This beautiful old Ric bass showed up at my workshop with no output from the neck pickup so, as usual, once I got time, I took a bunch of measurements to make sure I wasn't disturbing a working vintage pickup with issues elsewhere. The original High Gain was definitely not healthy so I dived in to see if it could be repaired. I pulled the pickup apart and started to unwind the coil to see if I could find a break near the end of the coil that I could reattach to the lead wire and salvage "most" of the original pickup. After unwinding to a point I didn't feel comfortable taking more wire ..read more

Well, here it is. What would happen if you somehow melded the greatest rock rhythm guitarist with the greatest punk rock rhythm guitarist? Or, possibly more accurately, what would happen if some idiot who builds guitars under his house in Brisbane wanted to make a Mosrite like Malcolm Youngs Gretsch?  This would happen. I'll start off by sacrilegiously saying I'm actually not a huge AC/DC fan. I mean, I get they were great, and I understand the importance, and some of their records were the first records I ever bought with my own money back in the early/mid 70's but, I'm not a huge fan ..read more

I'm getting more and more requests for rewinding pickups and while I do make and rewind pickups, I don't really consider myself a service for rewinding common pickups. Let me explain. I built and set up my winder originally to make pickups for my Wosrite guitars as I wanted accurate Mosrite style pickups which weren't available anywhere back in the early 2000's. After I stopped making guitars for a while around 2010, I packed up my winder as I needed room in my small and cramped workshop. In about 2017 I started making guitars again and, got the winder back out to make my T-90's, FMF pickups ..read more

I first met Dave on Sounds Like Sunsets first tour to Brisbane when the whole band dropped into my workshop on their way to the show. Despite not knowing them or their band we nerded out over gear and music and quickly realised we had something special connecting us. After getting a copy of Saturdays, their first release I was hooked. It, like their second release Invisible 4 years later in 2005 was both seemingly harder to get than they should have been considering the sheer quality of the content. Why weren't these records available everywhere? Why weren't they being played everywhere ..read more

Here's another TMI Custom hot off the press and yet again heavily influenced by Johnny Ramone but this time NOT a Mosrite. While Johnny was most famous for playing Mosrites, the 1965 Mosrite Ventures model II was his weapon of choice and although he did own and play other Mosrites, the famous blue and white "slab bodies" were his most recognizable guitars by far. In 1978 Hamer approached Johnny with the hopes of making him a signature model to replace his Mosrites. Jol Dantzig, who was co-owner of Hamer was a big Ramones fan and wanted to work with him to make a guitar that would work f ..read more

I've written about making these bridges before for old Gibson basses that need a little TLC without the cost and impact of a full neck reset. The last one I made was a 2-post bridge which, in all fairness, was never really a great idea as the tension on these bridges is immense, especially on the long scale versions like this, which is why Gibson quickly developed the 3-post version here. This one came in to discuss the options we had as the owner hadn't played the bass in years due to the bridge being down as low as it would go, and the action still being way too high. The neck was straight ..read more

I started my vinyl record label back in 2012 to work with a release music by friends and hopefully introduce people to these amazing artists.  I managed to get 63 vinyl (and 1 cassette) releases out into the world between 2012 and 2020 and then, well, the world kind of collapsed and it became VERY difficult to support and do new releases justice so, I took a break while the world realigned. While I'm not saying we're particularly well realigned yet, it feels like a good time to start working with some amazing people again in this capacity so, next month, Feb 2023 I will be doing the ..read more

Back in December I finished one of two new TMI guitars I had started a couple of months earlier to clear my brain of the world. That one was my TMI Custom S62 and was in homage of my favourite and most influential guitar designer and builder, Semie Moseley. I mentioned at the time that I was building another guitar dedicated to another one of my influences and here it is. Serial number 137. The TMI Custom LPS is to show my great appreciation to the man Les Paul. As a designer, builder and inventor I hold Les in the highest regard and he, along with Paul Bigsby (who is also honoured here) are ..read more

That's 2022 done and dusted. I'd like to say a genuine thanks to everyone who follows my place and supports it, even in the smallest ways. As challenging as things have been I'm well aware how immensely lucky I am to do what I do for the people I do it for. It's been a big year of repairs and setups here at my cramped little workshop and I've enjoyed it immensely. Bringing peoples guitars, pedals, amps and bits that go along with them back to life is (mostly) a very satisfying thing to do with your time. Mine anyway.   I serviced and listed over 250 guitars on the site this year with mor ..read more

This awesome 1982 Westone Thunder came in recently for some love and a complete overhaul to get it playable again after sitting around for a while. We don't see a lot of these Westones here in Australia as they were a Japanese built guitar made by the great Matsumoku factory for a US importer dealer St Louis Music who also imported guitars under the Electra brand. While the name Westone was owned in the US by St Louis Music, these guitars were marketed directly to dealers in Europe from the factory and hit UK and US shores in 1981 after Matsumoku had displayed prototypes at seve ..read more