You don’t see these everyday! A while back our buddy Mark brought us his vintage Martin 0-18K (koa) for a refret, which is usually a very run-of-the-mill job for us here – except for one thing. This instrument comes from a bygone era when C.F. Martin guitars were made using bar frets. Bar frets differ … The post Bar Refret on a Vintage Martin appeared first on Strange Guitarworks ..read more

Today, I’m going after one of my least favorite features on the world’s most popular guitar: I’m making a case against Fender’s Micro-Tilt. Fender introduced the Micro-Tilt in the early 70’s, and this has been causing problems with their necks for over 50 years. This was designed to angle a bolt-on neck back in the … The post The case against Fender’s Micro-Tilt appeared first on Strange Guitarworks ..read more

I’m a fretless guy. My first foray into fretless bass was back in 2001, when I yanked the frets out of the carbon-fiber neck on my Peavey B-Quad4. Over the years I’ve rarely owned a fretted bass, and have gone deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of fretless playing – so much now that … The post Fretting a fretless bass appeared first on Strange Guitarworks ..read more

Woodworking can be a tedious process that requires patience, preparation and precision to execute well. Oftentimes we see examples of someone taking a more, uh… expeditious route. Like this guitar: someone attempted to modify this Floyd Rose cavity to fit a different style bridge that it wasn’t designed for, with less than stellar results. Maybe … The post Repairing a Floyd Rose route appeared first on Strange Guitarworks ..read more

“Intonation is a social construct”. I’m not sure if I coined this phrase or inadvertently appropriated it, but I do say it often. All music is out of tune – it’s a mathematical impossibility for any three notes to be perfectly in tune with each other at the same time. That’s just science. We all … The post Gibson frets in the wrong place – FIXED! appeared first on Strange Guitarworks ..read more

Recently, our pal Mike Keller came into the shop with an interesting object accompanied by an interesting request. The object in question was a solid rectangular slab of blue molded epoxy with a fragment of wood suspended within, like an ancient mosquito in amber. He told us the wood was a Native American artifact – … The post Bo Diddley-Inspired Custom Guitar! appeared first on Strange Guitarworks ..read more

I honestly don’t know how many broken headstocks I’ve repaired over the years. But I can tell you that when I first started doing this 20 some-odd years ago I wasn’t fixing broken headstocks with splines and a backstrap overlay – it was more like a single C-clamp and some wood glue. Boom. Done! Maybe … The post Fixing a Broken Headstock with Splines and a Backstrap Overlay appeared first on Strange Guitarworks ..read more

Broken Gibson headstocks are very common, and we’ve repaired A LOT of them over the years using various techniques such as backstrapping, laminating multiple-layer overlays, routing reinforcement splines, and sometimes a combination of everything. We see so many broken Gibson headstocks that we’ve developed our own proprietary tooling to give us repeatable and reliable reinforcement … The post Repairing a broken Gibson headstock appeared first on Strange Guitarworks ..read more

Inside nearly every modern guitar and bass neck is a truss rod: a long, adjustable steel rod designed to counteract string tension on the neck. Without it your guitar strings will eventually bend your instrument’s neck into an unplayable banana-shaped object. They are usually pretty sturdy, but if they are abused they can sometimes break. … The post Removing and Replacing a Broken Truss Rod appeared first on Strange Guitarworks ..read more

When I was 17 years old, I had already become bored of the same-old, same-old approach to guitar design. My jaded teenage eyes were already sick of seeing Strats and Teles over and over and over again. I thought these were grandpa guitars, and I yearned for something new. Then I discovered the Parker Fly, … The post Replacing the output jack on a Parker Fly appeared first on Strange Guitarworks ..read more