do you have any non working guitars ? something wrong minor annoyance that makes them somewhat "broken" ?

[crustoleum]

I have 2 things that need work. 1 , the nut that holds the input jack came loose , and the jack fell into the thing semi hollow. And i also have an ultra lp that one of the input socket jacks cuts out or works intermittently lose wire or something . I bring these types of things to my local guy simple repairs maybe he does it right and has proper tool to fish lose wires out and re solder stuff wrenches and other guitar tools plus I get to check out the shop 2x dropping off and picking up

[WRGKMC]

I started messing with electronics building radios and telegraphs by the time I was 7 years old. I started playing acoustic at 10 then electric at 12.

I already had enough curiosity and wisdom to do any electronic work on a guitar. All passive guitar electronics are amazingly simple. I suppose being poor back then was part of it too.

 

Most of the spare electronic parts I got scavenging old radios and TV's people threw away. You learn how things are put together by talking them apart. I had encouragement from my folks to get into electronics and music too. Used to drive my father nuts running antenna wires, telegraph and phone cables all over the place. It paid off though. I got my education in music and electronics and the jobs I got in electronics supported the music.

I still buy most of my gear used and refurbish it to work like new.

 

I have friends come over to record and the most common question I get is how do you know how to do all of that wiring, or repair gear, and I say its not hard to when you been doing it for a good 53 years, especially when you do it full time 8 hours a day 40 hours a week.

 

I do encourage young musicians who have simple problems like you have to fix it themselves. As long as you're an electric musicians you'll have to deal with these kinds of faults. Its not that they are expensive to get fixed but its simply the hassle involved. I'd get myself a coat hanger, clip it to length and fish that sucker out and screw the bit back on. I've done much more difficult jobs trying to get into a car where I accidentally locked my keys in.

 

I suppose its like anything. You have to do things to learn them. Women, yea. They can forgo learning to change their own tire when it goes flat. Men have to learn some of those basics cause it gets too expensive otherwise. Heck I even taught my wife to jump her own car battery. If I could only get her to mow the lawn, that would be a real feat

[TheForkWigger]

My guitar room is like a guitar torture chamber with all pieces everywhere.

[badpenguin]

I'm a tech, trained at Martin, and Ibanez. If there is anything wrong with one of mine, it's fixed within minutes of knowing something is wrong.

[Freeman Keller]

Unlike BP I am self taught but like him, if there is anything wrong its fixed immediately. Lots of my regular "customers" bring me guitars with little problems like you describe - the small ones cost them a beer, larger ones might be a bottle of nice cabernet.

[Chordite]

Not much

The pups on my Peavey Falcon got weaker over the years I don't know why. Whether to try and re magnetize (how?) or just replace them.

And weirdness with one of the Encores that the high E is always much quieter than the other strings (on all pups) though the spacings are correct. I suspect some kind of capacitor issue.

[nice keetee]

My guitar room is like a guitar torture chamber with all pieces everywhere.

 

[WRGKMC]

Not much

The pups on my Peavey Falcon got weaker over the years I don't know why. Whether to try and re magnetize (how?) or just replace them.

And weirdness with one of the Encores that the high E is always much quieter than the other strings (on all pups) though the spacings are correct. I suspect some kind of capacitor issue.

 

Magnets are much harder to demagnetize then you think and it wouldn't simply affect your high E string.

It could be the other strings are too loud because of the pickup height.

 

I had the same kind of issue on a guitar I hadn't played in a long time. The guitar sounded good through an amp too, but when I plugged it in to record I found a serious setup issues making my High E dead sounding compared to the others. The sting height was too low. The neck was too flat and the pickup too close.

 

When I added a little relief the height took care of itself. I was getting too much fret slap and it was absorbing all the strings energy. The other problem was the pickup was too close and I was getting Stratitis.

 

(The excessive magnetism causes different sections of the string to vibrate at different rates producing multiple dissonant frequencies from the same string. The effect becomes even more unpleasant when the string is out of tune. Excessive magnetism is the reason you can’t set pickup very close to the strings if you want to avoid a loss of natural sustain)

 

I held the last frets down and set the pickup height to 3mm on the Bridge on both sides and 4mm on the neck pup on both sides. I later added an additional mm on the low side to get a better balance. (when recording you have a level meter which makes this easy to do. The low side always has a stronger output but double the strength was too much. 1mm made a big difference balancing it out.

 

The other thing was the pedals I was using. I had all my settings set up for a Tele which has single coils and bright output. When I plugged in the guitar with mini humbuckers I had no top end so I had to readjust my entire effects chain for those pickups. Not just the EQ, but all the gain staging to get the pickups to sound right. Much of it was bringing down gain levels and brightening and removing bass.

 

An amp can be a problem too. I have a Peavey amp I bought without a speaker and stuck a lower end 10" Jensen MOD speaker in there. The head was designed for a peavey 12" and the 10" lacks both bass and highs. The head has an incredible amount of treble and produces ice pick tones. The speaker doesn't produce highs very well so turning down the treble to get rid of the ice pick tones seriously attenuates the high strings output and because the speaker lacks low frequencies, cranking up the Bass EQ makes the low string output more even though the speaker isn't producing allot of bass tones.

 

In other words, I'm tilting the EQ like a sea saw, increasing bass and reducing treble. This affects the pickup strength to have a stronger low signal and weaker highs. The problem is the speaker isn't reproducing those changes because its frequency response doesn't match the heads tone stack. I play leads on the guitar and my top strings are dead. I have to carefully tweak enough highs and mids in and do with less bass to get all the strings to match in loudness then I'm stuck with sucky amp tone but at least all the strings can be heard.

 

I plan to rehouse the head in a 12" combo cab and install a Peavey 12" which I picked up awhile back. The amps EQ stack should be much more linear and the speaker should push even amounts of air at all frequencies.

[1001gear]

Not much

 

And weirdness with one of the Encores that the high E is always much quieter than the other strings (on all pups) though the spacings are correct. I suspect some kind of capacitor issue.

 

I used to have that problem with bridge pickups across all my guitars. I would just raise the pole pieces on the high E and/or raise that side of the pickups. Turns out I was just a clumsy picker and had dialed back the treble/presence/mids further upstream to get gooderer toan. Turns out this solution kills a lot of the high notes on the high E string. Many years hence I have a better picking touch and can use adequate treble and presence. Pickups are adjusted normally and stuff sounds more balanced.

 

[crustoleum]

I'm a tech' date=' trained at Martin, and Ibanez. If there is anything wrong with one of mine, it's fixed within minutes of knowing something is wrong.[/quote']

I have associates degree in electro mechanical engineering and "Liberal Arts" History of western civilization and philosophy complex ananysis statistical analysis German and Spanish, Guitar 1 technical writing psychology civics sociology mythology economics strength of material ac/dc circuitry and logic circuits. I attended the local 2 year community colleges and obtained 2 degrees 40 years ago. wow So now you know If you ever want to discuss anything well here I am

[crustoleum]

that doesn't help me dig the lose wires , jack socket and stuff and re-solder my 2 broke things My oldest kid took my soldering station to where he works too lol

[DeepEnd]

. . . An amp can be a problem too. I have a Peavey amp I bought without a speaker and stuck a lower end 10" Jensen MOD speaker in there. The head was designed for a peavey 12" and the 10" lacks both bass and highs. The head has an incredible amount of treble and produces ice pick tones. The speaker doesn't produce highs very well so turning down the treble to get rid of the ice pick tones seriously attenuates the high strings output and because the speaker lacks low frequencies' date=' cranking up the Bass EQ makes the low string output more even though the speaker isn't producing allot of bass tones. . . .[/quote']

It doesn't make much sense to put a 10'' speaker in a cab made for a 12''. You're just asking for trouble. Did you replace the baffle? Otherwise the new speaker would just fall out of the hole. And the amp has a lot of treble but the speaker doesn't and turning down the treble accentuates the high strings? Turning down the treble should reduce the output of the higher strings. Not the fundamentals but the harmonics for sure, which would reduce the overall output.

[RaVenCAD]

Sadly yes... My beloved Charvel 375 has a stripped intonation screw hole in the bridge, so the D string saddle will not stay put. Because of that, I've been unable to play it for a long time now. Yes I could buy it a new bridge, but then it wouldn't be complete anymore, and the cash investment just isn't worth it.

[daddymack]

At the moment two...well one is my 'prototyper', and at this moment I need to make a new pickguard for it to test some filtertrons/capacitor combos and some P90 configurations in tandem with strat single coils.

The other is my 'Custom' Gretsch-ish hollowbody, which the Filtertrons are destined to be assembled to, but I have some other mods to do before that...including the mounts [i could not find a simple conversion from a standard size humbucker to a F'tron adapter, so I'm making my own...'Shecky, set up the router table, we're gonna cut some plastic!'].

Plus a couple of amps in various stages of mod and/or repair, but when you have way over a dozen amps laying around, having a few in pieces is no big deal

I'm an inveterate tinkerer, 'if it ain't broke, mess with it until it is...then figure out what broke it and undo that...'

 

I'm also very non-methodical about my work...so sometimes the simple stuff sits while I ponder the really challenging stuff...plus I have to put my stuff on hold when paying customers show up; I do repairs, set-ups and such for a number of studio/session players and road warriors here in LA, mainly bassists for some reason...

[Les Paul Lover]

Your prices sound very fair!!!