Musicman Stingray and Martin Acoustic

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Aylesbury Guitar Repair

Today is an exciting day at Aylesbury Guitar Repair.

This magnificent Musicman Stingray 5-string bass has wandered in and needed a little bit of attention.

This instruments are fantastic – great build quality and their technical appointments are top notch, too. Real player’s instruments!

This one needed the fretboard to be cleaned, new strings fitted and intonation sorted out, so that’s what I did! It’s come out beautifully!

Next on the list is this Martin acoustic.

This is another very special instrument – sounds incredible plugged in and plays nicely. The action needs to come down on this, and that will take place once I’ve fret-stoned and re-crowned the frets as there’s a bit of wear on them. I can’t wait to see how this one comes up!

Reverse V Gauge Change, Jazz Bass and Tele Set-Ups

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Aylesbury Guitar Repair

Have you ever seen one of these before? This is a Gibson Reverse V guitar, which was released in very limited number in 2008, and the owner wanted the strings changed up from 10’s to 11’s.

It was an interesting guitar to work on, although a little unwieldy as it pivoted on the bridge end of the body. Great instrument, though!

Once that was done it was onto setting up a Fender P Bass – nice and straight forward, and cleaned up really nicely – and a Telecaster. Both of these were left-handed instruments.

The Tele ended up needing an extra bit of attention since the high E and B strings were ‘fizzing’ in the nut, but after a little attention and fettling they were good as gold again! What will come through the door next?

Yamaha Pacifica Set-up

Posted on December 22, 2014 by Aylesbury Guitar Repair

So yesterday a lovely chap dropped over his Yamaha Pacifica 112 guitar which was in need of a setup. In its lifetime it had been strong with 9’s, 8’s, and mostly recently 10’s, leading to a raised tremolo bridge and high action. The bridge saddles were set flat, so they needed attention too.

The client simply wanted the guitar set for the 10’s, with minimal buzz – at a height whereby his fingers didn’t rise on top of his fingers.

In order to achieve this, I fitted an extra spring to the tremolo, which brought the bridge flat to the body (another request of the client), and then set about getting the action just so.

I set it to factory settings (1.9mm and 2.4mm at the top fret respectively for each E string), and this was to the customer’s liking.

After intonating the guitar and a quick polish, this guitar spent a little over 36hrs in my possession all told, and it was great to be able to get it back into the customer’s hands before Christmas!