Overview – Whether you’re interested in guitar building or guitar repair, it’s important to understand that there are many expensive tools that need to purchased. In this post, I’d like to discuss some items which are very useful, that you won’t need to buy. So if you’re just starting out, or even if you’ve been…

Overview – I recently finished up with this Zager ZAD80CE OM acoustic guitar repair that was particularly tricky. It took just about all of my skills as a luthier to get this back to where it should be, and I’m pleased with how it turned out. This was my first time doing an acoustic guitar bridge reglue…

Overview – Back in July of 2020, I was beginning to put together what would eventually become the Winter Storm guitar pedal. At the same time, I was expanding my knowledge of guitar pedal circuits and beginning to build pedals regularly, some of which were clones of common guitar effects. I’ve always been interested in octave…

Overview – This Peavey T40 bass with a sunburst finish found its way onto my workbench recently. While I was cleaning it up I decided to take a few pictures and make some notes regarding what I thought about it. What I like most about this bass was the sound and the build quality. The sound is…

Overview – Prior to founding my business in the fall of 2021, I realized that I needed a guitar that would live in my repair shop all year round. If a customer brought in a guitar that had faulty electronics, I could use my guitar as a reference. I could also use it to test my own…

Overview – In Part 1 of the Gibson Les Paul Fretwork blog, I discussed what causes fret buzz and how to prepare a guitar for fret levelling. In Part 2, I will be discussing levelling, crowning, dressing, and polishing the frets so let’s get into it. Fretwork – I use my aluminum sanding beams and a combination of tools including…

Introduction – I’ve been doing guitar repair since 2008 and in that time I’ve done many different kinds of repair work. A lot of the work that I do these days has become routine, while other times it’s more involved. Over the past 14 years or so it’s been my opinion that fretwork is among the most…

Overview – I’m back again with another circuit analysis, this time for the Ibanez Tubescreamer. If you’ve checked out my previous blog post, I did a circuit analysis of the Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal guitar pedal and felt like taking a look at something more common. There are boutique overdrives on the new and used market…

Overview – I recently breadboarded the Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal guitar pedal circuit because I was curious about the overall sound and how it works. I’ve owned a couple of Boss HM-2’s in the past, both the Taiwanese and Japanese versions (which I remember being marginally different from each other), but I eventually sold them off. It’s…

Overview – I wanted to share some of my thoughts and ideas on using a breadboard that I’ve gathered since 2016 when I first got into building guitar pedals. Something that I feel isn’t stated often enough is that using a breadboard for electronics is pretty difficult, especially for beginners. There is a fairly steep…