Revival Thursday

Not too long ago, this guitar was unplayable. It's been looked into & the following tweaks were done...

The primary fault was the chronic fret buzz. It seems that someone tried to file the frets down to get rid of this but was unsuccessful. There were black marker stains on many frets. It's the typical (& correct) approach of identifying problematic frets & marking them down for filing. The stains would be gone when the filing's done but in this case residue black stains were not taken care off.

A closer look revealed a need for proper neck tilt. I managed to shim the neck (hence the visible maple bit you see above) to raise the rest level as well as rectify the tilt angle. The neck was also bowed & that was easily attended to via a quick truss rod tweak. Action was re-set for a set of 9 - 42 but there's residue string buzz. Culprit - popped out frets. These were hammered in. Only 2 frets underwent minimal filing. I wonder what happened to this guitar along the way & the way it was re-set up disappointed me because it was still unplayable but put up for sale. Tsk, tsk, tsk...

The default Ibanez Quantum pickups meant nothing to me. Seymour Duncan JB / Jazz are the replacements. The gold pole pieces - inexpensive tweak to match the hardware livery of the guitar. Adds zilch to tone, of course.

The 5-way selector is the circuit board type to supplement the coil split option. The terminals are well-labelled but you need to follow the replacement pickup manufacturer's colour code which might be different from the Ibanez pickup colour code (seen above).

This gap between the saddles might be minimal but it caused string misalignment (against the pickup pole pieces). Noticed the other saddles are seated properly without gaps in between? Well, so much for QC.

Also replaced - tuners. The default ones were locking version but it added weight to the headstock & the neck dive was intolerable. Easy fix, yes?

Re-string Saturday: Martin SC-13E

Gloomy weather + sick + no money = Stay home. An indoor weekend made a little exciting by the presence of this Martin SC-13E. Not mine though, belongs to an ex-colleague who bought it at the City Music sale yesterday.

It's a showroom piece & the strings were dead. The guitar sounds awful when I tested it for its electronics. I happened to have this SIT set & managed to inject life back into this rather awesome guitar. Folks, if you wish for some crispy tones from your acoustic guitar, do give this Golden Bronze set a try. 

Next to receive some attention were the frets. These look well played (L) & after a quick polish (R), they look shiny & attractive once more.

Last but not least - wood care. The air-conditioned showroom might have dried the wooden parts of this guitar, especially the unfinished & open pore areas. An example would be the bridge; note the dryness (top) & its re-conditioned look (bottom). Folks, dry wood will flake off or even crack if unattended to. The dry fretboard was taken care of as well but it's not as dry as the bridge.

Here are the exciting bits:

• A: The neck sports a shallow C profile, in fact, it feels like some modern Fender electric guitar more than an acoustic where things tend to be beefy in this department. The special feature here is the flattened upper fret / heel area so it appeals to those shredders very easily. In fact, Martin refers to it as a heel-less joint. Very convincing.
• B: Sculptured cutaway bit to encourage more upper fret access especially when the guitar features a cutaway. This guitar is almost heel-less due to the fact that it's a bolt-on construction as seen here.
• C: The guitar also includes a neck tilt adjustment access. A bolt-on construction allows this to happen just like the solid body counterparts.

If you missed it, the SC-13E is an offset design. The understanding of 'offset' here refers to the waist curvatures which are not located at the exact opposite of each other as highlighted above; they are a little misplaced. Of course, the well known offset design we can always understand are the Fender instruments; Jaguar, Jazzmaster, et al.

Set up: Ibanez SR bass

This is an Ibanez SR bass, passed to me for some looking into. The primary instruction was to address the default action which was a little too high, made playing difficult. My first diagnosis- the bass sports the wrong neck tilt. Upon removal, the neck had a shim to address this concern, I had no idea if it was factory-default or inserted by the previous owner.

Since this was insufficient to address the situation, the neck pocket in the body was shimmed as well.

Ibanez: Halberd (Part 5)

I've talked about shimming & neck tilt recently & my Ibanez Halberd here obviously has a tilted neck. The evidence is rather clear from the pic above. Will check for any shimming done to this guitar on its next string change.

Shimming notes (Part 3)

So the compromised shim in the previous episode was detached from the neck's pickup-end base, a replacement shim was made using an unused portion of a guitar string box & inserted into the area depicted above. I usually ensure at least 1/4 of the pocket surface is covered for a marked effect. The corners of the shim were rounded for a snug fit. 

When the neck was re-attached to the body pocket, the effect of the shim can be seen here; there's a little gap as indicated above. Despite the shim being rather thin to many of us, it's more than enough to wedge the neck up. The neck needed a wee bit of wedging material to generate enough angular effect to rectify the action settings. It's like prescribing a small dosage of medicine to cure a person, regardless of how big the person is.

Why is shimming necessary? 

You did well in setting up your guitar; the neck had been straightened or bowed adequately according to your personal preference, the action had been checked to your specs but upon playing, you feel that the action at the upper frets are disproportionately higher than the rest of fret areas. 

Why does this happen?

It's not your fault. Either the body's neck pocket cavity had been routed a little too deep or the neck itself had been cut/ sanded down too much. It could also be the bridge's fault; at its lowest setting, it still inclines the strings too much at the upper fret areas (assuming there are no issues with the body's cavity & neck).

Some upper tier guitars feature a neck tilt mechanism to address this issue like the Fender you see above. All you need to do is insert the allen wrench provided & adjust the neck inclination accordingly.

Tilt

Here's something to note; the guitars you see above are my Schecters, Omen 8 (left) & 7 (right). The neck fitting of the 8 is a leveled fitting, meaning, it sits rather flat/ flushed against the neck pocket surface of the body. We can tell because by looking at the maple between the body & fretboard materials, we observe a straight line.

This is not the case with the 7 & as you can observe from the pic, it looks inclined. Do not be alarmed because the 7 sports a tune-o-matic type bridge so the strings incline down from the bridge saddles towards the nut. The neck has to conform to this inclination, otherwise, we cannot obtain a uniform action along the neck length. I'm sharing this here because there are some wise cracks in the shops who claimed that this is a sign of poor fitting but it's definitely not so. I just feel that some old people tend to say too much & they expect us younger dweebs to believe without much questioning.