0% interest, that is.

Yep, for the next few months, you can get your grubby hands on a spanking new Taylor through a financing agreement with 0% interest. If you’ve been hankering after a new guitar, and considering financing it, now might just be the time. Until September, 2010, Taylor (in partnership with GE Money) are offering zero percent interest on 12-month finance agreements.

The offer covers new guitars (obviously) from the following series:

• 500 Series/Acoustic 5 Series and up
• T5 Standard and Custom
• T3 models
• All SolidBody models

Check out how to get your frugal Taylor.

What the hell is a neck reset and why the hell would you want one?

You’ll often hear talk about neck resets (or sometimes, neck sets) but the reasons it’s required are often glossed over by saying it’s just something that acoustics need sometimes. It’s all pretty simple and it has to do with geometry (stay with me…) and wood.

Huh?

Let me try to make a little sense of that.

Why would I need a neck reset?

When an acoustic guitar is made, it is designed and constructed such that the guitar’s string height or action is round about where it should be to ensure a comfortable and buzz-free playing experience. Things are all cool for a while but, as time goes on, the wood that the guitar is made from alters very slowly. The tension of the strings (which is considerable), over the years, pulls the bridge up and, often, pushes the upper bouts of the soundboard down. Click on the image above for a closer look.

This happens to pretty much all steel string acoustic guitars eventually. How quickly it occurs, and the degree to which the soundboard shifts can vary considerably due to factors like construction, timber variables and environmental variables. It can happen in a few years or in sixty years. The bellying may be severe or may be so small that it doesn’t adversely affect things.

As this process occurs, the guitar’s geometry changes. The relationship of neck/fingerboard to bridge/saddle is altered and the upshot is a higher action.

In an ideal world, a straight line along the tops of the frets should terminate around the top of the bridge. This allows a guitar’s string action be set using the height of the saddle. A good indication that a guitar is a candidate for a neck reset is when a straight-edge along the top of the frets contacts somewhere below the top of the bridge (as in this image).

For a quick, visual assessment of the same thing, sight down the guitar neck from the headstock end. This will give you an idea of the neck-set situation.

What you’d like to see is the frets looking like they’re hitting the top of the bridge and not, as in this image, somewhere quite a ways down it.

What we often see, as guitars age, is that the saddle has been lowered again and again over the years to compensate for these changes. Most guitars are manufactured with a bit of ‘adjustment’ in mind and it’s often ok to do this for a while. In most cases, it just buys time though and eventually you run out of saddle height and can lower it no more.

So what can be done about all this?

What is a neck reset?

There are some things to consider before a neck reset is decided upon and you should talk over any alternatives with your repair guy to decide the best course of action. Sometimes the top of the bridge can be ’shaved’ lower – there are times (not that many, admittedly) that this is the best alternative. Sometimes, the bellying of the top is not the result of the ageing process but an indication of loose braces. A neck reset is a relatively ‘invasive’ job and you and your repair tech should be sure before doing it.

But, in most cases, it’s usually the way to go. And, if so, this is what will happen:

The neck will be removed from the body of the guitar. On most guitars currently requiring a neck set, this means a complicated process of heating the fingerboard extension to soften the glue holding it to the guitar top and then ’steaming’ the glued-in dovetail joint to release the neck. This process is somewhat easier on some newer guitars that use ‘bolt-on’ neck systems. Many of these are still too young to need resets but it happens.

Once off, wood is removed (using chisel, rasp, sandpaper, etc.) from the bottom of the heel. Doing so alters the angle at which the neck joins the body such that the fingerboard better follows the string plane (and its own plane hits the top of the bridge as explained above). How much wood is removed is generally calculated by entering some dimensions in a formula and/or by eye (experience counts for a lot). Personally, I usually end up using a combination of both – the formula to get me close and working by eye to get me exactly where I need to be.

Once the wood has been removed and the angle altered, the neck is reattached. It’s not just a matter of slapping glue on it joint and hoping for the best – the newly modified geometry usually requires that the joint be adjusted and shimmed.

After all that’s done, it’s sometimes necessary to either level the frets, or occasionally, to refret the neck completely. A lucky repair tech will get away without fretwork some of the time.

A neck reset is a pretty big job. You need a repair guy you can trust as it’s easy to mess up. Talk through the job with your tech and satisfy yourself that you’re leaving your guitar in good hands.

Prices can vary depending on the instrument as different manufacturers use different methods of attaching necks. Martin is one of the easier neck sets. Gibsons have some quirks that make life more difficult and they finish their guitars after the neck is glued on so they’re practically impossible to set without some paint chipping and touch-up work. If you’ve got a Guild, you’d best take a seat before you get a quote – some of them make for a nasty reset.

So then, the long and short of it, if you’ve got an acoustic that’s worth keeping, chances are it’s going to need a neck set at least once in its life. Make sure you find a good repair guy to do the job and you’ll get an easier playing instrument for quite a while into the future.

As always, shout up in the comments if you’ve any questions.

This article was brought to you by Gerry Hayes from the workshop of Haze Guitars. Haze Guitars provides instrument repair, restoration and upgrade services in Dublin, Ireland.

The Lick Library are launching a new DVD tuition course.

In the wake of their Andy James’ Shred Guitar in Six Weeks, comes their latest course, Andy James’ Metal Rhythm Guitar in Six Weeks. The folks at Lick Library say they are confident that, by following the course, you’ll hear and see progress in the timeframe.

The course comprises six DVDs (that can be purchased separately or, at a discount, as a set of six). Here’s what you’ll learn…

• Week 1: Standard Tuning: drop picking and palm muting, triplets and left hand muting, alternate picking, chord variations, practice routines, getting a metal tone, four metal jam tracks.
• Week 2: Drop D Tuning: Pedal tone riffs, chord progressions and phrasing, alternate picking, palm muting, the phrygian dominant scale, technique performances, three metal jam tracks.
• Week 3: Drop C# Tuning: Arpeggiated riffs, odd rhythms over a 4/4 beat, alternate picking, palm muting, technique performances, two metal jam tracks.
• Week 4: E flat Tuning: Complete song breakdown with technique lessons focusing on triplets, pedal tones, down picking and palm muting, metal guitar jam track.
• Week 5: Drop C# Tuning: Complete song breakdown with technique including arpeggiated riffs, triplets, pedal tones, down picking, plus a metal guitar jam track.
• Week 6: Drop C Tuning: Complete song breakdown using alternate picking, palm muting, odd rhythms, phrygian dominant scale, plus a metal guitar jam track.

Andy James is one of the UK’s rising stars of metal guitar. He’s lead guitarist with the band Sacred Mother Tongue. All of the jam tracks on this course have been specially devised by Andy to support your progress and help practice what you’ve learnt.

Here’s Andy with a taster of the course.

Check out Metal Rhythm Guitar in Six Weeks over at the Lick Library. A full set of DVDs will retail for UK£79.99 or you can buy each separately for UK£16.99.

Pagey again. Jimmy Page is being sued over writing credit (and, obviously, royalties) for the song Dazed And Confused.

Jake Holmes alleges that Pagey and Led Zeppelin infringed copyright by using his song, Dazed And Confused, as the basis for – well – Dazed And Confused which appeared on Zeppelin’s first album.

Holmes is an American folk singer and, back in 1967, he recorded his Dazed and Confused on his album, The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes. Cool name.

Here, have a listen.

Word is that Holmes supported Page-era Yardbirds when they played in Greenwich Village in 1967 and it’s supposed that Pagey first heard the song there. It’s certainly no secret that The Yardbirds gigged their own version of the song.

When Page finally got around to putting the song on vinyl, by then with Led Zeppelin, Page himself was credited as the writer. There was no nod to Holmes.

So now, quite a while later, Holmes is suing Page. Legally, it seems that even a win for Holmes will be limited to the previous three years’ royalties. I’m guessing that’s probably more than the last three years royalties for The Above Ground Sound though, so he’ll probably be ok with this. There’s also the future to consider and a writing credit on Zeppelin’s version can’t hurt.

This is not the most surprising news really. I think the only surprise is that this didn’t happen before now or that a number of the other ‘influences’ that show up on the first couple of Zeppelin albums haven’t tried their luck in the vein of Holmes now has and Willie Dixon did a few years back.

More information and some words from Holmes himself at Classic Rock.

Buzz is the bane of the guitarist. Fret-buzz is the one that gets all the press and, to be sure, it’s a serious pain. Frets are not the only thing that is likely to buzz, rattle and hum on your guitar though. If you’ve got a Gibson (or Gibsonesque – the one below is a Gretsch) guitar it’s possible that your Tune-O-Matic bridge may be the cause of that buzz you hear.

If you can hear a metallic rattle or buzz when you pick a note – sometimes all notes, sometimes certain notes or strings – it’s worth checking your bridge.

The ABR style Tune-O-Matic bridge (the vintage style one) has six adjustable saddles held in place by a small retainer wire. As you can see in the photo, the wire runs across the top of all six saddle-adjustment screws and anchors in a tiny hole either end of the bridge.

This is all very good and ‘vintage’ until it starts to rattle.  If you’re having trouble tracking down a buzz, try damping the retainer wire in some way to determine if that’s the cause.  Pop a bit of tape on temporarily or have a friend poke their finger on it while you play – whatever you need to see if the bridge is the issue.

Once you determine you are actually afflicted by a buzzing bridge, all that’s necessary is to use a small, flat-head screwdriver to push down on the retaining wire between all six saddles. Doing this forces a slight kink into the wire which tightens the wire and forces it more snuggly against the saddle screws.

I recommend going from one end to the other and kinking gradually rather than forcing large kinks in all in one go. It’s possible to force one or more too far and affect their ’saddle holding’ ability so go slow.

Take it easy and carefully. You should consider it a necessity to cut some thick card (a couple of thicknesses is best) to place on the guitar top, under the bridge. It’s incredibly easy to slip and stab your AAAAA-grade quilted maple top with a screwdriver blade. You don’t want that. Protect the guitar before you start jabbing screwdrivers at it.

All going well, you should have a nice, silent retainer wire. Some wires require more persuasion than others to shut-up and it’s not uncommon to have to ‘re-kink’ from time to time after you do it as it works its way loose again. If you really mess up it’s possible to make a new retainer from a guitar string although it’s probably easier to just buy a new, ready-bent-to-shape wire.

Easy-peasy. Just don’t get cocky and forget to protect the guitar top.

As always, feel free to shout up with any questions in the comments and I’ll do my best.

This article was brought to you by Gerry Hayes from the workshop of Haze Guitars. Haze Guitars provides instrument repair, restoration and upgrade services in Dublin, Ireland.

“…Very, very soon.”

BBC 6 Music snagged a short interview with Jimmy Page and he continues his intriguing hinting at new material.

“I’m just looking forward to making some music and surprising people with it,” said Pagey, again mentioning the surprise element.

“I’ve got other ideas that have been nagging at me for a long, long time. I think the way to produce music or present music is same picture, different frame. But sometimes the frame can be quite radical and that’s what I’m gonna do,” he added.

This time, however, Pagey seems to pooh-pooh the idea of big name collaboration and any sort of ’supergroup’. What the hell is he up to? He claims it’ll be out this year so we won’t have to wait too long.

Oh, Pagey, you big rock and roll tease, you.

You can take a listen to the audio of the interview using the player below. It’s kindly provided by the BBC and, sometimes, they have location restrictions on these things so there’s a chance it might not work for you. Fingers crossed.

I recently read an interesting article on the Etiquette of Browsing in guitar stores (by PT over at 5th Fret) and it began to coalesce some thoughts (you might also say fears) that have been wobbling about in my mind for a while.

I want to talk about guitar stores. Before I start, I want to make it clear that I am not talking about all guitar stores as, if I think about it, I’ve probably only been in about half of the guitar stores in the world. I am certainly talking about some guitar stores though and would be interested to see if I’m alone in my views.

In the Etiquette of Browsing article, PT outlines things from the (potential) customer’s point of view and from that of the guitar store salesperson/employee. While I’ve played and repaired guitars for years, I’ve never worked in a guitar store. I know some people that do/have but the opinions that follow are mine alone and are from a customer’s viewpoint.

So then, to the matter…

Since I was a waster, teenage guitar-geek, I’ve been visiting guitar stores and I’ve seen things change over that time. While I always felt a little self-conscious playing a guitar or amp in a store (probably a reflection on how much time I spend practicing), as the years passed, I’ve felt more and more like an imposition to the store employees.

Many of the guitar store-guys of my youth were surly, long-haired blokes with a healthy dislike of having to work for a living (not judging that) but, it seems to me that some guitary Rubicon has been crossed and many guitar salespeople now consider non-employees in their store to be an inconvenience.

Recent trips to a couple of guitar stores have left me in a bad mood. Small but important things – like a poor selection of strings, including plenty of empty hangers where strings had sold and not been reordered – were annoyingly evident. I’ve seen sales-guys trying their best to look invisible and seeming ticked off at me when I broke through their cloak of obscurity. I’ve been ignored as a huddle of sales guys chatted about the frightfully interesting thing that happened the previous evening. I’ve rang guitar stores with a sales query only to be promised on multiple occasions that ’someone will phone me back’, which never happened. I’ve seen lots of similar things on many occasions and across a number of stores – more times and over a longer period than I can chalk up to bad luck or coincidence.

Why is this?

Have these guys accepted that they can’t compete in an internet age and given up?

While it’s definitely true that the ease and cost of buying a guitar from the internet makes for some serious competition, guitar stores have an advantage that many, many other businesses don’t. Pretty much everybody prefers to play a guitar or amp and hear it in real life before buying. This is a massive benefit for guitar stores if they play it right.

The last couple of guitars I bought were from the net. Would I have preferred to buy from a local guitar store? Of course I would. I’d bet that pretty much all guitarists and bassists would prefer to buy from a local store. Many of them still do, despite issues like poor service, poor stock, too-expensive prices and ill-informed and unhelpful staff.

Guitar stores, if you’ve given up the fight with the internet, at least give up gracefully and bow out. If you actually want to compete, however, you’ve got to do things differently. You can’t continue bobing along complacently or, worse still, actively discouraging custom.

For what it’s worth, here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

• Many customers would like to buy stuff. Engage with them. There’s a happy, smiley place between looking over someone’s shoulder as they ramble through your store and scowling at them because they’ve interrupted your pocket-fluff cataloguing. Find this happy place.
• Many customers might not want to buy something right at that moment? Engage with them too. Most of them are not trying to waste your time. They’re browsing, checking stuff out. Maybe tomorrow they’ll be back with a wad of cash so don’t make they feel like an inconvenience or they’ll definitely hit the net.
• Everyone recognises that you can’t stock everything. Everyone recognises that you might not even want to order up strings for that 17-string backwards bazouki. That’s cool. What’s not cool is terse, unhelpful responses to genuine queries. Can you suggest an alternative? Can you suggest somewhere else the customer can try? Can you sound interested?
• The thorny matter of cost #1. People understand that you can’t offer the same price as ultramegaguitarsrus.com. Many are happy to pay extra if they have some ‘added value’. Many are happy to pay a little extra just for some assistance. That’s why they’re in your store. Make sure you offer them something above and beyond what the net can offer. Importantly, make sure that added value is something real and not just a complacent perception you may have of your store and its service.
• The thorny matter of cost #2. Added value notwithstanding, people are not happy to be ripped off. It’s really easy to see how much that guitar on your wall costs on the internet. If the differential is too much, expect walkers. People appreciate that bricks and mortar necessitates a premium. Don’t be greedy. I know what mark-up is on a number of items in local stores and I’d consider most of them to be edging or passing the ‘greedy’ point. This is shooting yourself in the foot. See sense or be internetted out of existence.

I’m no Donald Trump but I understand that customers are pretty important to a business. If you, your staff or your polices are annoying customers, you can expect to see that in your bottom line. The internet has changed how business is done and you need to adapt or die in a bloody, faeces-stained, sorry mess in the ruins of your bankrupt store (too much?). Take a look at the record industry and how they’re struggling to adapt and just pissing off potential and actual customers by chasing the idyll of a wonderful time before cassette tapes were invented.

Don’t let that be you, guitar store owners.

I realise this is a bit of a rant but it’s from a good place. I don’t want to see my local stores disappear. I’m relatively sure my thoughts are objective and not just some ‘it was different in my day’ whinge. I’d love to hear the views of you guys. How are things at your local store?  Please feel free to agree or enthusiastically disagree in the comments below.

Bloody hell! Trev Wilkinson’s been busy.

Trev Wilkinson’s name is pretty well known. The man’s a guitar-tinkering genius in the vein of Leo Fender. Trev’s always come up with splendid ideas on how to make guitars better. His input to brands like Vintage have made for some budget guitars that can punch above their weight and his ideas and inventions have made many pieces of guitar hardware work much better than they ever did before.

Well, it seems that Wilkinson has been turning his giant, bulging brain to the issue of auto-tuning guitars and this is what he’s come up with.

Fret-King is Wilkinson’s brand of guitars (featuring some doozies). This one is the Fret-King Super-Matic and it features the Wilkinson ATD HT440. ATD is Auto Tuning Developments and I’m guessing HT is for Hard Tail (but I could be wrong). The 440 you can figure out yourself.

While the Super-Matic guitar is a handsome animal in a black or burst, Strat-style, alder-bodied, H-S-H configuration (with clever vari-coil tapping), that’s not really what I want to talk about. The story here is the bridge and it’s auto-tuning goodness.

Take a look at the close-up of the bridge. See that thing between it and the humbucker? That’s a mini hex pickup. It’s sensing the string vibration and feeding the info to the complicated gubbins that do the actual thinking. The hex pickup has a button and a small LED display. The button cycles through six preset tunings (indicated by a number on the display), you strum the strings and the little gears and pegs on the bridge tweak each string accurately to that preset. The hex pickup even has a built in tuner so you can check the accuracy if you want.

This system has its fiddly bits at the bridge. The auto-tweaking gets done there. There’s no need for additional weight and complicated tuners up at the headstock.

Frickin’ sweet.

Even better, the unit is designed so that it can retrofit into a standard Strat bridge and trem pocket.

A retrofit auto-tune system? Frickin’ sweeter.

The Super-Matic will retail for UK £1299 sometime in the autumn. Wilkinson will be displaying this baby at Summer NAMM. Thank you to Music Radar who ran this story originally.

Can I get a frickin’ sweet?

This is cool.

Peterson Tuners are (or at least, should be) ubiquitous in the world of professional guitar techs and luthiers. A Peterson strobe tuner – or, more recently, their Virtual Strobe – is the top of the heap when it comes to tuning accuracy. Most tuners that are available to the man (or lady) on the street are reasonably accurate. The emphasis must be on reasonably though. A strobe-type tuner allows you to ’see’ finer increments of tuning than most LED or needle tuners can realistically display. This is the reason that a good tech will prefer a strobe tuner when performing a proper setup for instance.

This sort of accuracy comes at a price though and, although Peterson has continually introduced cheaper models, their price range still tends beyond what most are willing to pay for a tuner.

Then they released iStroboSoft for the iPhone a while back. At US$9.99, it was a pretty cheap way into the world of strobes.

Now they’ve gone one better and, for a limited time, you can get a copy of iStroboSoft (iTunes link) from the App Store for the not-so-princely sum of US$0.99 (or local equivalent). You’d be mad not to. It’s about the best tuner app in the Store.

iPhone people can use the built in mic (and this comes with an input boost facility which is nice) although using an adapter cable would probably be more accurate and easier. You can buy a cable from Peterson but I’d wager that you could get yourself something (¼” jack socket to 3.5mm stereo plug**) that will do the job in Radio Shack or your local equivalent. iPod Touch users will need an external mic.

Go. Get. Strobe.

**UPDATE: D’oh. I stupidly posted this info and my brain just assumed it was ok. I realised a couple of days later that it’s not. A 3.5mm stereo jack won’t do the trick as – to the best of my knowledge – the mic input for an iPhone is on one of the rings in a 4-way jack plug. A 4-way jack has a tip, two rings and a shaft and a stereo jack only has tip, ring, shaft. It’s still (probably) a relatively easy matter to knock-up an adapter cable – especially if you don’t listen to me. Sorry for any hassle.

Hmmmm…

This post should probably be tagged as ‘huh?’

Whitesnake – they of the hair and the guitars and the crotches and the rock ballads and the Tawny Kitaen and whatnot – are releasing their own wine. Teaming up with Dennis de la Montanya, the ‘Snake boys are bringing you a zinfandel that David Coverdale himself describes as:

…a bodacious, cheeky little wine, filled to the brim with the spicy essence of sexy, slippery Snakeyness… I recommend it to complement any & all grown up friskiness & hot tub jollies.

Is this love? … I believe it is …

Spicy essence of sexy, slippery snakeyness? Hot tub jollies? Try drinking a glass of this without thinking about David Coverdale’s penis or where he’s put it.

I might just have a beer.

Buy Whitesnake Zinfandel for US $29.95 at DLMWine.

Zinfandel, though. You’d think they’d have gone for a chardonnay.