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Guitar Repair: Martin 000 Eric Clapton

This is a bit of a self-indulgent post, but I was so pleased that I needed to tell someone.

I had taken in a Martin Eric Clapton signature model (picture posed by model, left), and the lacquer was separating all along the back of the neck.  Because it was a nitrocellulose lacquer finish, I was able to repair this, and have no evidence marks where I had thinned and added laquer to the original finish.

The post just came today, and I noticed something that looked suspiciously unlike a bill.  I opened it, and it was a card, with a picture of a tree on the front.  I read the message, and this is what it said:

Dear Jim,

A word of thanks for the superb work you did on the Fender and the Martin.

You’ve completely solved the niggly intonation problems I was having with the Fender and it’s a joy to play again.

As for the Martin – we’re staggered at the flawless finish on the neck.  To be able to not feel the previous abrasions was great, but not to be able to see the joins (as it were!) is a bonus.  The Waverley tuners have increased the tuning accuracy no end – I wish I’d have had it done years ago.  The upshot of all this is that I’m playing more than I’ve done for years!  Thank you.

The owner was delighted with the job when he picked it up, and has sinced phoned me to tell me how pleased he was with the new tuners I installed.  For him to go to this extra effort is what my job is all about.

I am in such a good mood that I am now going to put the binding on a cutaway.  This is an fiddly job, but this letter has given me the ego boost I needed to get cracking on it.

Expect a bad mood again in 1 hour’s time.

How I Defret a Six String Bass

What’s better than a six string bass?  That’s right: a six string fretless bass.

The reason why I am a bass player and a luthier goes all the way back to when I was 13.  My parents had just got Sky, and I was flicking through to MTV.  The channel was showing a European festival, possibly Rock Am Ring; the first thing I saw was Les Claypool, eight finger-tapping a solo in “Tommy the Cat”.

Now I knew nothing of guitars at the time, but I was astounded.  I turned to my friend Knuckles – who played guitar astonishingly well even back then – and asked, “What’s that he’s playing?”

Knuckles replied: “It can’t be a guitar, because there’s the guitarist behind him. It has strings, but no frets, so I guess it must be a six string fretless bass.”

“Well, I guess I’m just going to have to play six string fretless bass”.

And I do.  What this has to do with my luthiery is that Les was playing his Rainbow Bass.  A stunning piece of work by Carl Thompson. Some years later, as I put down a £1000 deposit to have a six string fretless made by Carl (already owning the Ken Smith shown in the picture) I realised that I had better start making them, because this hobby was getting too expensive.

I digress.  A customer brought in a six string for me to defret, which I am always delighted to do.

First, I remove the frets.  Gently does it: I don’t want to chip the fingerboard.  The gaps aren’t going to be covered up with new frets, so special care is required.

Here you can see that the frets have all been removed, without any issues.

Now I insert ash veneer, the same thickness as the fret slot.

Here the veneer has been scraped and sanded flush.

Then I sand my customer’s fretboard, using 1200 grit sandpaper, and polish it with lemon oil.

Nearly done.  Lastly, because there are no longer any frets, the nut is too high. So I file down the slots and set up the bass, to give it the really low action that fretless players like.

Obligatory “down the neck” shot.

Now the customer has a real instrument.  First thing I do when I play I six string fretless is play the intro to “Fish On” by Primus.  It’s my favourite bit of bass playing.  I still can’t make it sound quite like Les, though.

Then again, here’s a clip of Les playing it live and making so many mistakes (be warned, genteel reader: he does use an expletive at one point).  It reminds us all that we’re all human.

Custom Guitars: Rosettes

I’ve been thinking about rosettes quite a lot recently. The rosette is the decorative circle around the soundhole. They come in many guises.

This is a Martin rosette. It’s an example of what you may find on many guitars, with a few rings surrounding the soundhole.

Spanish guitar rosettes tend to be more elaborate, with beautiful marquetry patterns. You almost never see this on a steel string.

Baroque guitars were extremely elaborate, with three dimensonal “roses” going into and covering the soundhole.

This rosette is the work of Master Inlayer Larry Robinson, and appears on the 750,000th Martin. Check out the 1,000,000th Martin for more of his stunning rosette and inlay work.

Here at Jim Fleeting Guitars my simple hardwood rosette, with a couple of rings around it, is very fashionable. However I have decided that there is so much more that can be done.

I spent a week with Ervin Somogyi in Oakland, California. Ervin’s guitars all show his high level of skill, and his wonderful eye for design.

His interrupted rosette idea really struck a chord, and I decided to try a mix between the simple hardwood rosette and this interrupted design. This rosette is bolivian rosewood with a little of the sapwood showing, matching the headstock, back and sides.

This is what I came up with. It has inlaid mango, again to match the back and sides, and the Jim Fleeting Guitars’ ‘F’ logo.

This is my latest creation. The top hasn’t been cut out yet, but you can see the drawing of the shape of the guitar on the spruce. I put a fingerboard on there, to get the look of it. I am obsessed with the Art Deco designs from the twenties and thirties (probably because of their use of exotic woods) and I think this really shows that style. What do you think?

United Breaks Guitars

With more than two million views of his YouTube video, it would seem that musician Dave Carroll has finally persuaded United Airlines to listen to his complaint.  They have arranged a meeting with him.  I guess it’s because he has the sequel to this song in production, and a third in the planning stage.

The serious point of this is that since September 2001, most airlines won’t allow you to take a guitar case into the cabin of an aircraft.  They insist that you check it.  This is a frightening prospect.  The important thing is to make sure that your guitar can’t move in its case. It is the headstock hitting the end of the case as it goes down the chutes that causes it to snap off.  If you pad that at the shoulders, then the guitar can’t move.

However, if it is thrown or dropped so that the case is crushed and the guitar damaged, there is little preventative action that can be taken. Remember though: I can glue headstocks  for a modest fee, and can undertake any number of structural and cosmetic guitar repairs.

Do your worst, United: I’ll get the guitars back up and running.

Banjo Repair: A Five-String With A Past

This one is from the 1920s.  The frets were a  bit of a mess, and there was a great big hole in the skin.  It was brought in by a customer whose father played it professionally in a banjo group from 1926 until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.

I replaced the skin with a goat skin vellum. This is a difficult procedure, which involves wetting the skin and trimming it to size.

Once I’d tidied the frets and set up the banjo, it really began to sing.

On collection, the owner brought along some photos of her father, the banjo’s original owner.  She was also kind enough to allow me to scan them and include them in this blog.  His name was George Rusby.

George is fifth from the left on the back row.  I think these photos are great.  It makes me want to throw on some spats and dance the Charleston (or at least curl up with a good P.G. Wodehouse novel).

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