I completed that course about six years ago.
It's a fantastic course, Nick (the main tutor) is a lovely bloke. It took me three years to do mine.

If you want to save yourself a lot of time, it would be worth buying a decent plane iron (or whole plane) and sharpen it yourself at home. The ones there are heavily used, and you can't rely on sharpening one and it still being sharp by the next lesson.

Enjoy it - I had a great time and wish I could get the time to go back and build something else!

Edit - sorry, I misread and didn't notice you'd already started, so you probably know more about it than I do! :)

We're able to sharpen a plane, mark it with our names and leave it in a cupboard for our sole use. In theory. I don't know what happens to them when I'm not there.

But I have bought a couple of old #4 planes. One is in serious need of a wire wheel, which I don't have here, and the other has been cleaned up with a glass sheet and lots of sandpaper. I can't seem to get the iron to sit nicely though. But maybe I just need to plane a load of soft pine and just mess around with it, get it fettled.

I'm itching to have a workbench somewhere now. No space at home though, really.

Did you just keep paying to repeat the course until you were finished?

Yes, I paid by the semester for a few years. The 'beginner/intermediate/advanced' classification didn't really mean much - we just had Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday groups.

However, it was a cheaper course at the time. If I were doing it now I'd use their thickness sander to thickness the top, back and sides rather than spend weeks planing them!

I'd also be tempted to get a fretboard pre radiused - that'll save at least a week and it's an extremely unrewarding task. Let me know if you find anywhere in the UK that sells them, otherwise check out stewmac.

You can make electrics in a surprisingly small space once you know how - I build in a 4x4 shed in my garden. It's too small, but having built my acoustic without power tools you get used to those methods compared to every YouTube builder who uses planers, table saws and the rest.

I’m in a flat. If it was just me here I’d just whack a workbench in the living room, but Mrs Sparky already puts up with all my bikes.

It’s an expensive course now so I want to finish in less than three years. Nine semesters would cost lots more than a new Martin now...

Between this and finding Paul Sellers on YouTube I’m itching to do some projects at home.

Loving the guitar course chat. Would love to do something like that but y'know. Had babies instead so I'm no longer able to things I enjoy, have nice stuff or sleep.

@tilover, don't get rid of the practice amp, I just bought one of them and it's really useful for living room level widdles. I have an old Champ as well... used to have two but now just one... and yep for home use 5w of of 6v6 into an efficient 8" speaker is LOUD for home use. I have gigges with just a champ mic'd as well as using alongside another amp but if yr going to play with drums you'll need 20w plus of valve welly i'd say.

I used to play in a band that had all clean guitar tones and even with a fairly wristy and light touch drummer 15w amps would break up trying to be heard over a full kit. We had some little Laney thing, then a Pro Junior, a 60s Ampeg Jet and a few other things before giving in and getting bigger amps. Had Twins and Pro reverbs buy they were way bigger than we needed and are a pain to lug about, ended up with a Cool old Selmer combo and a brownface Vibroverb reissue which was 40w 2x10 and light as a feather. Loved that amp. Stupidly gave it back to record company.

Sorry I'm rambling. I'll look up some s/h stuff for yer.

By the look of it, the owners of some very nice guitars trust him with their kit.

I'll report back after next week I think.