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I wish I would have know this years ago- would have saved loads. Thanks for the lesson on necks!

Good morning my friend Tom good too see you mi amigo

My first thought was positive pressure on the area that needs to be clean - like a box fan with an air filter or two blowing IN to the studio area. Oh man, I wish I could play around in a room like that!

Got my guitar fretwork done at Salvis fine guitars in Australia, absolute hacks, more dead notes than when I took it in. Complete disaster.

Great referral. Will give em a try

Why reach to the bottom of the barrel for musical instruments? I use USA manufacturing. I know what the wood is, I know what the metallurgy of the fret material is, I specify the shape, the fret size, and know I will need to do minor fitting , and only minor fret work to be perfect. The outcome tonality wise is fairly predictable. As is using China parts. They are vastly different. Just buy a squire if you don’t have the funds. Asia guitars with QC from a larger manufacturer is better than rolling the dice at Amazon or other. That has no accountability or QC.

Thanks for casting some light on this latest 'issue' that has a lot of YTers throwing some uninformed, unjustified shade. As with the old parlor game, by the time a story's been passed from person to person a few times some of the facts have been changed or omitted and some new 'facts' have appeared.

Would love to see something even more in detail about the inductor and how the acoustic sound works

I saw nothing whe soldering the back of pick board !!!

We are watching Fernando and I from Colorado

I bought a used guitar with upgraded DiMarzio pickups where I think they wired it according to the Seymour Duncan color scheme. The pickup was out of phase with itself. Red/white versus black/red, if I remember correctly. Anyway, it sounded a lot better after I fixed it.

This man speaks truth without the bs! Praise brother .

Excellent Tom

Why do so many people think G string is a problem? you clean the nut and put graphite from a pencil, and you done. I have four Gibson guitars, and none have g string issues.

Just awesome, factually and asceticlly!

Many years ago, I put a TOM-style bridge on my fender Jaguar. So, a 12" radius bridge with a 7-1/4" radius neck. It was not ideal.

Very interesting. Will have to watch this again (and again...) and make some notes. Goes to show though that we can do some cool tone mods with fairly simple circuits and parts and some imagination. The trickiest part sometimes is fitting everything inside the guitar and protecting bare leads from accidentally shorting against each other when everything is pushed back inside the cavity. Will be watching when you demonstrate your soldering techniques/tricks for this mod, which are maybe a bit intricate for folks that don't do much wiring. The actual connections can be more difficult than understanding what they're doing. Thanks Tom!

You know, when Fender pairs a neck, the neck is specifically sanded for the body. So to fit a neck neck perfectly, it is sanded to match the body. You don’t route a body to fit the neck. That explains why the necks are a little big. They’re giving you product to work with so you can get a perfect fit. This is also true for the nut. These are still roughed out necks. The time saved in finishing is passed on in price. You weren’t expecting perfection for $50 bucks were you?

When the new shop is up there will be a series on guitar wiring from soldering techniques and troubleshooting to designing circuits.

I don't understand this electrical stuff. Wish I lived near Tom, so that I could get a tone and volume controls to work properly. Had my brother solder a capacitor on an off brand guitar bought for a nephew. The tone knob stayed at max level. After soldering, now not neither the tone or volume function.

I like the tip about see how the tone is with the knob at 0 to see whether you want a bigger or smaller capacitor. But isn't the capacitor still in the circuit, just with 250-500K resistance in line with it, when the knob is at 10? I've always assumed that the tone circuit was active all the time, and lower pot values and higher (i think) capacitors recommended for single coils took away more brightness than the ones recommended for use with humbuckers, even with the tone pot open all the way. I'm guessing the truth may be more complicated - it usually is.

Audio was 5x5 today. I could hear you before but much better now. Your talk on 5-way switch wiring has me wondering about ways to replace my Strat's stock bridge single coil pickup with a mini 'hot rails' type humbucker for the same hole. I really like the normal 2 & 4 positions on a Strat 5-way and would like to keep those as-is while still having the 'hot rails' bridge pickup independently selectable between single-coil and humbucker by a separate pickguard-mounted switch (mini-toggle or slide, say) whenever the main 5-way switch is in position 1. That's the 'extra' humbucker tone option. Seems like it would require 4 or 5 conductors for the hot rails pickup and an extra switch to ground out the hum coil independently for single-coil operation in position 1. Follow me? This is not urgent but I'd appreciate your thoughts. Including if you even think this is a good idea or not. It occurs to me I might not get the single-coil sound I want from a hot-rails pickup, which would make this whole experiment a big flop.

Audio volume on this post is just fine today on this feed.

I have family not far from you over on the north side of Tampa. Hope the weather goes easy on y'all through this round of storms and you can keep your shop construction on schedule. Btw as someone else commented, audio volume was a bit low on YT. Thanks, enjoyed the discussion Tom!

The audio feed of your post is very low to YT. My volume level is at 10 and your voice is barely coming across.

Do reversible mods. Keep the original parts. If you want to turf the guitar, put the original parts back on it. Keep the cool parts for the next victim.

The Rollernut caught my attention. Almost 20 years ago, a friend needed some cash, and I was able to pick up his 2004 Lite Ash Special Edition Fender Stratocaster. At first, the guitar played and sounded like crap. First, I properly shimmed the neck. Then, locking tuners, Graphtek saddles, and string trees. Out came the noisy single coils Seymour Duncan pickups and in with the Seymour Duncan single spaced humbuckers. The key ingredient was adding a Rollernut. Here we are in 2024, and the Strat sits in the case, and my go-to guitar is my Les Paul. The Rollernut is not right, and not too many people know about them. The low E, A, and D sit on the bearings like they're supposed to. The G, B, and high E sit on the shaft that goes through the bearings. The bottom unwound strings always have tuning issues. The Rollernut was installed by a luthier, and everything else was me. Is there a reason why those bottom strings don't sit on the bearings?

Very good insight. Good job , Tom

Wow

Man thats going to be huge

Good progress. Beautiful place!

Question.. Not much info on used Hohner HS 35 (335 copy MIK) I was looking at. They were made in Korea and had Kent Armstrong humbuckers supposedly sold by SKY. I heard there was another Kent Armstrong version PROPER sold in UK. Can you give me a history lesson? Loved everything else you already stated. I live near LInden NJ Thanks in advance!!

werent the bridges fulcrum?

Are there strat style replacement bridges with a string span of two inches, the saddles ten millimeters wide? I have two cheap old 80's strat-style guitars with bridges that size. (I guess it was to have proper spacing for a gibson-style neck pickup in the bridge position.) I've wondered about replacement parts for them, and how common such bridges are these days.

So you do the fall away first!! Before doing the normal fret level? Ok. Bring up the 15, last 5 frets get the hit/sanded level (so 17 to 22 frets are going to get hit on a 22 fret board and 19 to 24 get hit on a 24 fret board). I am correct on this?!?!? Please advise.

Why from the 5th fret & not just the 12th?

Great video. Good info. I put the Les Trem on my Epiphone ES339 after agonizing over what trem system to use. Then I added the roller bridge. Great combo. Stays in tune 98+% of the time which is good enough for me (as even if I'm playing normally with my tele I usually check tune every other song anyway) and if I hear any out off tune notes I just give the Les Trem a little tap and voila back in tune.

High quality content. If only all of RUclips was like this.

Ive had guitarists in 80s that had that slant. When i picked up guitar and got into playing i thought that was the correct way but watched the over produced big sub pros and never got that info. So i did it anyway as my old bandmates did it. I have never had tuning issues tough thank God ive just been super lucky. Thats the ones with the tilt and ones without. I even tried an even claw with differing spring tensions of spring by design and that worked too. So i am lucky i suppose no matter what. Lol. Great info man. Old school is key. It worked for the pros then. Will work now.

Tuners, yep. Put Schallers on a Fender Jaguar as a teenager. Used a hand drill. Recently put a Chinese jazz bass neck onto a Fender P Bass Lyte and had to fill and drill the holes. At least I have a drill press now. Then I have two guitars from the 80s with string spacing that matches a Gibson neck pickup in the bridge position. Maybe one centimeter per string? Narrow! I've no idea where I could get replacement parts for those. Not 'Zon. My only guitar with a Floyd came that way from the factory; thankfully everything matches and lines up on that. It's a Korean Mockingbird. It's one of the nicest things I own.

It's the rude customer service that has kept me away from Sam-Ass and Guitar Center.

Hi Tom. Interesting discussion all around. I live right down the road from where they held the Dallas guitar show recently and if you live around here you probably wouldn't have known about it unless you'd seen the sign in front of Market Hall as you drove by. Inside, the aisles were devoid of customers and the mood was like a funeral. It was so quiet you could hear conversations on the other side of the room. There was practically no dealing going on except between dealers. Hardly any guitar playing. Sad and depressing. WTF? That's about as concisely as I can put it.

Just got a cheap jackson neck and it needs the heel cut down like you said. Thanks for the tip with not using a router and to just sand it. Ibwas thingking of using my dewalt muti tool lol. Im pretty good with it. Flip the neck upside-down and chop a bunch of lines to create the curve i need and depth and then cut it long ways just enough to cut off the slivers ill need. That was my idea but sanding may work too. Mine came from the same company with that same card too lol.

If I were a farmer I would be outstanding my field!

Appreciate your channel friend. Was wondering if you could recommend somebody competant in Central Fl. for setups/repair on vintage guitars and amps? Thanks!

@mc2mc277 0 seconds ago Hate to bring up politics but….BIDEN HAS DESTROYED THE U.S. ECONOMY!! People can barely afford to eat, let alone buy gear. MUSICIANS BETTER DO THEIR HOMEWORK BEFORE NOVEMBER…..If your personal finances SUCK, compared to 4 years ago, when the economy was cranking with 1 percent interest and $2 gas, maybe DON’T VOTE for a senile f*ck with a loaded diaper in his pants!! THIS is what happens…BUSINESSES FAIL, especially ones that depend upon disposable “play money” income. I spent a decade as the editor of THE main musical instrument trade magazine that specialized in the gear manufacturers and the gear retailers, plus as THE only guy who was the TV HOST for NAMM-TV, before everyone with a cell phone was shooting videos.

Such a great conversation, however the narrator has a voice that is almost indiscernible, then add the shaky audio quality, and it's almost unlistenable. I have a loud clear voice, but if I had a voice like this guy, I would make sure that I am mic'd up as best as possible, we don't want to miss any of this good information..

Cool technique