Appointments: The final word
Haze Guitars » Guitar Repair
by Gerry Hayes
1y ago
Hi I have an update on the appointment booking system. Short version: I’m moving to a straightforward waiting list for appointments. Nobody likes waiting lists but this is the most fair system. My previous attempt at managing this was overly complicated and — let’s face it — bad. I’m sorry. If you were already registered for notifications, I’ll contact you (in order of the time and date you registered) to arrange an appointment. For anyone coming in fresh, click the appointments button above to register. Thank you. The longer version (because I always have a longer version) is this ..read more
Visit website
Haze Appointment Update
Haze Guitars » Guitar Repair
by Gerry Hayes
1y ago
Ok. So, yesterday was a little wild and so I feel like I need to say something to address the appointment situation here at Haze Guitars. Last September, I booked out to the end of the year within five days of opening appointments. Yesterday morning, I booked out five weeks of appointments in a couple of hours. I don’t know what’s happened to cause this crazy level of extra demand. Yes, my appointment list has been growing and growing over time but it's ballooned wildly in the last year or so. Full disclosure: I had to slightly reduce my working time for personal reasons but that’s nowhere nea ..read more
Visit website
Notched or non-notched straight-edge
Haze Guitars » Guitar Repair
by Gerry Hayes
1y ago
Recently, I had an email from someone having trouble with their neck setup and they reached out for help. They wanted their neck set up almost perfectly straight but were having some problems getting things to sound and play correctly after they set the relief where they wanted. In the course of discussion this, I found that they were using a Stew Mac notched straight edge to set their relief. Some context in case you don’t know: The notched straight edge is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a precision-ground ruler with a series of notches cut in its length. The notches correspond with fret p ..read more
Visit website
Rounding Out Tremolo Stabilisers (for now)
Haze Guitars » Guitar Repair
by Gerry Hayes
1y ago
Things have been a little crazy around Haze HQ as I write but I thought I’d take this opportunity to round up a few final points on the previous discussions on tremolo stabilisers. Actually, that’s not quite true. There is one last trem stabilising system that I want to talk about but, I’m going to park it for a while. We’ll return to it another day. For now, I want to discuss two important things about these stabilisers. First point regards the tension element of stabilisers like the Back Box and the Tremsetter. On these devices, you can turn a thumbscrew and alter their internal spring tensi ..read more
Visit website
Using Tremolo Stabilisers
Haze Guitars » Guitar Repair
by Gerry Hayes
1y ago
It feels like we've taken a circuitous route to get to tremolo stabilisers but I think it was the right way to go. After looking at how to physically block an unused tremolo, we talked about at the problems with 'flutter' (and other issues) endemic to floating trem systems. Then a quick stop at stops (sorry) let us look at a couple of options to turn a floating trem into a dive-only system, thereby alleviating some of these problems. And now we're stabilising things. Back Box There are heaps of tremolo stabilisers on the market. If you do a search for the term, you’ll find no end of devices re ..read more
Visit website
Setting a Tremolo for Dive-Only
Haze Guitars » Guitar Repair
by Gerry Hayes
1y ago
Last time, we discussed both chimpanzees and the problems with a floating tremolo system. To recap on the trem issues, in a floating tremolo system, any upset to the balance is going to throw things out of whack, even just temporarily. What to do about this? Well, we're sneaking up on the subject of tremolo stabilisers but we need to make a stop on the way. There's a category of stabiliser that's not really a stabiliser but can be really useful in the right circumstances. Let's consider 'blocking' again. We saw a few weeks ago that it’s possible to fully block a trem bridge to, essentially, h ..read more
Visit website
The delicate tremolo balance
Haze Guitars » Guitar Repair
by Gerry Hayes
1y ago
All this blocked tremolo talk is bringing us nicely to a drawback of a floating trem system: Shifting the balance can really upset the applecart (or banana-cart—stick with me). So let’s look at that balance in a tremolo system and consider how it should work and what can go wrong. I’ll even throw yet more metaphors into this email as we go. Consider a relatively standard guitar with a floating tremolo (one that’s free to move in both directions—raising and lowering pitch). A standard set of D’Addario EXL110 10-46 strings has a combined tension of 102lbs. Let’s round that off to 100lbs for the ..read more
Visit website
Blocking a Floating Tremolo Bridge
Haze Guitars » Guitar Repair
by Gerry Hayes
1y ago
Last time I talked about blocking an unused tremolo bridge to prevent it moving inadvertently. But there’s more to the story. What about fully-floating bridges? Last week’s method requires at least one of two prerequisites: The bridge base can be adjusted flat against the guitar top In the bridge’s ‘zero position’, the front of the sustain-block makes a solid contact with the cavity wall facing it. That’s not possible on many guitars. Sometimes the instrument and hardware mean the bridge has to float above the surface of the body and, in many of those cases, there’s a gap in front of the ..read more
Visit website
Blocking a Tremolo Bridge
Haze Guitars » Guitar Repair
by Gerry Hayes
1y ago
Not everyone uses—or even likes—a tremolo bridge. You can love a Strat but hate that bloody wobbly bridge. Eric Clapton is famous for disliking, among other things, wobbly bridges on his Strat. So he has them blocked. What’s involved in stopping the wobble? Well, on some guitars, you can just jam in some more springs and tighten the tremolo claw way up. That pulls really hard on the bridge and forces it back hard against the guitar top. The added pull of the extra springs, tightened way up, means the bridge will stay put under string-tension and won’t lose tune if you break a string. How to b ..read more
Visit website
Setting nut height on a fretless bass
Haze Guitars » Guitar Repair
by Gerry Hayes
1y ago
A while back, I received an email with a question and I thought the answer might be useful to a wider audience. The question was about what height to set the string slots on a fretless bass. There’s some information to be found about string-clearance heights for fretted instruments but not really anything much for fretless. I’m going to start somewhere far from fretless basses but bear with me. I’ll get back there. ? Let’s consider a guitar fitted with a zero fret. If you construct and set this up as I believe you should, you level all the frets—including the zero fret—at the same time. That ..read more
Visit website

Follow Haze Guitars » Guitar Repair on FeedSpot

Continue with Google
Continue with Apple
OR