Octave Fuzz – July 2020 – #9 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….

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…