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.

As a guitar repairman, I glue a lot of headstocks back onto guitar necks.  In many cases the guitar has been dropped, or has fallen from a stand, and the headstock has snapped on impact.  More often than not, it will be hanging on by its headcap.

This diagram represents a side view of a one-piece neck.  As you can see, the grain is aligned with the direction of the neck. So when it comes to the headstock, the grain is very short and can snap easily.  To compound the issue most acoustic and many electric necks are made from mahogany, which already has relatively short fibres.  This means that the area around the headstock is really weak.

Another way to construct a neck is to use a scarf joint.  This way, you have good, long grain in the weakest point. The neck is therefore much stronger.

What I don’t like about this joint is that you can see the “shark’s nose” shape that the joint leaves on the neck.  Most players won’t even notice it, but I’m fussy when it comes to joints. I prefer to hide them.

This third diagram shows the method that I use for the custom guitars that I build. By doing this, I am able to hide the joint with a rear headcap.  This headcap also adds strength.  I figured that if a broken-off headstock often hangs by the  headcap, then a rear headcap is likely to help prevent it breaking in the first place.

I also think it looks great.  This rosewood headcap hides the joint nicely, and really accentuates the contour of the volute.

What do you reckon?

The Good:

Gibson is without doubt one of the most important and innovative brands when it comes to fretted instruments.

Gibson has made the world’s most sought after banjos and mandolins.

The Gibson Les Paul has been a staple of the electric guitar market since it’s very inception. On top of that, the Les Paul is my favourite electric guitar. It may be back-breakingly heavy, but I think that all that mahogany is what helps it sound better than any other electric.

The Bad and the Ugly:

In my opinion, the litigious behaviour of the Gibson Guitar Corporation has become increasingly bizarre.

Gibson failed in its suit against Paul Reed Smith after PRS released its single cutaway electric guitar. It appears that Gibson believed that it infringed their copyright on the Les Paul.

From left to right: a Bigsby Merle Travis, a Gibson Les Paul and a PRS Single Cut.

Now it strikes me that all three of these guitars are similar.  Admittedly the first has a more pointed cutaway, but in essence, they are all the same.   Certainly compared to a Strat, or even a Tele, which is a single-cutaway guitar.

The years that these three were released go, from left to right, 1947, 1952 and 1998.  Now I know that the PRS and the Les Paul do look similar, but the concept that one guitar company might have the copyright on single cutaways is ludicrous.

Even stranger is Gibson’s lawsuit regarding the sale of guitar-shaped game controllers for Guitar Hero style games.  What is the deal with these people?

As a guitar repairman, I’m also cross with Gibson because the company no longer using a parts distributor in the UK. Instead, Gibson has decided that it will only sell parts to authorised guitar retailers.  In other words, if a repair shop wants to replace Gibson parts on Gibson guitars, it must now stock a range of Gibson instruments.  I didn’t ask what my minimum stock requirement would be – but even if it was just a couple of guitars, it would be a heck of a lot of money to spend just so I could replace a green tulip tuner on an old SG.  The result: I now must go to a guitar shop and buy parts at retail in order to fix people’s guitars.

This is more than inconvenient; it demonstrates an attitude towards fans, customers and prospective suppliers that baffles me. When I was at the NAMM show in California a couple of years ago, Gibson would only allow “authorised dealers” to view their guitars.  I was there representing an independent guitar store in Oregon and was therefore a potential dealer – but although other exhibitors were extremely welcoming, Gibson was just the opposite.  It’s all so odd.  The Gibson Guitar Corporation is like an elderly relative whose behaviour is getting more and more eccentric.  You feel like you shouldn’t mention it, because they’re such a staple. But it ticks you off all the same.

All that said, when I win the National Lottery here’s my shopping list:

Gibson F5 Mandolin

Gibson Mastertone Banjo

1952 Gibson Les Paul Gold Top.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe what is on my desk.  Gibson only made SGs with front accessible controls in 1969.  It should have a bigsby trem, and a scratchplate.

It should also have a fingerboard.  What a mess.  This customer bought the guitar as is, as he knew that this could be a very valuable guitar with a lot of work.

The neck has been cracked a number of times, and I’m pretty sure that Gibson didn’t offer this model in cheap, badly applied black finish.

So, lots of work to do.  I started with a new fingerboard, and made a surface to glue the new fingerboard.  After this, a full refinish, sorting out the horror around the tailpiece posts (these had been replaced with cut off screws) and filling and tidying up the previous repairs on the neck.

This is the result.  New hardware. I made new scratchplates.  Note the Les Paul shaped scratchplate specific to this model.

The customer wanted a particular tone, and I was able to suggest my favourite combination of pickups:  Seymour Duncan 59 in the neck position, and a Seymour Duncan JB in the bridge position.  Great tones.  Bassy and rich for rhythm, and hot and powerful in the lead position.

I’m confident that this will be one seriously happy customer.

The guitar sounded amazing – and clearly, I wasn’t the only one who thought so. All the frets were worn, and heavy wear had made it impossible to fret chords on the first three frets. A complete refret was required.

My first job was to take out all the frets. This was done by heating each fret with a 100 watt soldering iron. The heat disintegrated the glue holding the frets in. The soldering iron was followed by a pair of “fret pullers” – really, a small pair of flush cutters. I gently squeezed each fret, and pulled it out. This is always a delicate task, which demands a strong and steady hand. Much care must be taken not to crack the fingerboard, and the fret should be well heated.

When all the old, worn frets were removed, I sized and cut new frets from a coiled length of fret wire. The new frets were bent to a smaller radius than the fret board; an overbend that ensured the ends of the frets stayed down once they were in place.

This is the Jim Fleeting Guitars Fret-a-Tron©: as useful as it is unsophisticated.  Each slot is marked with the number of the fret. It ensures that the various lengths of wire do not get mixed up, and that the the correct length is hammered into each slot.

Because the Gibson Heritage has binding running down each side of the fretboard, I trimmed the tang - the part of the fret that fits in the slot of the fretboard – so it didn’t go to the end of each fret. I also sanded the fretboard so that it was level.

Now that the frets were all the correct size and shape, it was time to hammer them into the slots.

I dabbed very thin superglue onto each fret, so that the glue wicked under the fret and along the slot. Then I hammered and clamped each fret. When clamping I used a thin piece of wood, positioning it between frets. The clamp pushed the frets in the fretboard down and out. This helped the ends to stay in. Once the glue had dried, the ends were trimmed using the flush cutters.

Then I shaped the ends of the frets using a file, so that the end of each fret was 45 degrees to the fingerboard.

Now that the frets were in, they had to be levelled, crowned and polished. First, I made the frets level with one another. To do this I used a piece of glass with sandpaper glued to it  to ensure that  the sanding surface was as flat as possible.

The levelling process leaves the frets flat at the top; from a side view, they are trapezia. Frets should appear semi-circular from the side, so must be crowned. This is achieved with a crowning file: a file with a concave edge, used to carve and round the top of a fret. To ensure that the height of each fret remained unchanged, I drew a line across the top of the fret with a felt-tip marker. The fret should be crowned until this ink line is so thin, it is almost disappearing. In this way the fret was rounded, but the very top was untouched.

The final process was the polish. The frets were now covered in scratches from the levelling and crowning processes, and I polished every single scratch from every single fret. I also rounded off and polished the ends, so that there were no sharp corners to catch the player’s hand.

The final stage: I cleaned the fingerboard, to remove all the tiny pieces of fret (some of which you can see in the picture above). I use lemon oil for this. Not only does it do an excellent job of cleaning and protecting my customers’ fingerboards, it also gives their guitars a pleasant smell.

The end result: