Guitar Players: Show us yours!

[Ulu]

Patterning a new pick guard.

There’s a lot of room inside this guitar but there’s no sound holes. Maybe I should put one in the pickguard.

 

[Ulu]

Fancy 3-layer pickguard plastic.

I want to put a 45° edge on this but I’m not sure if I can do a neat job of it. At least I have enough material to do it twice.

 

[Ulu]

Good thing I have extra material. My first Dremel setup had a fatal glue failure and I screwed up the part. Now I have to relocate things and try again. Before that I will make A special clamp to positively locate the router base without glue.

I used my 1950s Bruning drafting machine as a pantograph.

I attached a plastic platten to the machine and then glued the router down and braced it with 1/8 inch steel wire and screws.

Also I’m going to try a different cutter, because this one seems to leave a particularly poor finish.

I took a closeup picture of the carnage just as my camera decided to go dead so you’ll have to imagine it for now.

 

[Captain Awesome]

 

[Ulu]

OK, it’s just like buying bikes. I can stop any time I want to. Right?

Generic 2020ish “Fender” partscaster and a 1958 Silvertone Speed Demon.

I had a gun that I did not like, a scope that cost a lot of money but I thought it was damaged, a bipod that had too many adjustments to be useful, and the protective case so heavy that the cost to fly it anywhere would be prohibitive.

I sold it all and turned the cash into these two new guitars plus a fancy Taylor guitar strap, Also a few other little goodies like lemon oil, a pot oiler, a new set of volume and tone pots, and knobs all for the Bobcat.

 

[Ulu]

OK you knew this was coming, right?

I tore the Silvertone guitar down today.

There was a problem with the middle pick up but as it turned out it was the switch. The selector switch was just dirty and corroded, and after a good cleaning it’s OK.

This guitar has a two piece construction, with the neck bolted to the body, like all fender guitars. It needed the neck reset, because with the bridge adjustment all the way down, the action was still a mile high. OK it was 1/8” which is nearly twice what it should be.

I took it all apart and found that it had been shimmed up the last time it was apart, with a bit of birthday card and some drafting tape.

Then the gap (There should not be a gap!) had been filled with a whole lot of mahogany furniture crayon. Most of it has been scraped out already in these photographs but you can still see the dark crayon.

I made a new shim tapered to approximately 4°, but this turned out to be nearly twice what I needed. Now my bridge is above the normal top of his travel, but the action is too low and the strings are buzzing.

I congratulated myself on a successful shim that I can disassemble and shave down a little bit until I get the correct angle. Better that than the other way, because you can’t add to the shim.

 

[Tom Walters]

OK, it’s just like buying bikes. I can stop any time I want to. Right?

View attachment 288082

Generic 2020ish “Fender” partscaster and a 1958 Silvertone Speed Demon.

View attachment 288084

I had a gun that I did not like, a scope that cost a lot of money but I thought it was damaged, a bipod that had too many adjustments to be useful, and the protective case so heavy that the cost to fly it anywhere would be prohibitive.

I sold it all and turned the cash into these two new guitars plus a fancy Taylor guitar strap, Also a few other little goodies like lemon oil, a pot oiler, a new set of volume and tone pots, and knobs all for the Bobcat.

Your 58 (Kay) Silverstone is fitted with three of the "speedbump" single coil pickups m

 

[Ulu]

I tore the Silvertone apart again and cut the shim down and put it back together. The action then would set up properly, with the bridge right where it should be, in what would be considered the middle of its adjustment range.

Basically I hot glued a little handle on the shim and shaved it on my belt sander. When I got done it was pretty thin, and I had to be very careful about taking off the glue.

This came out really well, and I got the neck angle I wanted. I was pretty lucky, because with no instruments large enough to measure the angles involved, I was just eyeballing.

Two of the slots in the nut were over cut and I did the trick with baking soda and crazy glue to build the nut back up. This guitar has a cheap plastic replacement nut, and it’s not quite skinny enough for the neck. I will have to measure it in order a real bone nut blank. Or six. I have a few guitars that want one.

The D string was too low at the bridge so I did the toothpick trick there. It was either that or cut the other five slots then raise the bridge. I wasn’t sure I was quite there yet. An acceptable replacement bridge is probably available but I hate to destroy this 60-year-old piece of rosewood.

Your 58 (Kay) Silverstone is fitted with three of the "speedbump" single coil pickups m

I’m pretty sure this was made by Kay for Sears, and with a different logo, for Spiegel.

Those pickups are heavy monsters. They definitely work better running through my little booster/limiter pedal.

It took me a few minutes to figure out the controls on this guitar. Each of the three pickups has its own volume knob. The selector switch allows you to select pickup one, pickup two, pickup three, or all three at once.

There is a bass knob and a treble knob, which cover output to the Jack, but one of them has a terrible buzz. I think its capacitor has gone dead.

Also there’s no ground wire to the tail piece but there’s something loose inside the guitar, perhaps a tiny nut that secured the ground wire to the tail piece by way of a flat head machine screw which also secured the strap button. That screw appears to be missing.

I have to get a pickup or two out again, when I put new strings on it, and start digging around inside some more. I am afraid that to remove one pot from this guitar to fix the capacitor I will actually have to remove other pots, and the jack, and their harness, and then fish it all back in at once.

So far all I have done is pull the knobs and lube those pot shafts from the outside.

If you look at the photograph above where I have the neck and the body separated, you will notice four extra holes. Three screws secure the neck of this guitar and one hole is for the factory jig when the neck was built.

But three of those holes were where some bozo put cabinet screws into this guitar, to try and achieve what I just did with a shim.

You can see I will have some plugging to fix this well and it will never be completely invisible.

To be sure, this is a cheaper steamed plywood guitar. No one carved the arched top and bottom.

Nonetheless that’s a beautiful piece of 70 year old maple veneer.

 

[Ulu]

I spent an hour playing the Speed Demon, and just the name makes one faster.

Then I spent a couple hours cleaning 25 years of grunge off my Fender amp, and polishing the “Tolex” (stamped PVC) upholstery. I took off all the screws and hardware to polish the chrome and get the edges clean.

We made pizza and avoided watching the super bowl.

After dinner I took the neck off the Bobcat, and really cleaned it. I scraped the fretboard free from decades of accumulated grunge. I scraped it to bare rosewood without removing the frets. That took about 4 hours with a flat scalpel.

I also started wedging off the maple veneer, which is coming loose on top. It will need to be re-glued. Not sure why the top is delaminating. Maybe it hung in a store window.

Also, I bought new control pots and knobs for it.

 

[Ulu]

I have been working on a custom strap for the 1448 Silvertone. I started with a vintage leather and canvas belt from the 90s.

Then this added leather came from an old boot, and I hand stitched it all together.

I pre-drilled all the holes and sewed it with two needles.

Loctite brand high-tech spray adhesive holds the leather together before sewing.

Also a copper plated iron rivet secures the webbing.

It’s going to get a “vintage” suede shoulder pad next.

I didn’t get that finished yet because
I ordered some new machine heads for the bobcat Guitar and they came today.

I took some time to get the head all set up and everything square. There was some fine-tuning with an X-Acto knife and sandpaper involved.

Afterwards I had to fill all the original screw holes and touch up the paint. It took several rounds of paint & sanding to fill up the little dents. I used a heat gun to speed the drying.

 

[Ulu]

Polishing the roller bridge.

Before

After

I took that all apart & used Nevr-Dull polish wadding and a brass brush on the rust.

 

[Ulu]

I polished up the tail as much as possible, but it is not In good shape. The whammy bar was ripped loose somehow.

It was nice today, so I clamped up the Bobcat body on the outdoor bench.

I had to glue 3 areas of major delamination.