So, this bolt-on neck we’ve discussed over the last couple of weeks gave us a bit of a run for our money. We saw a method of fitting it to the body and how to plug and re-drill the mounting screw-holes. That’s all done and we should be on the home stretch. Just need to mount the tuners and string it up. Gah! Seems this neck has one last trick up its sleeve. The tuners that my customer bought for this project don’t quite fit. The tuner holes in the headstock are too large for the tuner bushings. Actually, the holes are stepped—the front is wider than the rear and there’s still finish at the ba ..read more

Last time, we looked at how to deal with a common problem when fitting a replacement bolt-on neck—namely that the new neck is sometimes too big for the pocket in the body. This week, we'll check another common issue with aftermarket necks: The screw-holes don't match. In this case, the replacement neck came with the usual four holes whereas the original neck fitted with five screws. More often, you'll probably be replacing a four-hole neck with another four-hole neck but will find one or two (or all) holes don't quite match. Either way, the fix is the same. By the way, the necks in the photo ..read more

Fitting a new or aftermarket neck to your bolt-on guitar or bass is a common enough job that I thought I’d talk a little about it. I recently had to do this with a Precision Bass and I hit a few problems along the way that are pretty typical. Certainly typical enough that this information should be useful. First off is the annoying issue of tolerances. You see, even if you’re really careful, measure everything, and order a like-for-like replacement neck from the original builder, it still might not fit. Grrr. Tolerances are always plus or minus a little. Even if the person spraying the neck ..read more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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