Sympathetic guitar repairs

Foster

My awesome POS guitar had stupidly high action and a bridge that was set as low as it could possibly go.



I don't want to do much to this guitar but I wanted the action a bit lower (so it could be measured in mm rather than inches). The only option was to shim the neck!

Now the best thing to do is to get some veneer of wood, preferably angled correctly, sand it down, etc, etc.... Sod that, I'm sticking with the intended character of the thing! Tools should be whatever is lying around and materials should be similar.

Neck is perfectly (well, good enough) shimmed using only a penknife and a fag packet. One day i'll "fix" the nut

Maynehead

Stick a fag butt in that hole in the scratch plate while you're at it, and make it your cignature guitar... 

Phil_aka_Pip

repairs to a sympathetic guitar?

sympathetic repairs to a guitar?

The guitar looks a bit like those things they used to have in Woolworths. Might be worth spending time on if it is of sentimental value and maybe up to a tenner in parts & materials, but not otherwise.

Foster

Phil_aka_Pip said:

repairs to a sympathetic guitar?

sympathetic repairs to a guitar?

The guitar looks a bit like those things they used to have in Woolworths. Might be worth spending time on if it is of sentimental value and maybe up to a tenner in parts & materials, but not otherwise.

Bugger spending money on it! It's lucky to have a change of strings as I had some old ones kicking about 

mbe

If you're looking for sympathy you've come to the wrong place   

jonnyburgo

Ive had similar, the necks always feel kind of hollow, one of mine, an Arbiter iirc had a fretboard like a rope bridge in a gale.

I sold it as "set up for slide", people will buy any old "vintage" shite.

ICBM

Phil_aka_Pip said:

The guitar looks a bit like those things they used to have in Woolworths.

The very same... or at least out of the same factory - Tiesco.

They can usually be made quite good if you can be bothered - not like a modern guitar, but playable and interesting-sounding, the pickups are quite powerful and have a great trashy blues/punk/Jack White tone. Apart from the neck angle, the bridge will usually need moving to get the intonation anywhere near accurate, they’re set too straight across the body - they’re only held down with two screws though, so easy to do. Stripped screws are a problem too, often almost all of them...

But I’ve rebuilt loads of them and always sold them for good money, usually £150-£200 - which is as much a reflection on the cost of the work as any inherent value!

I wouldn’t do the sanded wooden wedge nonsense on a vintage Fender by the way, let alone one of these. Card is a very good shim material, and if you need something thicker then fibreboard - the sort of thing cheap photo frames are made from is ideal - or a simple strip of wood veneer across the end of the pocket, is perfect.

boogieman

A couple of my guitars had strips of old credit card as shims. 

Sassafras

I've got an old Teisco Tele-type thing that used to serve very well for slide guitar.