Anyone had a set up from J White Guitars in Ash Vale?

Moe_Zambeek

I would find a quality luthier / tech who can do a proper job. These can be fixed and fixed well by someone appropriately skilled - there are some on here who could do an amazing job and let you love these instruments again.

EduardoFalicioni

Moe_Zambeek said:

I would find a quality luthier / tech who can do a proper job. These can be fixed and fixed well by someone appropriately skilled - there are some on here who could do an amazing job and let you love these instruments again.

I welcome any recommendations - they might just be guitars but I’m devastated, and also feel a terrible sense of guilt to my Mrs, for ever taking them to be butchered. 

Lewy

EduardoFalicioni said:

Moe_Zambeek said:

I would find a quality luthier / tech who can do a proper job. These can be fixed and fixed well by someone appropriately skilled - there are some on here who could do an amazing job and let you love these instruments again.

I welcome any recommendations - they might just be guitars but I’m devastated, and also feel a terrible sense of guilt to my Mrs, for ever taking them to be butchered. 

You'll have a 6 month or so wait before he can do it (this is a good sign) but Dave Smart is who I use for everything now. He's Oxford based. I also hear consistently good things about Richard Pilkington in Reading. 

mark123

EduardoFalicioni said:

Moe_Zambeek said:

I would find a quality luthier / tech who can do a proper job. These can be fixed and fixed well by someone appropriately skilled - there are some on here who could do an amazing job and let you love these instruments again.

I welcome any recommendations - they might just be guitars but I’m devastated, and also feel a terrible sense of guilt to my Mrs, for ever taking them to be butchered. 

Got to be Feline guitars to sort this out.

Lewy

J White used to do the repairs and setups for Guitar Village in Farnham. I wonder if he still does......

Moe_Zambeek

Assuming you are down south (relative to me) I’d recommend @FelineGuitars  Monty’s guitars,@IvisonGuitars, if you’re further north Probett guitars in Yorks, Haydn Williams has a good rep in the NW / Carlisle way.

Not sure if all are still doing repairs but most do.

EduardoFalicioni

Thank you for the recommendations all. One thing I’ve encountered so far, is that those I have approached, don’t want to touch other people’s cock ups  

richman6100

Another vote for Feline guitars. They've worked on three of my guitars - one Gibson, two Fenders - and I own one of their Lion models. All have been faultless experiences. Very nice chaps to boot.

Philly_Q

I'm no luthier, but I think it would be quite a task to sort out this mess.  Removing those buried inserts wouldn't be easy, then all the holes would have to be plugged (not just a glue-and-matchsticks job) and accurately re-drilled.

I'm sorry to see what a mess they've made.  I installed neck inserts on one of my guitars and I will say it's not easy fitting them into hard maple, but that's not defending these guys, they're supposed to be professionals.

Seziertisch

Two things:

1. Get it repaired. Seeing as Monty’s insert kit was involved I would contact Monty’s directly and try and have them do it and provide a report of what they had to do to put things right.

2. Then open a small claim against them for, at the very least, whatever you paid plus what you had to pay to get it fixed. https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/legal-system/small-claims/making-a-small-claim/

Also, based on that one photo I don’t think your guitars are irreparably damaged. In terms of loss of value, you likely devalued them by deciding to install the inserts, regardless of the quality of the work,  purely because they are on longer “stock”.

PAL

If you have a new guitar then I would set it up yourself because you know what you want and sometimes it's a case of taking  your time and gradually tweaking it until it's right for you. A set up on a new guitar amounts to truss rod adjustment , intonation , string height, pickup height , check neck screws ( if it's bolt on ) strap button screws. Polish Frets.
We are dealing with wood so any adjustments need to settle in so a set up may change over a few months or even days so
you wouldn't want go back every time you feel something needs a tweak !
Is £90 expensive no it's what he charges and it's up to you if you want to pay it. I'd rather spend £90 on strings !
Hope this helps.

springhead

That’s shocking but they can be fixed. As others have said Feline would be a good place to go. They installed Monty’s inserts into a partscaster build for me and that was a roasted maple neck which is not easy to work with. Flawless work as always with them. Good luck. 

Brio

As the OP I've got to say I'm so glad I asked on here before taking a guitar to him.

Offset

Well based on my own experience I was expecting this to be bad - but this is absolutely beyond the pale.  I got off lightly; my guitars were nowhere near this sort of value and the work wasn't as intrusive as this.  In fact it was so straightforward (new nuts, setups) you'd have thought it impossible to fuck up, but fuck it up he did.  An altogether unpleasant (and expensive) experience.

That 'work' on those lovely guitars is nothing short of butchery - and the arrogance displayed both before and after the work was undertaken fits in with my experience.

I really hope you get your instruments sorted and can love them again.  As others have said, you'll get plenty of sound and trusted recommendations on here.

Good luck and I look forward to seeing them repaired and back to their former glory.

Boromedic

That's awful, I'd be seeking all possible avenues of compensation to get the value of the work plus the value of sorting it out paid back to me. Them pictures are pretty much cut and dried, please show us the other work, I'm more than interested. 

Feline is my go to and I'm sure Jon would make them spot on. For those who always chime in on these threads with you should learn to do this yourself talk, I can set a guitar up as well as the next person. Jon's work is next level and beyond me, that's why it's worth the money Vs the time I would spend. For me it's valuing my own time over the mastery of someone who's learnt his craft and will do a better job than me no matter how long I took.

andy_k

Reading through this, and seeing some of the pics posted, I feel quite bemused really.
The 'luthier' seems to display a lot of the traits and eccentricities that long established repair guys have, plus a lot of arrogance on top.
I am pretty shocked by what the guy has done to these guitars, and there is a level of amateurishness ( if that is a word ) about the work.
It looks to me like the neck, after these inserts have been installed, could not even then be fitted to the guitar due to the amount of variance in the pitches of the screws.
Adding up the cost to repair all three guitars, if done correctly, could well exceed anything that a small claims court could recover, and as these guitars have sentimental, as well as real value, which is considerable, it is only right that the 'luthier' in question should bear ALL the cost of putting it right.
His responses seem to display a real ignorance of the issues here, which brings into question some of the positive reviews really, something seems really 'off'.
I don't think these 'mods', if done correctly are devaluing the instruments, as they have been done in part out of necessity, ( pickup mountings becoming stripped ) and as upgrades to allow for multiple adjustments ( neck bolts ), and possibly even tonal reasons ( what does Monty say about the reasons for fitting them? ), but they have obviously been done badly here, and fixing the issues sympathetically will be difficult and expensive.
If they were my instruments, I would get them done, one at a time, by somebody with a very good reputation, and would try to reclaim some of the costs via the courts, but wouldn't be expecting it to be fully covered.
Perhaps larger diameter bushes could be installed to correct the faults?, which would also at least hide some of the damage done.
Terrible story really.

Seziertisch

andy_k said:

Reading through this, and seeing some of the pics posted, I feel quite bemused really.
The 'luthier' seems to display a lot of the traits and eccentricities that long established repair guys have, plus a lot of arrogance on top.
I am pretty shocked by what the guy has done to these guitars, and there is a level of amateurishness ( if that is a word ) about the work.
It looks to me like the neck, after these inserts have been installed, could not even then be fitted to the guitar due to the amount of variance in the pitches of the screws.
Adding up the cost to repair all three guitars, if done correctly, could well exceed anything that a small claims court could recover, and as these guitars have sentimental, as well as real value, which is considerable, it is only right that the 'luthier' in question should bear ALL the cost of putting it right.
His responses seem to display a real ignorance of the issues here, which brings into question some of the positive reviews really, something seems really 'off'.
I don't think these 'mods', if done correctly are devaluing the instruments, as they have been done in part out of necessity, ( pickup mountings becoming stripped ) and as upgrades to allow for multiple adjustments ( neck bolts ), and possibly even tonal reasons ( what does Monty say about the reasons for fitting them? ), but they have obviously been done badly here, and fixing the issues sympathetically will be difficult and expensive.
If they were my instruments, I would get them done, one at a time, by somebody with a very good reputation, and would try to reclaim some of the costs via the courts, but wouldn't be expecting it to be fully covered.
Perhaps larger diameter bushes could be installed to correct the faults?, which would also at least hide some of the damage done.
Terrible story really.

https://nectite.com/faq-about-threaded-inserts/

The M5 kit from Nectite would possibly mean that no filling needs to even be done as the bushings are that bit bigger than the M4 size (which is presumably the size the Monty’s are)

timmypix

At least this thread is now showing up as the second Google result when you search for "J White guitars", so hopefully that'll have some impact for even non-TFB members considering using him.

Lewy

Seeing as we're in full disclosure mode, here's my experiences. First one was maybe 15 years ago, a refret on a 1963 SG and he did a perfect job.

A couple of years ago I took an acoustic to him which needed some attention. The top was bellying (no big deal in and off itself) but the bridge saddle was tipping forward and the bridge itself was starting to crack as a result. I'd had a quick fix done to stabilise the bridge crack but wanted a proper job. The guitar also needed a refret so I figured I'd take it back to white. 

In the "consultation" basically him and his son dismissed any of the set up specifications I tried to ask for, and badgered me into accepting that the only solution was to permanently install a JLD Bridge Doctor to remove the belly in the top, and then install a second larger bridgeplate over the existing one. In his arrogant way, he described the construction of the guitar as "well intentioned". This was an instrument made by a highly regarded small workshop in the 70s, very sought out by bluegrass players who know what a dreadnought should sound like. I SHOULD HAVE WALKED OUT THERE AND THEN and I know that but they were very persuasive and so I agreed. 

When I collected the guitar the fret work had been done very well and I could see that the geometry of the guitar had returned to a better place. But giving it more of a play when I got it home, it sounded pretty shit. Really compressed and no punch, and much less volume. Essentially the entire character of the guitar had been destroyed. After some more research I discovered that this was an inevitable outcome of installing a Bridge Doctor and he really should have told me. But I think the problem is he doesn't know, or care. 

I ended up having another repairer basically take the Bridge Doctor and second bridge plate out because I figured I'd rather have it sound like it did before even if it was going to implode at some point rather than have it unusable and taking up space. I couldn't sell it in good conscience as it was after the "work".

Hence my comment earlier that if he was convenient, he'd be ok for some jobs but not for anything special. I can't fault the fretwork he did, but for anything more, hard pass.

ps. It hasn't imploded.

Offset

...and yet this would suggest he does sometimes know what he's doing.  It's very weird.

https://reverb.com/item/66706936-j-white-guitar-workshops-eg2-2000-trans-red?utm_source=rev-ios-app&utm_medium=ios-share&utm_campaign=listing&utm_content=66706936