G & L ASAT Semi-Hollow, and a Gretsch with a broken neck

Broken! BluesBoy ASAT The Honey Dipper saga.

Hi'lo humans. If you are reading this, you must have nothing better to do and that makes me sympathize with you. That also helps me try harder, believe it or not. Last week, Jon brought me 2 guitars to fix. The first is his personal teaching guitar, a 2006 semi-hollow G&L Bluesboy ASAT with a white finish, and tortoise shell pickguard. A beautiful guitar that also plays perfectly when under the correct action and the buzzing removed.

Picture from the previous service

This was a very simple service, raising the action a bit, get rid of the buzzing on the strings, and replace the 1/4in jack. After adjusting the truss rod, taking tension off the strings, and putting on a tuner, I began string by string to raise the action. Once that was finished, I noticed a buzz will not go away on the 5th string, and traced it to the saddle spring. The string touches the spring, and thus a buzz will inevitably develop. I let Jon know of this, and maybe a saddle upgrade will be in his future. After the action was raised by .25 - .50, I tried to remove the 1/4in jack nut and ran into the issue of it being stripped by someone overtightening it. Jon told me the guitar jack would loosen up, so I assume he took a socket and a ratchet wrench, and gave it some torque. Well, now I have to figure out how to remove it later because at this point, I wanted to get the guitar playing again.

New string height

Jon has picked up the guitar and seems happy with the new adjustment and jack. I did have to bust out a new ALL PARTS football jack plate because of the above issue. So, to recap:

1. Adjusted height of action .25 - .50mm and reduced/eliminated the buzzing

2. Adjusted truss rod slightly to compensate.

3. Unsoldered old jack, replaced with new jack. Replaced jack plate with ALL PARTS chrome football jack plate.

Now, for the real drama.

Oh hey, that's not so bad

Ohhhh.

So this poor guy. This is a $999.00 Gretsch Honey Dipper with a CAXRxxxxx serial number. Made in China, these were developed in the 1920's during the pre-amplification era when players needed to be louder when playing in Jazz clubs of the time. This has a biscuit cone, and something called a "pump house roof" finish on it. In any case, it is a beautiful instrument, until you take into account the owners sister gave it a little bump on the stand, and it came barreling over striking whatever it hit perfectly to cause this angled snapping off of the headstock. I need to think this one out a little bit as just a epoxy resin fill and clamp is probably not going to keep it from snapping under incredible tension from the 13-52 gauge strings, or the twisting of a truss rod inside the neck.

Updates and such. Life being life...sleep is failing me, and I hate summertime

 The Epiphone is almost finished:

The action came down by almost 3.5mm @ the 12th fret. It is now playable and sounds great. I used 8-32 3in bolts with a few washers to make sure they did not go further into the hell than I wanted and push the threaded inserts out. (Or push them into the fretboard, YIKES)

Beautiful guitar , even if it isn't a very sought after...and very technician friendly. The Japanese are nothing if not resourceful and forward thinking. Frets were polished and crowned lightly, since they are already .60-.82mm and the owner does not want to pay for a re-fret. I polished the headstock and the tuners. It looks like it is a few years old instead of 50. I will fine tune the action, and now that the truss rod is unfrozen I can add a little tension and it will play great.

I hate the fact summer is coming. I really do not care about the temperature outside anymore, but I prefer to be mildly cold and heat up, than sweating and have to cool off. Also, the temperature and humidity makes sleep a bit harder, and the fact that I am going through another used portable AC unit, I will have to buy another one.

Update: This guitar is finished. I played it for a half hour yesterday and I must say it has a tremendous voice. The smaller string gauge does affect the tone, obviously, but I think that in this case it is justified while the neck settles into its new position. I can still hear the neck wanting to shift in the pocket, and it may need service after a few months of summer weather. All in all though, this was a great success bringing back a still very affordable vintage guitar from 30 years of neglect (I do not blame the owner, he has many more guitars and plays in a band) and twisted tension. It would have been better if the low E strings had broken, or even D or G strings. (The .22 gauge G was gone) That would have put the tension in the middle, or with less pull on the high E strings. The neck did seem to have a slight twist, but it is gone now with proper tension on it and the truss rod unfrozen. I am impressed with the durability of the Japanese made Epiphone acoustics.

The Ex, Les Paul Leo Jaymz DIY kit...and more

JRs Custom Guitar Blog Spot

Today, I was reminded of my ex several times. I could never understand how a person can lie and misunderstand another human, twist their interpretations of a person to suit their narrative. It is highly depressing. I wish I still didn't love the person she used to be, and cannot stand the person she is. What a contradiction.

Onto guitars: I wanted to blog about my interactions with Leo Jaymz, and the experiences I have had with their DIY kits: in particular this one:

I received the first kit and the damn thing was awesome looking. I looked forward to building it so much, that I already had a switch and pots wired up with orange drop caps, ready to drop in!

After all the work installing the switches and pots, I began working on the hardware. I installed the Grover tuners (gold vintage) and taped up the neck to do a little polishing on the frets. To my surprise, the frets were LEVEL and no sprouting or sharp edges. My excitement gained momentum! I then stripped a 6in piece of copper wire to use as a post/tailpiece ground. I began installing the gold hardware for the tailpiece and after getting the posts in, I tried to slide the tailpiece in. Oh shit. It will not fit. (In my fit of intense anger, I have since deleted the pictures which can be seen in my rather bloated and scathing review on Amazon)
I grabbed the OEM tailpiece and even using Leo Jaymz' posts, and studs, and tailpiece....it still wouldn't fit. Well isn't that a fuckaroo.
I contacted Amazon after deciding that trying to fix this problem would only result in damaging the guitar, and costing several hours of labor that I shouldn't have to contend with. Of course, the first person I deal with is a peon and they come to the same conclusion I already knew from checking on my account: There is NO option to have a replacement sent out. However, he did tell me that if I wanted to try Leo Jaymz customer support email, they are generally very good at replying and solving an issue like mine. If they do not solve my issue, call back and reference this call, and Amazon will fix it. So, I gathered up my wits, and the two email addresses the CS agent gave me, and opened outlook to begin my crusade for a replacement body.

Hello. I bought this kit from Amazon and the tail piece holes for the tuneomatic are misdrilled. I cannot get the tail piece on, I've tried the one that comes with the kit, and a gold one I bought for the build. I cannot get them to fit without plugging the holes and redrilling and possibly repainting. I've also spent a few hundred dollars on parts to make this guitar beautiful and now I'm going to have to send that all back to Amazon and wait for a refund unless I can get a replacement sent out, which Amazon can't do.

I've bought Leo Jaymz products, I have a monsoon guitar and 2 other DIY kits I've built and this is the first major issue I've had that will require extensive wood working repair if I can't get a replacement. My Amazon  Order #
113-1809243-3401815

I included a few pictures - including the one showing the gold tailpiece not fitting onto the posts. I then waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
After 4 days, I called Amazon back and to my surprise, they had a new kit sent out that day, and they said don't even bother sending the old one back. (Challenge Accepted!) with that, I savored my pyric victory and began to work in earnest on the mis-drilled body; damage be damned! I would work the bugs out and be ready for the new kit. Which I did.
I used the MusicLily Alnico 5 pick-ups = $35.79
I used a switchcraft switch I had laying around = $0
I used some gold locking tuners from Saphue or Kaish = $31.99
I used some Kaish knobs that look better = $8.99

After getting the bugs out, and figuring out the old switchcraft switch is slightly broken, but still works well enough with some jiggling, this guitar sounds and plays very well. I find myself actually liking it.

Old Epiphone, Computer Life, and where I am with Technical Support. First blog.

JRs Custom Shop Guitars BLOG SPOT 

Today I decided to start blogging. Now, let's not be silly here, I've been a part of gaming culture since the early 80's when I owned 2 Atari systems, and was fascinated by Coleco-Vision, and computer gaming systems of the time. However, my parents thought transformers, GI-Joe, Star-Wars and other such action figures were more designed for the engineering prowess of an 8 year old child who received many electrical gadgets and promptly took them apart to find out how they worked. Fair enough. As such, I did not receive my first computer until 1997, my very own custom built DX2-66 with a Sound Blaster card, 2MB of 30pin SIMM memory, and a video card that played Diablo and World of Warcraft without much issue.

Now that the boring bio is out of the way, I have been building and fixing computers since that day. Because of my parents wisdom of keeping a $3000 computer system out of the hands of a very curious child, I promptly broke my first PC by trying to find out how it worked. I had no idea what a BIOS was, or what it was doing on my computer. I took it to a local repair guy who after noticing I was good-looking, smart, and curious in the ways of computing systems of the day....decided to hire me for $5.00 an hour under the table to learn how to build and fix computers. So, since 1997 I have built over 300 computers, fixed several thousand machines, refreshed thousands more, recertified, rebranded, and every "re" you can think of. After many years of technical support, I finally figured out the average layman hates computers, and thusly so did I. I also cannot stand the people who call with the most googlistic questions on the planet, meaning..."LOOK IT UP YOURSELF YOU LAZY FOOL!" and I got out of technical support fairly recently. Besides that, no one wants to pay someone who can be replaced with an AI prompt, and no one in this day can live on $19.00 an hour, especially at my age and experience.
So now I sit in my shop, looking at a 1960's era Epiphone 12-string guitar in for repair, reading Ted Woodford's blog, ordering 3in #8-32 machine screws to fix a very old neck that needs an upgrade to strengthen the neck heel joint to the body so it will hold tension for the very light 46-10 set of 12-string D'Addario I have in store for it, and not pull loose from the pocket. The owner of this wonderfully old Japanese built instrument has let it sit in a very thin case, with 10/12 strings under tension, for 25-30 years. I must say it has held up remarkably well considering, however, the action at the 12th fret is a dismal 6mm @ Low E and 4.5mm at the B strings.

You can see what I am dealing with. However, thank goodness for the Epiphone guys hindsight to make this a bolt on neck in all its glory. 4 3in wood screws from the 60's are all that is needed to remove this neck from the body, and see the tiny piece of card stock paper that was used as the shim to get the neck angle.

Neato!

I ordered the screws, and spoke with the owner. I don't foresee any real issues with the modification. *knocks on wood*