Articles in the Workshop Category
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This is a bit special. It’s a lovely, pre-war Martin. Actually, it’s pre-1934 if you want to get a little more precise (but only a little) – it’s fitted with bar frets.
It’s been through the wars a little and has, at some stage in the past had a long side-crack repaired. That repair has lasted some time from the look of it and doesn’t overly concern me.
What is a concern, however, is the bridge. The leading edge has cracked and broken off under string-tension. The owner saved the piece that …
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The 3-Saddle Intonation Problem
If you play a Telecaster with a 3-saddle bridge (like the one shown opposite), you may be aware that setting intonation on the instrument is a matter of compromise. Because a single adjustment screw sets the intonation on two different strings at the same time, Telecaster intonation is really a matter of ‘balancing the differences’ and getting each string as close as possible without putting its partner string out by too much.
Move to a 6-saddle bridge
If this really bothers you, you can move to a 6-saddle bridge. …
Workshop »
You’re a millionaire playboy guitarist with a vintage Fender or you’re just someone with one of many current or past Fender originals and reissues.
Whatever the case, you’re finding that those big blues bends that you love doing are buzzing or, worse still, choking-out completely and dying. Your guitar plays fine and buzz-free the rest of the time but as soon as you go for a nice, soulful, bent note, it buzzes or chokes.
Annoying.
Possibly more annoying is when I tell you that there’s a good chance it’s just a limitation …
Workshop »
There are a number of reasons that a plucked guitar string might buzz. We’ll probably go into some of those reasons in future articles but, as I happened to have one of the more uncommon reasons for a buzzing string in the workshop, I thought I’d share it with you.
What I had was a Tele with a few minor issues and a pronounced, ‘zingy’, buzz on the D-string. This wasn’t fret-buzz – the string buzzed even when fingered at the last fret with no more neck in the picture (and …