Episode 3 - What is a Luthier?, Violin Bass, 432 Drop A, Kill Switch, Epoxy Smoke & Marketplace Updates!

Join me for Episode 3 of All Guitars Buzz! In this EPI I discuss cool guitars that have come into the shop, what's on my bench including - Crown Professional Violin Bass, John Reuter Acoustic, Martin Copy...Interesting customer stories and what the heck is a "luthier" anyways! 

Transcript

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Mighty fine, mighty fine. Welcome to All Guitars Buzz, the weekly guitar-centric podcast that dives into a variety of topics, including guitar repair, building, what's on my bench, guitar news worth mentioning, customer stories, buying, selling, trading, along with existential philosophical ramblings. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, stick around. We had some interesting guitars come through the shop. We had a Dan Armstrong bass. This is one of those acrylic ones. Super heavy, but also super rad. If you've never seen one of those, I highly suggest you hop on the internet and just search Dan Armstrong Bass. Might as well put acrylic in there and you'll see it. We also had a Rickenbacher fretless bass roll through. Now this is fretless from the factory, and it's rare that you see one, but a lot of times when you can convert a base into fretless, you will uh well first you pull the frets and then you will fill the frets with um a variety of things. Some people even use like wood putty, but I would suggest not using that. We use like a Teflon strip that we get from a train hobby shop. They come in a variety of uh thicknesses, but we'll use that with some super glue and we'll fill it. So you'll see lines on the fingerboard uh once it's converted to fretless. This doesn't have any lines, it's from the factory, super rare, I've never seen one. So that's pretty cool. You might say to yourself, hey Kenny, what have you been up to? Well, uh I got some news on that servicemen Stratocaster that I was uh converting to hardtail and I was filling it with epoxy. Last week uh the epoxy dripped out of the top and made a mess over everything. If you want to hear what happened there, go check out episode two. And then this time I made sure that it was watertight and it was, and I went ahead and mixed some. I have uh epoxy tints, they're tints specially formulated for epoxy, and the guitar is like brown, mahogany, it's natural. So I went ahead and I, you know, you start to feel kinda like an artist. You got your hat on, you got the your little palette, at least that's what I picture myself looking like. Anyways, you get these tinted epoxy tints, and you uh drip them into the epoxy and then you stir. And I use Total Boat, this is the one that has a long open time, supposedly long open time. I really do think with uh epoxies the open time has to do with the weather. So it went from being pretty chilly in San Diego to hot all of a sudden, and then it cooled down a little bit and now it's hot again. And so, not that that happened within the course of like an hour that I'm mixing this epoxy, but anyways, check out what happened. So I pour the epoxy in uh the back cavity of the strat, like where the uh springs go, and where the bridge block is, tail block or whatever you call it, and um it goes in good, and I'm getting the standard little bubbles floating to the top. And so I go ahead and get my lighter, which I've done a lot of times in the past. Sometimes I even use a torch, and I've had good results with doing this, but anyways, you just lightly hit it and the bubbles will pop. And this time when I did it, it started smoking, and so when that starts to happen, uh Kenny starts to panic, basically. So I'm just like, I'm in my I call it my dust free room of my workshop because that's where I have my uh guitar vice, my neck vise. So I have the guitar chucked up in the vise, kind of free floating by the neck. And so uh it's hanging out there, right? And it's starting to smoke, and I'm thinking, like, okay, first of all, this was just supposed to be a quick thing before I went to bed, and now uh usually I wear a respirator, like I mentioned before this time, no respirator because I was just supposed to be in and out, so it started smoking, and I instantly think, okay, I shouldn't be breathing this in. I gotta protect my eyes, I should probably open the door to get some uh air in here, and then I'm thinking, like, what if this thing catches fire? I you know, so anyways, what I wound up doing, this probably happened in the course of like 30 to 60 seconds, so I took it outside where it continued to smoke, and um yeah, then I tried to go to bed, but I couldn't really go to bed, so I checked up on it and I didn't want to leave it outside the entire night. It had quit smoking, and so I brought it back inside and I chucked it back up in the guitar vise, and uh something happened in between. I'm trying to remember. Okay, at this point the epoxy wasn't set, so okay, here's what happened. So the tint started to turn like a green instead of a brown, which I thought was really weird. So I took a dowel and I stuck it in the cavity kind of where the block goes to stir it. That's what I wanted to do. And a big clump of hardened epoxy, I could feel it in there. It almost felt like um a crumpled up piece of paper that you soaked in super glue. That's what felt like was down in there. And I thought, okay, well that just started to s it's setting like right now. I pulled out the dowel and it kind of self-leveled back again. Then I went to bed. And so the next morning I went down there, checked up on it, and uh it did harden, but there was like a slit in it, uh like probably a one-inch slit that you could stick a razor blade in, and I did stick a razor blade in. I stuck it all the way down in there until it stopped. It when I pulled up on the razor blade, there wasn't any uh residual uh epoxy like that was sticky or wet. So it had all cured, but it had it reminded me of like the tectonic plates or or something, like the desert ground, how it yeah. Anyways, that was super weird. So the next I just chilled out for a second because I was like, this is my second gnarly experience with epoxy, and like I mentioned, like you know, I I dabble in epoxy quite a bit. I I like it for unconventional repairs, especially if it's something for myself. Um, I think it's kind of fun. I've I've always been that way, like in the back of your head, like you shouldn't do it, but like you're gonna do it anyways, and if it doesn't work, at least you figure out firsthand why. You know, but so far I've had really good experiences with epoxy, but anyways, that was weird. So I let myself calm down after that one, and then I went back the next day and I mixed up uh this time. So by the way, the epoxy did stay green, and not just green, but it like was different shades of green. It looked like a swamp pond inside there, if you can imagine that. So I did the right thing and I mixed up some yellow this time, and I was gonna pour it on top of the green, which I did, and there was some overflow and it kind of spilled on top of the body a little bit, which I was okay with because I'm gonna come back with a router and route it flush. But in pouring some more epoxy, I wanted to pour it in the crevice that had opened, and I wanted to make it uh proud of the surface so I can, you know, router it flush. And what I think I'm gonna end up doing with whatever pick guard material I use for the pick guard, I'm gonna take that same material and I'm gonna route a um back plate, but it's not gonna be on top of the body like every other strat. It's gonna be routed um down into the body so it's flush, if that makes sense. And it's I I hope that it's gonna my design will completely cover um the epoxy. And then if anybody beside myself take off the back, you'll you'll just see a block of epoxy there. Basically, so that's the servicemen strat update story. Um, I've had a lot of cool guitars on my bench. Last week I mentioned a stratatone. I did finish that up, and the owner was super happy with that one. It like I said, I put a Lawler gold foil pickup where it it just was a single pickup guitar, so it was in the neck position and took the Hershey bar out, which seems kind of sacrilege because those Hershey bars sound really good, but um, but so did the Lawler. It sounded like a a gold foil, and um, yeah, that that was a cool project that uh finally buttoned up. And another cool one. So have y'all heard of the Roberto Van Luthery School? Well, there is this guy named John, and I'm gonna mess up his last name, uh Rudder, Rooter, R-E-U-T-E-R, and he is a professor there, and I guess he's been there since the 80s, and this customer of mine likes to buy his guitars. So there is an acoustic guitar, it was like a grand concert, and um he has a super nice uh build, and I went ahead and I did an anthem install in that guitar, and that turned out really great. Um, he wanted the customer wanted the action the same as when it came in, and he said that he set the action on his guitar. So um, you know, getting into the mindset of the customer, I I don't take anything that customers say lightly. When I hear them say that, I think, okay, this guy has knowledge of setups, not only that, but he bought a guitar from another uh well-known luthier that uh is a professor at this school. So um, you know, I better uh really make sure that that action is where it's at when he dropped it off. And I explained to him, I do that anyway, you know, but um I went ahead and I got my gauge and it it was, you know, where an acoustic guitar should be. It was about 90,000ths on the bass, and may maybe like you know, 80 on the treble, or sometimes people like it the same on both sides. But anyways, it was where you should have it. So what I told them I would do, and what I wound up doing is you take your calipers and you measure uh the braid, the LR bag's braid, and then you take that measurement and you just take it off the bottom of the saddle, and there you go. So did that, and uh yeah, that that one turned out good. Um, I did a hi-fi install on a tailor with a florentine. Now that I think it was an 812, and when you see a florentine on an acoustic guitar, that's not really something that you see every day. And if you're not familiar with the term Florentine, just think of that big old jazz guitar Gibson ES175, and that sharp cutaway that is called a Florentine. So to see that on an acoustic guitar was pretty cool. Not only that, but it was an old tailor made in El Cahone. So that was cool to see because I have a tailor as well from El Cahone, and you know that that was when it was early tailor, basically. So if if you see Made in El Cahone on the sticker, you know that it's an older one, and uh those have had a chance to really break in and sound good. Uh Taylors, I think a lot of times get a bad rap because they're known, at least they were for a lot of years, to be kind of on the trebley side. And where they excelled was um their uh live sound, like their pickups, and also the neck. So I think Taylor really took off with their 12 strings because that neck played like almost like an electric guitar, and you know, uh 12-string players were just freaking out over that, and they're constantly experimenting with their electronics, with their pickup systems, and they they would hold up to live, you know, abuse of being on the road, changes in the weather, etc. So um, you know, that's where tailors really pull forward, and not only that, but that uh troubly kind of uh yeah, the trebly tone that they were kind of known to have in the 90s. Um, once a tailor breaks in, they sound really good. Especially I know a guy that used to work there for a long time, and he said, especially the Koa guitars, what they take a minute to break in, and once they do, they sound phenomenal. So old Taylor, yeah, that was a cool guitar. And I told the customer that with the hi-fi, basically what it is is it's two contact transducers that you glue on the bridge plate. And there's an interesting kind of uh I call it like an elevator lift system that they include uh with the pickup so you could do it yourself. But he said he bought the pickup. Uh we're a dealer for bags, but he bought it on his own and he tried it, and he said it wasn't going that well, so he brought it to me to do. And uh this Taylor guitar had a threaded insert for the strap button on the back, and so had to pop that out, and he wasn't used to seeing that. I see that on Taylors from time to time. And also the um placement of the contact transducers is paramount because you don't want the cables to be banging in there, so you're thinking cable management, as you should for all acoustic uh pickup installs, but especially with those, because there's c they're contact transducers, but they're essentially like kind of like little microphones. That's how you can look at them uh when you're installing them, or if you hear of this pickup, and so it basically the pickup brings out the tone of the acoustic guitar. So if the acoustic guitar sounds bad, the hi-fi is gonna make it sound bad. And so it's kind of like uh the K and K pure Mini. Now the Pure Mini has three transducers that you glue on the bridge uh pad. This one just has two. The K and K is passive, which is why a lot of people like the K and K. They don't want to deal with the battery, but the LR Bags one has a battery, and let me tell you, it sounds better. You know, the K one, you're at the mercy of the sound person, and so however they're choosing to dial you in. If you're the sound person, great, but you definitely need a little EQ pedal or some type of thing, acoustic guitar pedal to get the tone right with those, not so much with the hi-fi. However, this is huge. Um, you hear every single thing on that acoustic guitar. So you put your arm uh on the guitar, like if you're sitting down with the acoustic guitar and you prop your arm up there on the upper bout and you strum a chord, if you're wearing a jacket or some sleeves, you'll hear those sleeves on the guitar, it comes through. So every little thing uh that you touch on that guitar will come through on the LR Bags Hi-Fi. So it's just something to note. Um, I'm not really crazy about it. Uh I don't know. I'm I'm just not. They sound uh very hollow, you know, to me. Um they kind of sound like a bad microphonic pickup would in a hollow body guitar. I don't know. Maybe maybe I'm being way too harsh. I think they can sound good with the appropriate player. You gotta learn uh, you know, you gotta play and listen and play to it. You know, you can't just be banging away chords, uh, especially if the guitar doesn't sound so great in the first place. So anyway, uh that's the hi-fi install. I did a Martin copy, and I don't know if this was a kit Martin or what. He said, I think the customer said about 20 years ago he played it at a shop and he was blown away, and it's his favorite guitar, and uh it was cool. It looked like a D28 or a D35, and it was kind of beat, like it was played, and it just needed the the saddle taken down a little bit. I think we might have gone down a gauge and strings, um, needed a little network, I think, but it um it sounded great. It sounded like a Martin and it was on par. That doesn't happen often with kit guitars. Usually, you know, somebody that's learning puts them together or whatever. That could have been the case with this one. Maybe it's been worked on a lot throughout the years, but anyways, was an older uh copy and you know sounded great. That brings me to my favorite repair of last week, and that was a crown violin bass. Think you know, Tysco, made in Japan, Kawaii, all those brands. Um I actually had a long time ago a violin guitar, and uh man, I could see the it was a height, a height deluxe, I think. And uh yeah, it was uh it might have even had a similar pickups, but this thing when you oh uh interesting to note, it had almost like uh a scroll on the on the top of the peg head. It kinda it wasn't a scroll, it looked more square, it kind of looked like a framus. Um framus ha made stick bases in the 60s and it kinda the headstock looked like that. But anyways, um that one needed one of everything pretty much. When you looked down the neck, it was like what? You know? And the bridge wouldn't go any lower, and the action was high, and it was missing a piece of binding. Not only that, but it was the binding on the top, so it had the dots for the inlays, so I was gonna need to do binding and some inlays. And um actually that's probably why that piece of binding uh came off, because there was a crack right in the middle of an inlay. And so plastic back then, this is probably a 60s base, was funky, you know. I say loosely the beginnings of plastics. I don't, you know, that's not true, but you know, they were st they had to be still experimenting with what's what because I I don't think plastic shrinks like it used to back in the day. I think it's pretty stable now. We'll see. But um it needed all new electronics, so it had a three-way uh volume, master tone, and um yeah, they brought in uh Labella flats, which was cool, and by the way, when I s um put the low E through the hole on the tailpiece that holds the string, uh the wines at the end of the string weren't making it through the hole, so I had to enlarge the hole there. I added binding and dots, and then I aged the binding to make it look okay, and then there was a a little lip because the binding was um slightly thinner, and so uh I uh burnished that with a uh screwdriver and it was smooth. That was pretty cool, and I did some miscellaneous fretw. I'm trying to think. I just kind of gave it one of everything, and uh the customer said that he got it at I think this the some person bought a house and it was in the house, and so it was a marketplace find, and the person knew nothing. About it. He said he got it for cheap. And so he put a little money into it. And let me tell you what, that thing thumped. It really thumped. Talk about microphonic pickups, but in the best kind of a way. That bass sounded dead, thumpy, funky, really freaking cool. I was really happy with the way that turned out. And uh, oh yeah, so a long time customer of mine uh dropped off a parlor guitar. This thing is in rough shape. Uh think maybe I don't know, it could be 30s, 40s, 50s. Um, and he said he bought it from a lady in a shopping cart. Now, if you know my customer, he is the nicest guy. And so I could just picture him, you know, some lady was selling some stuff out of a cart, and him being a guitar guy, sees this parlor guitar, and you know, my customer likes to uh refinish stuff, and he's just getting into refinishing, and um he does a lot of sanding and buffing. So, anyway, I'm just kind of setting up the story here. So the guitar is called a lake side, you could barely read that inside. Now, when uh the customer hit me up about helping him with this guitar, he sent me a picture. I thought it was gonna be like a Stella or something like that. That was the vibe I was getting. That that was the no, this guitar was built, it has binding on both sides. Um, I think it's ladder braced. I'll have to stick a mirror in there and look again, but it's got a dovetail, and it's like it's a slot head. It's a serious guitar from the time, and so if you're listening outside of uh the San Diego area, there is um there is a city, I guess a city, a town, a place. I don't know. It's called Lakeside, it's at the right before Ramona. It's called in East County, basically, Lakeside, California. And so I don't know if the guitar was made from somebody uh in Lakeside, if that was the name of their guitar company, or you know, Lakeside could exist anywhere else, you know, but uh yeah, so the neck is off. I should get to that part. The neck is completely off, the dovetail chewed up, it's just like someone put Bondo in there, and it's been cracked, the heels have been cracked, like you know, at least three times, and it's just like rough. So what my customer wants is he wants the neck back on, and he gave me um the tailpiece and the tuners, and I it's a floating bridge type guitar, it never had a glued-on bridge, so that gives me some leeway with the neck angle. Um, and so leeway insofar as uh if maybe it's not uh perfect, I can compensate with how high or low I make the floating bridge, you know, because time is the name of the game that's kind of a big job considering it's in a bunch of uh pieces, and when I was trying to clean out the cavity with the chisel, pieces of wood were just chipping off. There was Bondo dust everywhere, it was just um but basically uh yeah, part of the heel chipped off today, and so I'm gonna glue that, or I am gluing it back on, and then I noticed that the fingerboard was separating from the neck, so I glued two birds with one stone, I put some glue uh inside uh the fingerboard joint, and then I glued the piece of the heel back on, and I actually took off the heel cap because I'm gonna stick a dowel in there to reinforce the heel and all the pieces really that are glued together there. Then I'm gonna glue the heel cap back on later. So uh that's as far as I got with the lakeside parlor. But um, yeah, what a cool project. I'm I'm really stoked on that. Okay, I've been it's time for some water cooler talk. I've been thinking about this for a long time, and I've been talking with some of my coworkers about it, and just trying to get a general feel. And as far as I could tell, I think everybody I've talked to, anyways, is kind of on the same page. Here it is. What is a luthier? Who is a luthier? What makes you qualified uh to be a luthier? So to start this off, I will give you uh Google's little definition here. Google says a luthier is a skilled craftsperson who builds, repairs, restores stringed instruments like guitars, violins, cellos, and lutes. They specialize in wood woodworking, acoustic design, and precise repairs to ensure optimal playability and sound quality. Then it goes into some other stuff here, responsibilities, required skills, how to become one. I think the most famous luthier would probably be Strativarius, but if we look at the question at hand, are guitar techs luthier? I know several guitar texts that would call themselves a luthier, and so I'm gonna throw out my definition of what I would call a luthier. I think that is someone that builds acoustic instruments, and they are looking at uh tone woods, they're using different kinds of glue, whether it be hide glue, fish glue, tight bond, they're looking at the bracing, and they are most certainly tapping the piece, whether it be the back with the braces on it, they are tapping it, they're holding it up to their ear, or they are using a frequency analyzer to try to shape. They're shaving wood off the braces and they are molding and shaping this piece so that when all the pieces are glued together and it becomes an instrument, it is the intended tone that the luthier set out to have. Basically, the sun rises and sets with tone for the luthier. I think that is huge. Uh, and I think that's a little different probably than electric guitar building. Now, I definitely think that a guitar tech that will repair an acoustic instrument with highly skilled abilities, and they are going to take into account if they're replacing a brace, you know, how thick should it be, how wide should it be? Should it be just like the original? Maybe I can make it sound better even if that's what the customer wants, and in which case then you are using your ear and your skill uh, you know, to you're doing some woodworking, but it's more than woodworking because you're using your ears. Maybe that's the common thing that I'm just note noticing now is that the ear has a lot to do with what I would call a luthier. And that term does get thrown around. And if you're in the inner circle of the music industry, I think a lot of times the word luthier comes with you know some it's a prestigious kind of a title with some clout. So if you're a guitar repair tech, but you do acoustic guitar repairs too, maybe maybe even upright bass repairs, and you you understand the mechanics of building, but maybe you're not a builder, are are you on the edge? And if you are on the edge, you might as well just call yourself a luthier, you know. Now I'm not saying that it's wrong to call yourself a luthier if you're not a builder, and I'm definitely not saying I'm not throwing any kind of a shade. I'm just trying to have the conversation. I think it's really interesting. What do I consider myself? And so here's another interesting caveat is I have customers that call me Luthier all the time. So if they're calling me one, and the key word is customer, so if they're paying me as well, am I one? I mean, it's that old cliche that to become a professional you have to get paid. Well, I am getting paid, and they're also calling me a title. You certainly wouldn't call a doctor doctor if he wasn't one, if he wasn't qualified to operate on you, you wouldn't be calling, you know, I don't know, the assistant doctor, unless there was some confusion, which I guess there might be. But anyways, I thought that was an interesting thing to throw out there, and I have a feeling that we will continue to talk about this. Um there's a whole bunch of other words that you could call what we do. Uh a co-worker of mine, one of the owners of my shop, he proudly, for the past, I guess, 50 years, has called himself a guitar mechanic. And he has such a great sense of humor, a really great guy. He always says that we're the pit crew, you know, and he has kind of a realistic look on what's happening. Now, this guy, he's built instruments before, that's not his main thing. He's mainly a repair guy, but in particular, his specialty is acoustic instruments, and people do treat him with the utmost respect when talking about um, you know, Martins and old guilds and old Gibsons and whatever it is, you know, he's the guy that people want to talk to and they respect his opinion. So maybe respect has a little bit to do with it too. If you're getting respect from the person, if you are using your ear to help uh with the repair, not only your ear, but your skill as a woodworker, um, then I I would say that's close enough for rock and roll, man. I don't know. But all I know is there's a lot of guitars out there to be repaired, and hundreds and hundreds of guitars are being built every day, and eventually they're gonna need repairs, and I think we're gonna need uh some people out there to do them, and what you call those people is up to you. I will end this conversation with saying there is a new term being thrown around, and I would say it is looth. People use it as like, oh, I'm loothing, and there is something called a looth group, where you have loothiers on there, and you can pay some money to join this group, and you all can looth together. So there's another term for you if you haven't heard that one. Anyways, uh customer stories. Uh this I worked on a guitar for a guy, it was a Les Paul. He wanted it to be uh tuned to 432 and drop, I think, I think it was drop A. So wrap your head around that. So drop A, 432, and instantly I'm thinking like uh you're not playing in a band, because everybody tuned to 432. You gotta be tuned really precisely. Wouldn't that be kind of wobbly sounding? Like wow and flutter, like wouldn't that, you know, and of course they're plain metal. Ain't nothing wrong with that. And if you play in 432, um I'm sorry for this little rant, because I know a little bit of the history behind it. I I know uh it's supposed to be, I think, in very broad terms, kind of like a feel-good tuning, because it it hits some part of your brain that kind of feels good. So, you know, I don't know. But here's the weird part is it wasn't drop A because the B and the E string, uh, he was also tuning in, I guess what they call fourths, and I had to have one of the guitar teachers like break it down for me. In fact, I called him and I said, This isn't drop A because the tuning that you gave is different, and I think these last two notes are wrong. And he said, No, they're right. And he actually he said, Wait, let me walk to my keyboard. He said, Yeah, they're right. So he's a keyboard player and a guitar player, and uh so 432. So, anyways, I did it, and if you're not too familiar with drop A, um, you know, B to B. So imagine your low E string is B, and you're and you go dun dun dun dun and you go all all the way down to the high E. If you start with B, B to B, that is a baritone. So he's like a hair away from being in baritone territory. So uh the strings, I think the top was maybe a 62 or six. I mean, it it was they they were fat strings, but you know, he brings it in because he wants it set up. Now I don't know how he picks, so I I don't know anything about this customer. I did write him up, so I got a feel that he was very, you know, particular about everything. And I think this guitar was like an ESP Les Paul, something like that with a tunatic. So um I did my due diligence. I do what any uh guitar repair tech, I'm putting that in air air quotes, you can't see me, but uh do what any guitar mechanic would do, and you open up the nut slot, you even have to open up the tunatic saddles uh to accommodate those big strings, and then where do you set the action? Not too low, not too high, because the lower the tuning and the thicker the string is if you picture like a jump rope hitting the ground, you know, uh the tighter you make that string if you're trying to swing it the same amount, the less it's gonna drag on the floor. So kind of just trying to give you a a visual. So basically with low tuning and uh large strings, it's easy to get buzz. And so but I put it where I thought was appropriate, and he went away for a week, maybe even a week and a half, and then he he brings it back in, and my coworker uh just happened to be up front and and took him in and was was helping him, but his complaint, he brought it back, his complaint was that um he was getting buzz. So that was the complaint. So all my coworker did uh and he he had witnessed, you know, because we're pretty tight at the shop, so we vent to each other and and all that. So he he he already knew about this fourth 32 drop A fourths thing that was happening. So uh, and he knew that I could hear everything that was going on. I was just continuing to probably work on that stratatone as that was happening. He took it back to his bench and he raised it. And he said, Yeah, dude. He said, I checked the nut slots, I checked everything you did, and uh yeah, it it was fine. It was just he was hitting it hard, and so you have to raise it. And then he explained this to the customer, and the customer said, Yeah, my other guitar that the action is I I had to really raise it to not get it to buzz. So it's the classic case. Uh he really I guess what he needed me to do really was open up the slots. That's something that he couldn't do, but it sounds like he definitely has some control over how high his action is. He's tech savvy to lower and raise. So uh, but his big hangup was uh buzz. Was it a micro buzz? Was it coming through the amp? I think I think it wasn't sorry I got that wrong. Um was the buzz coming through the amp? And uh no, I don't think it was. I think it was a micro buzz, just you could hear it acoustically, and so um if you're so you you just got there's a happy medium, but you you have to pick what bothers you more. Do you want comfortable action and you control your attack? And if you hear it buzzing, don't hit it that hard, kind of a deal. Um or are you just gonna focus in that it's doing that and you don't want to change the way you play? Uh and so you're just gonna raise it or do whatever you need to do until the guitar quits buzzing. Um yeah, I I I guess that's that guy. So that was the 430 second guy. And now, drum roll please. The customer story of the week, and it's still going on. It I call him the kill switch guy. So I guess it was a couple weeks ago now. I got a phone call from somebody that wanted an arcade style kill switch installed on their Jackson. So I asked him, does it have a pick guard? And he said, What's a pick guard? And so I said, It's a piece of plastic on the top of the guitar, and it protects the finish from pick scratches. And he said, I don't know. And so here's what I'm thinking when I'm having this conversation on the phone with this gentleman. I'm thinking he's a newbie. He's so new that he doesn't know what a pick guard is, and when I described it to him, he still says he doesn't know. And so I told him, just bring in the guitar, and we will look at different kinds of kill switches and we'll see what your options are. So lo and behold, he comes in a little while later and he brings his guitar, and it's like a Jackson dinky or something like that. And he expressed that he wanted a red, that's very important. The color was very important to him. He would like a red arcade style kill switch. So we hop on the internet, and I start looking on Amazon, and I know there are other electronics websites that has kill switches, but I wanted the switch to get here relatively quickly. So I start showing him visuals of these types of kill switches, and he picks out one that is literally the size of an arcade button, so pretty big, and it's red. And I said, Okay, cool. So I said, Where would you like the placement? And there's a master volume and a master tone, and he wanted it right in between the two. So I said, okay, sure. So I wrote up the tag, I ordered the switch, the switch got to me, it wasn't prime, so I mean, we have prime, but it didn't get here next day. It got here in like a week and a couple days. So when it arrived, I gave it a quick quick look. I thought, cool. I still had other repairs to do before I got to him. So when I finally got to his tag, I pull the guitar out and I start looking at things more carefully. Now, his guitar has a carved top, so I instantly realized that where he wanted the switch wouldn't work because it was on kind of a curve. It would need to be on a flat spot. That was number one. Number two, I realized that it being on a flat spot, you would have to have a switch that had a pretty long, you know, shaft with um a nut and threads. And so I bust out the switch that he wanted, and uh it it had these two little tangs on either either side that you would and when you forced it through a hole, the tangs would go inside the shaft, and then when it reached uh when the arcade switch was flush to the top, the these two tabs would shoot out, h holding it there. Basically, the switch was wrong. It it was for like a pick guard. I should have caught it, but I didn't. Sometimes I make a mistake when you're writing somebody up. It's you know, these are just estimates also, you know, you're writing up an estimate, and so um, if there's any problem or anything, you just call the customer and talk about it. It's it's you know, it's hardly ever a problem, really. So, um, so yeah, there were two things that I caught, and I talked to my coworker about it because technically the tag was due that day, and so I was like, can we make this switch? fit. And he looked at it, and first he noted that the placement would have to be different also. Again, it would have to be on a flat spot. But then uh, you know, he said, well, technically it could work. I mean, we could do it. We could drill the hole and there are those two little retractable tabs on the side and I could cut out some slots to where those would fit in there and it would be a pretty good press fit. And we could just make it work. You know, that's that's the cool part about working with people that um they can basically do anything. Really great guitar repair techs and luthier, I should add. But anyways, so um but in the end I thought I'll call him you know I'm I'm a real kind of a call ya kind of a guy if there's any type of issue. So I called him and uh went to voicemail and then he called me back. And I um in in the meantime while I was waiting for him to call me back I went online and I wanted to be ready to present him with two options and the option that I had he was really wanted that red color. So there was a red kill switch but it was small. It was probably the size of like an eraser tip on a a number two pencil. And so like an aircra aircraft switch really and um so you know that one was small but it was red right that's the thing about that one. And then I found another one for him it was the size he wanted or pretty much the size but it was black not red. But the thing that both of these switches had in common is the shaft was long and it was threaded accordingly with a nut. So these switches would work. So he called me back and I started to describe to him you know what the issue was with the switch that we ordered and uh you know he seemed bummed because he had waited two weeks now the thing about the switches that I picked also is they were they were prime this time. So he would only be out like a couple days. And in the grand scheme of repairs sometimes things take a little longer and most people really don't have a problem with waiting a little while longer to get the job done right, you know. So he seemed a little bummed about the time but that's fine. Sometimes you know if I get the feeling like the customer is trying to have like the upper hand for some reason like there shouldn't be any reason to have hand or no hand in this situation. All you have is me trying to do right by the job, you know, basically so I started to describe to him the difference between the two new switches that I had picked out that I was going to present to him and after listening to me talk for a little bit he basically said just email me or text me the pictures and I'll make a decision. Now when he said that um I was thinking in my head well he's a newbie right he didn't even know what a pick guard was so I don't you know so I said sure I will email you the pictures but I just I'm trying to explain to you the differences here and I started to explain again and basically he interrupted me again and said that just email him to me. Like he was real like his patience was gone. Like he didn't want to talk to me anymore even though he's the one that called me back. So I s I was like oh I said you know I tried to level with him actually I said I could have just installed that switch and you would wouldn't have known and it wouldn't have you know we would have had to do some retrofitting and you know I said look dude I don't want to ruin your guitar I'm trying to put the right switch in there and I'm trying to do my due dil diligence and he was just like email it to me. So I was like okay okay fine okay so I I emailed him the two switches and then I had a day off from work and so um when I got to work today uh it seemed like things were just things have gotten worse basically um he had uh gotten back to me and said yeah he said I don't I I I don't I like the red one but either of them work. So I actually order ordered them both and they were on their way. And so when I got to work today I see an email from him that my coworker showed me and it said that he didn't want either of those switches um he he wanted one of these and he sent me a screenshot of two other switches. So again he doesn't know anything about guitar but now he's just choosing the switch. That's what we did in the first uh from the get-go and I I didn't look at it good enough and check it but now again here he's just picking switches and saying that the ones that he approved he actually didn't approve you know I'm getting just this whole time I'm getting a really weird feeling just like an abort an abort like you know I something sometimes you get the feeling like you can't please a customer and my coworkers were observing me because I filled them in on what was happening they were observing me I called him back today and was talking to him about it and at the end of the conversation my coworker said this you're never gonna please this guy he he you know and I I agree and I really hope that's not the case but basically I called him today after my day off after I had ordered the switches that I thought he wanted even did my due diligence and ordered an extra one because I thought he might change his mind right and I said listen I saw you sent me a screenshot of some text message that I never got this is all in an email chain and I I said you know regardless of like I didn't get the text where you sent it I ordered the wrong switch whatever all I want to do is put the right switch in your guitar and the placement. So I want this customer to green light the placement and the switch and I don't want to move on until he does that because I have this feeling in my stomach that he's not going to like it and say it's wrong and there's gonna be an issue. And so I'm just so I don't know I ordered the the switch that he sent me I don't think it's gonna be long enough the shaft in which I'm gonna have to forcen out some material in the back of the control plate to make the switch fit. No big deal I'd rather order one that fit so I didn't have to do that but you know whatever. So um so that's the dilemma the switch is going to get here and I'm gonna send him the switch I'm gonna say I ordered this one as the one you chose and then I'm gonna say I need you to okay the placement before I do it. And um I I really hope that that he can do that for me so I can get this repair off my bench because it is exhausting thinking about it. You know somebody that doesn't want to talk to you they really just want to communicate through emails and they're sending text to places that you don't even know what number that is and then he's saying I ordered the wrong switch when it's just a mess. It's just a mess. So anyways I'll keep you posted on that next week and hopefully it all ends good and he goes yeah I like it cool and that's it so uh man I finally sold an irregular size guitar case I had on marketplace it was a large brown rectangular case and it was made in the 70s and it had some unusual storage compartments and I sold it to a lady finally for my asking price 50 bucks which is the bargain a bargain for a case these days it was large brown had red type fur on the inside really cool uh guitar case and I said I guess this was my bad for for making this judgment but uh I said so are you gonna use this for uh like a project or do you have a guitar to put in it I I did say guitar I just didn't want to say oh are you gonna use this for something else uh but she said no I'm gonna put a guitar in it you know she was probably in in her 60s she was like yeah I'm gonna put a guitar in it and I got lots of guitars and I said oh I said okay cool I said well welcome to our shop and uh yeah if you need anything let let me know she paid me went on her way that was super cool I'm I told you in episode one about this Cordoba with the hole in it I patched the hole it uh I found out stuck a mirror in there it had a crack going from the bottom up to the bridge and then past the bridge all the way to the sound hole so put glue in that I cleated it up as well and I glued it and then today I restrung it with some Savarez high tension those are uh the strings I like to put on classicals because they don't stretch as much and I certainly like that and I plugged it in because Cordobas are known you know they're modern classicals so they have a tress rod and electronics and uh the pots on the preamp um that's on the side of the guitar it also has a tuner were scratchy cutting in and out sprayed it with deox it there was some buzz some high frets I knocked down um I adjusted the neck with the truss rod adjustment and uh very fine um classical guitar so now I'm gonna continue to what I want is 250 people are trying to knock me down to two and and then asking can I see a picture of that hole so instead now um the hole's gone and uh I opened up the hole and then I got a plug cutter and some spruce and I lined up the grain you know so it's it's a nice repair and so I'm gonna you know I guess I'd probably take two after all that work. I'd probably take two but I couldn't as a guitar repair person in good conscience sell that uh knowing that it had all those issues you know and uh I always disclose stuff um uh which reminds me actually this is another funny customer story this is uh just about disclosing stuff so this happened on my day off a guy a regular brought in a Rickenbacher base he wanted to put on consignment was a cool color um apparently so it wasn't fire glow if it was a cool color maybe it was a sunburst but um I guess the action was super high and the base side of the neck was had a lot of relief because those have two tress rods. So we they asked him do you want us to adjust this oh okay so he wanted to sell it that's what he wanted to do. And so we asked him well we we need to see if the neck is gonna straighten out before we buy it and he he said sure check it out so my coworker uh decided to try to um tight tighten the the rod and it it wasn't tightening if if anything it uh it started loosening maybe you know I I wasn't there it's just like a secondhand story but uh and so he told the guy and he's like oh yeah it's had some truss rod trouble before I took it over at another shop and they did you know my coworker was saying there was all kinds of washers in there and all kinds of stuff that was happening but then he started to get mad he said so you're not gonna buy it but now the neck is worse than it was when I brought it in which case my uh coworker said well you knew the truss rod was a problem you just got done telling us that you had taken it to another shop for this issue so you watched me turn it and was trying to turn the rod and you knew it was an issue why didn't you say anything? You know it's true right it's so true. Why wouldn't you you say anything? So uh my coworker messed with the rod and got it back roughly to where it was and just sent the guy on his way. So funny customer story there too but I wasn't there but uh and so back to the Cordoba. So I'm gonna put it back up I'm gonna put it at maybe I'll put it at three because I did the work they knocked me down to 250 I want 250. I'll even take two and that's what people were offering me after all with those issues but you know they were going to use all its flaws as a bargaining chip to try to get it way way down and uh not sure if I've mentioned previously but I am fixing up a recording king dreadnought it had all kinds of cracks on the top and we were a dealer for recording king they just went out of business which is so sad because they were making the coolest guitars the Dirty 30s were some of my um favorites they sounded real good. I was in Nashville visiting when the Dirty 30s line first came out maybe like 15ish years ago I played it at a guitar shop and was blown away at how good it sounded and so I went back to my shop that I was working at at the time a different one than I am now and we were a dealer as well and I ordered one I think new I think I only paid like 50 bucks or 60 I I don't know for a concert size uh recording king 3030s I still have that guitar uh they're super cool so this one came into my shop when Recording King was still a thing and uh it had just a bunch of problems. A bridge was lifting up it had some cracks on the top I've had it for years. I finally got got around to taking the bridge off and I fixed those cracks and long story short I'm gonna paint it and resell it but I want to paint it a color that Recording King did not uh paint their guitars so which is hard because they did black of course I you know they did sunburst they did like a midnight blue um they did a bunch of different colors but I'm thinking um I would love to do like uh green like a Cadillac green or maybe a Fiesta red and I'm gonna put a magnetic pickup on it I've made some really cool um kind of like out of pick guard material andor acrylic these uh mounts that you could put a single coil pickup in the sound hole if you have to put two screws on either side of it's like a permanent thing but uh and a volume and a tone knob and might even put an under the saddle pickup with a three-way where you could blend the mag and the pizzo which in the past there's been a little bit of an issue doing that an impedance issue where um you know in the middle position only you get almost no piezo uh so if I could figure that out that would be really cool because I just want to flip it so that's gonna be a marketplace one or I actually might put that one on consignment at my shop. My la the last thing I put on marketplace recently was uh ukulele parts and they were given to me by a really one of the best luthier I am saying luthier in San Diego that I know of used to work at Taylor forever and um when I was in a ukulele building class he gave me all these it's like a kit parts because he he was going to build a bunch of ukulele's and sell them and he did build a bunch but he had a bunch of stuff left over and he wasn't interested in doing it anymore this includes like a side bending uh jig with the heating element and ever and everything pre-cut sides fingerboards even Grover tuners like a lot of stuff he had a bunch of tops but I'm I'm not selling those because I actually use those for other things um but anyways uh yeah lots of parts and I have that up on marketplace for 200 bucks I've already got hitting up uh once about shipping it which I'm not gonna do or I just put it on reverb um and then somebody was was asking me if there was guitar parts as well as ukulele parts but there's not there's just ukulele parts but um that's an interesting one you would have to be really into you know guitar building to to see that and want that and know its value um in other news I so I have a YouTube channel it's at Hillington guitars one word and I'm about to drop a video I've been working on for probably well the video itself for probably five months but the the guitar I'm repairing in the video is probably it took me like a year and it is an uh an X series Martin so those are like high pressure lamb they're not even wood really I don't think so yeah they're all laminate so I had to use some interesting adhesives to make it work and um I did it for my uh cousin Steven and uh he recently passed away so the guitar was pretty much smashed and so that video will be the story of me it's a story of redemption really me re-gluing you know my cousin's favorite guitar and um how that went and so that's gonna drop soon hopefully the videos are really hard for me to make and that's why actually I started doing this podcast because it's really easy for me to just sit in front of the microphone and just talk. It's really um it's therapeutic for for me too I'm I'm I'm really liking it so far. So um thank you so much for uh listening to this episode and I hope you're um enjoying it I'm certainly enjoying sitting here yapping and if you want to check out um where else I'm posting stuff my Instagram is Kenneth underscore hillington my YouTube channel is at hillington guitars h-i-l-l-n-g-t-o-n guitars one word and uh I have a contact I just made all guitars buzz at gmail dot com so if you want to go ahead and chime in on a little bit of what I've said on these episodes or or anything you've heard me say um that'd be cool love to hear from you so thanks again for listening see you next time see ya later