I hope I may be allowed a slightly self-serving post. Although, to be fair, I reckon there’s something here that might well interest all you guitar geeks.
If you’re a regular reader, you know that I run Haze Guitars here in Ireland, building custom instruments and performing repairs on pretty much anything with strings. Well, I’ve been working with Radio Nova (also in Ireland) on a fantastic competition. Next week (the first week of October), Nova will be running their Rocktober 500 Countdown competition and the ultimate winner will get a …

About, bloody, time.
In my alter-ego persona as a mild-mannered, guitar-repair guy, about half of the times I get a call about a Jaguar, it’s someone with a stock model asking about modding it to make it all Cobainy.
Well now, they don’t need to. Fender have gone and done it already.
The Kurt Cobain signature Jaguar is a replica of the ’65 Jag that Cobain played with Nirvana. It’s been reliced too, to capture some of the original’s vibe.

As you’d expect, it’s got a pair of DiMarzio humbuckers shoved in there, with …

A while back, I outlined a (slightly) unusual method of repairing the broken neck of a Gibson SG. I mentioned that guitar would make another appearance soon and here it is.
The guitar suffered a broken headstock while still in its case. A neck-break in the case was the final straw for the owner—who’s had more than one Gibson require a neck repair— and he wanted to consider options to help prevent it happening again. We talked over the pros and cons of the various solutions and eventually decided on a …

I quite like some of Morrissey’s music. I also quite like meat—tasty, tasty meat—but I have no real problem with the fact that Morrissey isn’t keen on meat or even that Morrissey’s not too keen on people who eat meat. Despite that I’ve heard him say a few things I found annoying and stupid in the past, his views on vegitarianism don’t make him a twat.
What about stating that the recent massacre in Norway pales before the wrongs of the fast-food industry, though? Does that make him a twat?
The internet’s …

Nobody likes to see this. It’s the headstock of a Gibson SG and, as you can see, it’s broken. Ouch.
Something slightly unusual about this is that this guitar suffered a headstock break while still in its case. This is unusual but not unheard of. I’ve seen a few in my time (and I mention it in my general article about Broken Necks). It’s a real pain to hear this but even a good case might not protect your guitar in all circumstances. If you want to be even more safe, …

OK. I’m as geeky as the next guitar nerd and, like you all, I love looking at videos of guitarists’ rigs. I love seeing their seventy stage guitars and their two full height racks full of esoteric effects with flashing LEDs and their wall of stacks and that special plectrum they use that’s made from a shark’s tooth. I love that crap.
Still though, I can’t help feeling that this look at Buddy Guy’s rig is a breath of fresh air. Deep down, I’m a traditionalist and, no matter how much …

Bob Taylor is a geek. There’s no denying it. Geek is written all the way through this book as if it were a stick of rock. I think the odd thing—for a person in his position anyway—is that Bob Taylor isn’t really a guitar geek. At least that’s what comes through here.
Instead, what seems evident from reading Taylor’s book, Guitar Lessons, is that Bob is an engineering geek. All through, it seems like his biggest passion is figuring things out. How does a guitar work? How can I make one? …

A little ways back, I discussed the removal of an acoustic guitar’s neck for repair. I also talked a little about my opinions on the construction of that particular guitar. The neck-removal post was getting a little long so I decided to split out the reassembly part.
Putting an acoustic guitar back together generally involves some glueing. Sometimes more and sometimes less.
A bolt-on neck will generally just require that the fingerboard extension (the part past where the neck meets the body) be glued to the guitar top while the bolts inside …

This is my Fender Blues Deluxe amp.
It’s a beauty. I’ve had it for years and I love it. It’s full of Fender. Really, there’s so much Fender in here that it bursts out in sparkly loveliness whenever I plug in a Strat.
In fact, there’s too much Fender in here.
It’s too damn loud. It might be fine if I were placed it at one end of a football stadium and ran a really long lead to the other end but in my house it rattles the windows as soon as the …

I love these little Planet Waves SOS tuners. They call them SOS: Strobe On String and they work by pulsing two little LEDs at a particular frequency. You pluck a string and shine the light on it. If it’s out of tune, the pattern made by the light wobbles about. When the string is in tune, the pattern becomes stable. Easy peasy.
I’ve got a couple of these in my workshop as I frequently need to tune guitars (or even necks mounted on temporary—surrogate—bodies for refrets) with no pickups to plug …