What's Your Favorite MacGyver Fix? Post 'Em Up!

[timallums]

Mine is the jack that kept coming loose on my Strat. Some clear fingernail polish on the threads (no worries about color from blue Loctite smearing), cinch down on the nut, and it's good to go!

 

I also used clear fingernail polish on my nephew's Schaller strap-lock nuts and he's had no issues since.

 

TIm

[Alan Roberts]

The gasket from a Grolsch bottle makes a great straplock. Put your strap on the guitar and then put the gasket over the strap button. Perfect for when your strap becomes so worn it won't stay on the button anymore. Available in your favorite bar!

[WRGKMC]

^^^ I found using a large thin washer with a hole in the center the size of a screw on the end of a strap button did the trick.

the strap just barely made it on through the slot in the strap cut and there was no way it could just dlip off.

 

I'm pretty mych a master rigger for stuff. I had to be on my day job repairing electro mechanical business equipment

for businesses as a field tech. If you didnt have the replacement parts on hand, You'd have to use all kinds of rigs to fix

a customer up for a few hours to a day so you could order the replacement parts and come back. Keeping them limping

along till you could get back kept them off your ass temporarily. Thay had to be good fixes though.

 

Many times you come up with fixes that are superior to the replacement part, and if you get enough techs to adopt it

to where goes virus in a company, then it often becomes adopted as a mod. This usually pisses the engineers off who

designed the equipment and they will come up with a hundred page proceedure and 50 parts to replace your tie wrap

gismo because a fix for such a highly engineered product couldnt have involves such a stupid oversight.

 

Then you see the next product that coes out has your fix incorporated into it and you dont even get so much

as a thank you. You see an engineer is supposed to have superior intellect and its a matter of pride.

They can say 50 engineers go over a product and all pat themselves on the back as it being a flawless design.

Problem is they dont have to fix the junk when it breaks. Put one tech who views the product from his

service/repair experience and he'll see 20 problems that will fail and they often do.

 

And that my friend is the problem with manufacturing.

There was a time when techs and engineers rubbed elbows. The engineers would work closely with the techs,

view the difficulty and problems into a product, then reengineer them till those problems werent an issue any more.

Instead of pinching to save every penny for a production line they would save it down the road in service and maintainence time.

 

All that has pretty much ended though. They dont want things to last longer than 5 years. The days of designing something

to last a life time was realized many decades ago. If everyone buys a gizmo and thats the last one they need to buy,

then that company that manufacturers thet gizmo will die out once everyone owns one. The best they can do is

supply to the population growth and greed wont stand for that. They may come out with a great product to gain

reputation and market share at first. Then reduce its quality to squeeze more profit and reduce its life expectancy

so people have to repurchase the item again and again.

 

Anyway I'm off topic here.

One of my favorite fixes is to use epoxy in the neck pocket instead of shims to correct its tilt.

Its easy to work with and can be easily sanded. Having a hard flat surface for the neck to mount against

transferes all the vibration between the neck and body for greater tone transfer and sustain.

When you stick a business card or thin strip of wood in there, it absorbs the vibration or at best

only transfers energy across a small gap. This bottlenecks the vibration from the body from

passing up into the neck and neck down into the body.

 

If theres separation between the two, you have a independant resonations occuring in the body and neck

and those resonations pass up into the string from the nut and bridge. Its unlikely the two resonations will

work in unison and can make for all kind of flukey string movements. When the neck joint is solid,

both ends of the instrument will have a single resonance like a neck through design exhibits.

Tuning and intonation stability is greatly increased over having a compressed piece of paper which

can expand and contract like a spring as well.

[yanktar]

I once had a housemate who had a waterbed cap that kept leaking. He used a condom as an o-ring to fix it.

 

My wife has always been a big fan of me using epoxy or epoxy putty to fix stuff--fixed a heater core with epoxy putty!

 

Old-time Enduro riders always carried a vice-grips and a dime. The vice-grips could double as an emergency footpeg if you broke one off. The dime was a rough-and-ready feeler guage for gapping a spark plug in the woods.

 

When trying to get a coolant hose on a tight fitting in a car, the best lube is K-Y. It won't eat the rubber and is water-soluble so it washes away.

 

Add to the minimal toolkit of duct tape, WD-40, and vice-grips zip-ties. You can use the damn things for everything from luggage locks (works as well as the new compliant locks), to permanently tying off wires in your house...The most amazing use I saw for them was a New York hair dresser who does all the modeling shows. He uses the smallest zip-ties to create complicated hair styles that don't come out till you cut the ties!

 

Newest GREAT stuff for fixing stuff: Gorilla Glue!

[WRGKMC]

I wouldnt suggest using Gorilla glue on guitars.

 

""Gorilla Glue is designed to bond fundamentally flat, smooth surfaces.

As the glue expands while setting, it will fill minor gaps, however, such a bond is weak as the expanded glue contains entrapped air bubbles.

Moisture in the air or the materials being bonded is usually sufficient to cause Gorilla Glue to cure.

While the Gorilla Group and some of its competitors claim their cured adhesive is waterproof"",

other brands maintain only water-resistance. Stainability of Gorilla Glue is variable.

 

 

Since it is a polyurethane glue that foams and creates air bubbles in joints,

these bubbles can decrease the transfer of vibration.

And since its poly/plastic you can have issues applying finishes over a poly

joint thats been glued.

[yanktar]

Well, no, I'd never used Gorilla glue on a guitar, but I thought the thread was about GENERAL "McGyver" fixes, not specifically ones for guitars.

 

But when I built the gate for my pool, the 4x4 cedar post cracked. I filled it with G/G, clamped it, and sanded it down when it was dry. 10 years later it's still going strong.

[-=Pennywise=-]

I present to you, the $4 tremolo stopper....

 

 

 

Dive Only Mode:

 

 

 

Full Floating Mode:

[timallums]

Hmm... I like the $4.00 tremolo stopper. I like what I've heard in the other posts, too. Keep 'em coming!

[timallums]

Here's one:

 

Guitar repair neck rest made from a swimming pool foam noodle. Get the 3.5" diameter from wallyworld or wherever, for like $2.00. Cut to the appropriate height, then cut a v-notch to cradle the neck. You can make more than one, to accommodate the different body depths for multiple guitar styles. Durable, fits in most guitar cases. Works as well, if not better than the ones for sale at the guitar store.

[timallums]

Pics:

[timallums]

Here's another MacGyver trick of mine: I pulled the speaker cover off of one of my JBL monitors to vacuum the dust off the grill cloth awhile back. To my horror, I saw that an errant elbow (or something) had pushed in the center of the woofer. Not sure how much it's affected sonically, but looks bad for sure. Thinking about how to pull out the "dent", I realized I should have enough suction from the vacuum cleaner hose to pull it out. Worked like a charm! You can barely see any wrinkle in the cone material.

[WRGKMC]

Thats a good one. I'll have to remember that one.

[yanktar]

Not sure if this is MacGyver, but if the surround on your speaker rots, particularly on woofers on big old speakers from the 70's and 80's, don't throw those puppies out! Go to any one of the re-foam sites, like newfoam.com and order a $30 re-foam kit, with shims and center cap (don't go cheap, get the good kit). That and an Exacto knife with a fresh blade are all you need to make those speakers like new! It's not a hard job, just follow the directions.

 

 

PS: Sometimes I think I'm pretty smart, but sometimes I think I'm dumb as dirt. It took me over a year to figure out the little notch they cut into most peg-winders is to pry out bridge pins...how dumb is that?

[timallums]

Not sure if this is MacGyver' date=' but if the surround on your speaker rots, particularly on woofers on big old speakers from the 70's and 80's, don't throw those puppies out! Go to any one of the re-foam sites, like newfoam.com and order a $30 re-foam kit, with shims and center cap (don't go cheap, get the good kit). That and an Exacto knife with a fresh blade are all you need to make those speakers like new! It's not a hard job, just follow the directions. QUOTE']

 

Macgyver-ish or not, I'm glad you posted that fix. I have some monster speakers from the 80's sitting in the attic that haven't been re-purposed yet and may have some dry-rot...