Episode 5 - Elvis Costello Jazzmaster, 69 Strat, Ventura LP, Explorer + Marketplace Updates!

Join me for Episode 5 of AGB. In this EPI I chat about - Elvis Costello Jazzmaster, 69 Strat, Ventura LP, Explorer, Building vs Repairing + Marketplace Updates!

Transcript

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Mighty fun, mighty fun. 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 this sounds like something you would be into, please stick around. I got an email. It's allguitarsbuzz at gmail.com. So if you want to comment or weigh in on anything that is discussed here, please do. I would love to hear from you. Um my show at Nate's Garden Grill last week went great. There's a lot of people there, played all my favorite songs. I still have that firefighter benefit, that charity benefit in Elmonte Park and Lakeside coming up on May 2nd. And I have an update for you all on what came in on consignment a couple weeks ago. So we had a Gibson 1959 ES 330 T D, and the owner brought it in, and he also brought in what I'm calling the know it all guy, where he corrected me on the nubs or the nibs. But, anyways, that is neither here nor there. So the owner isn't actually the owner, he is selling it on behalf of somebody else. And not only that, but the owner was told that that guitar could be worth around $18,000. And so the owner didn't really like our assessment, which was lower than that, because it is definitely a player's grade guitar. And so the person that put that figure in their mind, I don't know for sure. I'm just using everything I know about the situation to assume the know-it-all guy probably told the owner it was worth $18,000. Now, when you are pricing out a guitar, one thing that we commonly do is we'll look on reverb and we don't look at what people are asking. I feel like I'm on an episode of American Pickers here. We look at what they've sold for recently based on condition. Now, that seems like common sense, but it's crazy. Whenever I was watching American Pickers and they'd keep saying that, I'd think, yeah, that's common sense. Not only that, but you have to take into account where the market is at. And if you've been on places like Facebook Marketplace, I haven't been on Craigslist for a long time, but if you look on there too, I'm sure it's the same. Other apps like OfferUp. People are selling their instruments right now, their luxury items. Uh, the market is very soft, and it is definitely a buyer's market. You can get really good deals on stuff, and so yeah, the market is just soft, not really for our shop. Our shop does well, and I think a lot of other shops that are as reputable as ours also do well, and that has to do with uh our reputation, it has to, but anyways, so I really don't think that we're gonna do that deal, and that's really too bad, and but you know what? More power to them because if they want to try and sell it on their own, then you know that's cool. You gotta do a lot of work and you gotta put up with all the looky loss and all the stupid questions, and where are you gonna meet up to do the deal? And you know, the cork sniffers, etc. So that was kind of a bummer. Some other cool things have come in on consignment, but I can't recall. Nothing that really, you know, made me take notice or made me want to write it down. So you might be asking yourself, what have I been up to? Well, uh I have to say, not much. I played a show last weekend, it was Friday at Nates, that went well, and I have to say, doing something like that kind of throws ya, you know, like they don't have their own sound system there, so I have to bring my PA, and they are Yamaha wedges, they can be used as floor monitors or speakers, and they're pretty heavy, you know, they're old school, probably from the 90s. So I bring those and then the stands and the mic stand and the guitar stands, then I bring my pedal board, and then I have a couple suitcases that are full of cables and power supplies, and I also have my Fishman Loudbox Mini, and I got a couple guitars, my main guitar, which is a Gibson jumbo, and then I have my telecaster, kind of my acoustasonic build. I showed that on one of my YouTube videos. So that's a lot of stuff, plus my tip suitcase, and then I have another suitcase filled with I forget what you call them, but I put them on the tables, and they have a picture of me with um one of those codes that you can scan, and it goes to my Venmo, and they could leave me a tip basically. So I got a lot of stuff. There's probably some other stuff that I'm not mentioning, and when I load stuff on stage, I actually bring work gloves with me, and I have a change of clothes. So kind of a big deal, and it just wipes me out. You know, I have that PA stuff in my car at least a couple days after the gig because I gotta put it back in storage. I don't have room at my pad, so it's just like that kind of made me exhausted, and so I've just been taking it easy, just working mostly at the shop, not really at my shop at home. Um, and I had a lot of cool guitars on my bench last week. So each time I do one of these podcasts, it's really about last week, and this one is kind of late in the week, so I've already had some things happen, and I was contemplating whether or not to save them the next time for next week's podcast. But I thought, you know what? Just gloves off. I'm just everything that's happened up until this point, I'm gonna talk about, and maybe that'll motivate me to really get into my shop this week. Today is Wednesday, so we're coming up on Thursday. And so this weekend, if I get a lot done in my shop, I'll have a lot to talk about there. So the Les Paul with no three-way, I completed that. The customer loved it, and I was actually right, and I asked him, I said, So are you gonna be living mostly on the bridge? And he looked at me and said, Yeah, I'm mostly on the bridge. And so, yeah, that's freaking awesome. So he was hitting the three-way switch on his les Paul, so that meant you always gotta think, well, what is that? He must have his strap kind of low, which I can understand. Personally, I've gone from somebody that low rides their strap, and over the years it's come up higher and higher, and so I totally get that. He's low riding a strap, he hits the three-way, he 86'd it, so now he's got a volume and a tone control for each pickup, and it so it kind of works like a jazz bass, and but in reality, he's just gonna he's gonna turn down the neck, and he's just gonna live on the bridge. And the volume knob closest to his hand is not the neck, like you would typically see. I wired it so it's the bridge. Cool mods. And I had a customer bring me a Jasmine dreadnought acoustic for a new nut and saddle, and you might be thinking to yourself, so he's gonna pay X amount more than the guitar is worth for you know to be tricked out, and he did, and there was a reason to it. The reason was he found it on the side of the road. I hear this from time to time. Actually, a few years ago, a guy brought in a tailor that he found in an alley smashed. It was completely smashed. Probably domestic violence, but uh yeah, he was asking how much it would be to repair, and you know, it wouldn't be worth it. So yeah, so this guy found a guitar on the side of the road, it does happen. And it was scuffed up a little bit, no major issues, no brace issues, um, yeah, just some road wear. And yeah, it didn't have a saddle or a nut. So I made both uh from scratch, and doing that sometimes I'll tell the customers if you know it's hard to tell if they understand the amount of work you've put into it, because you can just buy partially made, you know, nuts. But I'll tell them I said, Yeah, I made this from a block of bone and I buffed it, and now it looks like a piece of jewelry, and then sometimes I'll see them lean in and go, Oh, kind of pat myself on the back. But yeah, that one turned out really good. I got the action spot on, and everything was perfect. The saddle didn't even have to be compensated, the intonation was right on, so that was a cool one. And my buddy Sam, he is a customer for a long time, and he brings me all kinds of interesting things, and he brought me in a Gibson Explorer. He always finds these good deals. I I I don't know where, but I think he's on the internet searching for deals. So this Gibson Explorer uh looks like it had a ref in, so it was stripped. Um, but it was like dark mahogany, and he wanted gold everything, gold tailpiece, gold bridge, gold tuners, just the whole nine yards. And I know my customers, and in the past he always asked me for new screws, so I didn't write this one up, and it wasn't on the work order, but I did gold screws and uh manliest pickups, that's his thing. He's introduced me to manliest pickups, and usually I'm not a big boutique pickup guy, mostly because I play on my bridge like 80% of the time, and so my problem with neck pickups is they're always too bassy, too woofy. I feel like people that live on the bridge, even with guitars like Stratocasters, they will adjust their amp accordingly. So you always hear that the Stratocaster bridge pickup is kind of ice picky and too shrill sometimes, not all the time. But for players like me, I will turn down the treble and I will turn up the bass a little. And you know, it still sounds like a bridge pickup, but it's not killing me. And the issue with that is then when you switch to the neck, it has a lot of bass, and it usually just is unusable for me. So a lot of the a lot of times I'll put a bridge pickup in the neck as well. And I know that back in the day, I think Gibson, they were probably just the same pickup in different positions. I don't know that to be true, so don't quote me on it, but I feel like that's a Gibson move, at least back in the day. Um But anyways, so these though, I'm not saying that on the manliest pickups, the neck position sounds, you know, a whole lot brighter, but I will say that they sound like a good pair of PAFs. They they just sound really good, and I've installed them in probably like five of his guitars, and I even had a customer who bought one of his guitars that he had put on consignment that had the upgraded Manlius pickups, and he was telling me the other day, actually, he saw me working on the Explorer and he said, Oh, Manly's, and I said, Oh, you know about Manley's, and he said, 'Yeah, is that that same customer that I bought the guitar from?' And so, yeah, Manlius pickups are freaking awesome. They're a good option in this world of Duncan and all the typical suspects. Um, I I like them. And so did all gold hardware and a pickup swap, and it's just a killer explorer. And I had an Elvis Costello Jazz Master Comeback. Now, these guitars are kind of rare because they were only made for a couple years, so you really don't see them that much. And whenever this guitar is on my bench, it gets a lot of attention. People see it and they're asking about it, and so that kind of makes you think if you're the kind of person that are building guitars, even from you know, like MJT bodies and whatever, if you're thinking about what is gonna sell, which is what I like to think about because it's not always what you like, someone else will like. Uh, just take note that the Elvis Costello style jazz master catches people's eyes. And so the problem with it, why it got brought back, was the neck pickup wasn't working. And this is why he brought it in originally. Now it's been like six months since it's been in. So a lot could happen to a guitar in six months, but I have a good relationship with this customer, and he's just the nicest guy, and so I got no problem um checking it out for him. So when he originally brought it in, the pickup was Toast, the original one, the Elvis Costello. I think they're his spec, I think. Don't quote me on it, but anyways, so I took it out of the guitar and I read it with my multimeter and it was just dead. And so he bought another one. Not just any pickup, the same one that went in that guitar, you know, Elvis Costello's Spec Neck Jazz Master pickup. So we put it in and everything was fine. Six months later, it's not working again. So that always, you know, causes alarms. Like, what is it? Is there something inside the guitar that is causing this pickup to just quit working? Um and so I took it apart and I noticed that a ground wire had popped off. And so I didn't wire the guitar, all I did was install a new pickup originally. So I don't know how it popped off, but it did. So I soldered it back on along with a couple other cold solder joints, buttoned it back up. I tried everything, of course, the three-way toggle. I really worked it to make sure there wasn't something else, and it worked. And something interesting about this guitar, the entire inside is shielded with not it's not copper foil, it's actually molded copper, if you can believe it. So it's like a thick gauge, molded, and it fits right in that cavity. So the issue with this, I'll take a little sidebar here to talk about shielding, is a lot of people think that the shielding is going to kill the 60 cycles hum or maybe help it a lot or significantly. But I hate to break it to you, just because I've done it on a lot of guitars and I've seen it in even more guitars than I've actually done it to, it doesn't really help. It just doesn't. Um not only that, but you can buy the wrong copper foil where uh you can't just layer it on top of each other and have connectivity, you have to solder the pieces. And so you know, the number one issue though with doing this, you might think to yourself, well, it can't hurt. And in a lot of respects, I do like that philosophy that it can't hurt. However, if one of your volume pots were to get loose and you turn that knob and one of the lugs of the pots rubs up or hits the sidewall there of the cavity route that's covered in the foil or the molded copper, it'll ground out your signal. So that's a bummer. You know, that's why I don't like the idea of kill switches either, because over time stuff can corrode and stuff, and if that connection were to become undone or something, it just would stop and not work. So I think a lot of times the answer is just to get new pickups, and I don't think it's always get noiseless pickups, because some P90s and some Jazz Master pickups, they're just uh buzzier than others. It's really weird. And the common sense says, well, if you're plugged into the same circuit as a refrigerator or, you know, some type of appliance, the biggest thing is if you have a dimmer on a light in the circuit, that can cause buzzing. Of course, soldering irons can cause buzzing, all that stuff, that is a bigger uh concern that needs to be dealt with. And if you're on a stage that has no that's not grounded right and everything is buzzing, you know, that's something to take into consideration too. The room could just be noisy, you know. And after all, there is just, you know, wire wrapped around a bobbin with magnets, you know, this is like old technology, so you're gonna have problems. So yeah, I think a lot of customers really get freaked out. It's either now nothing against people with OCD, I'm just pointing it out. I'm OCD about certain things. But people that have that, they really can focus in on the buzzing and or the 60 cycle. And I think sometimes people get embarrassed because they'll go in a recording studio and the engineer will point it out to them that their guitar is buzzing. Now, in a previous life, years ago, I used to be a recording engineer, and there is any number of reasons why you would point that out. And so if the you know, the philosophy of being an engineer, that's a whole nother thing. You're dealing with all kinds of personalities and egos, but you know, if if you want to check the guitar player because maybe he's you know talking to you a certain way, or you know, he's saying this doesn't sound right, and you know that his tone is just terrible, his amp is terrible, but he's blaming you. One of the things you might say is, well, your guitar is buzzing, and you know, your compressor and on your pedal board and blah blah blah. You know, who knows? That's just one scenario. Maybe you have a really nice relationship with your engineer, and he just kind of pointed out, hey, that guitar is buzzing a little. But you know, the most common fix for that is just to move your guitar and stand in a different spot, honestly. You know, so anyways, uh end of sidebar back to this jazz master. So I was worried that it was a pickup, but it was a ground wire, so I gave it to my co-worker. I said, uh electronics uh check, just check this for me, work everything, make sure it's good, because I just checked it, but now you check it. We often do that just because we can. That's a benefit of working in a shop with other techs. So he did and he checked it, played it good. So wrapped it up, gave it to the customer, and then the customer came in today and I said, Yeah, it was a ground wire, and we were talking about it. And I said, But plug it in to just make sure it worked. And he did, and I said it worked, and I said, Hey, and work work that rhythm circuit uh slide switch, make sure that works. Honestly, it was just an afterthought. I just wanted, I know those can be temperamental, they are on Mustangs, and so I just wanted, you know, and he hit it and it was cutting in and out. And I was like, Oh, here we go. You know, I was I apologized, I was really sorry. I said, you know, I checked it, I checked it before I put it in the case and now it's doing it. So I I even popped the pick guard halfway off while he was there, escorted some uh Deoxid in there it really worked the switch and I showed him with the pick guard lifted up a little and you could see inside there at the switch that when I moved it it was still shorting out in other words it wasn't hitting any of the copper or anything like that. So I'm gonna install a new switch for him and he was super cool. Like I said, the nicest guy he said, yeah, just put it put in the new switch, no problem. He actually dropped off another guitar for me. I'll talk about next week. This is a um it's a Stratocaster. It is a I think he said it was walnut. It's like furniture wood. Yeah, I think it was a walnut strat and it was heavy. But again, this guy has really cool and eclectic uh guitar collection. So I'll keep y'all posted on that one. Now we have the 69 strat. I called it a Frankenstein strat on my stories on my YouTube channel, if you go find that one. But this customer has been coming into our shop since the 70s, and he's been modding this very same guitar since the 70s, and it's a 69 strat, and the neck our shop made for him a long time ago. It's a different neck. Why would you put a different neck on? Well, I'll I'll get to it. So this guy, he's a very nice guy, he's an eccentric guy, and he is uh uh uh obsessed with intonation um uh or I guess we should call it string length compensation because intonation is the player's ability to play in tune, and string length compensation is when a tech sets that so basically and he's playing mostly in open tunings, anyways, so when I say the player's ability, he's kind of taking himself out of the mix. What he is obsessed with is how the where each fret is on the fingerboard isn't 100%, I think it's called temperament, it's not perfect. So you can talk to somebody that studied music and they'll tell you all all about temperament, but he can hear it, that's the thing. So he can hear that the notes are off and that they're wavering, and I could only imagine it's akin to like warble, maybe on like a a tape player. Um so he is constantly switching out the pickups on his guitar and uh he's done some crazy things. Let let me tell you before I tell you about the pickups there's a Veritone on this strat, and it's mounted in a really cool way. I highly suggest you go to my YouTube channel at Hillington Guitars, one word, and it's plural, at Hillington Guitars, and check it out. And so yeah, it's got a Veritone, and he's tried at least in the six or seven years that I've been at the shop, he's tried everything to achieve like an even tone. His complaint is that the outside E's are uh not the same volume and uh other stuff about intonation. He ev he even has the saddles zip tied and every time the guitar is in, it's in a different state. I've seen weird things with the tuners too. Um different washers he put in between uh the tuner button and the sleeve where it screws into the machine head. Yeah, just really interesting stuff with this guitar. So he's had everything from E and G's to fluents, he had a seven-string rail humbucker installed. Now that I think that would solve, you would think, that issue of it being, you know, not balanced on the outside strings. But and then he got really into this thing called new metal, NU metal. I don't really know what the deal is. I'm just kinda at this point doing what he wants, but he has a pickup ring that's on top of the pick guard and it's new metal, and then he had me install a powertron, TV Jones powertron, so it's like a filter tron, but has two rails, and he had me put a pickup cover on top of that. So I believe I tried to take the pickup cover off of the powertron and I couldn't. He said just put the regular PAF cover over that pickup entirely, and it didn't really, I was able to get it to friction fit a little bit, but it bulged. So I told him I was gonna have to epoxy it, and he was like, fine with it, you know. He has I I really wonder how many pickups he has in his you know collection. But so, anyways, I actually used epoxy putty because it was cleaner, and it did keep the cover on, so it had two covers, it just picture a Filtertron and then a PAF humbucker cover on top of that. And I think the humbucker cover again was this new metal, and so that didn't do it for him, and he had bought a lace humbucker that he wanted me to install, and he was asking me about lace, and I get asked about lace pickups all the time, today I think twice. And it's very interesting, they're a noiseless option. People's complaints about them is that they're too compressed sounding. I really, really, really like lace pickups, they have a sound all of their own. I think one of the Eric Clapton strats has lace pickups, or is it Eric Johnson, one of them? And I have a lace pickup in the bridge on my telecaster. I believe it's the blue one where it says lace and blue. And it's good, man. If you're gonna have some drive on there and you don't want noise, it's just a great option. I think the fender noiseless sometimes can sound too sterile. And I'll make the distinction between the old noiseless and the new noiseless, the fender ones. I think the old noiseless fender single coil pickups weren't that great. I think the new ones are, I think they fix some stuff on there. But um, yeah, so I installed the lace humbucker and the install went good. And I sprayed out his Veritone because his Veritone was dirty. And uh when I when he came to pick up the guitar, he said, we'll see, you know, we'll we'll see how it is. So it's really in interesting with him, and I I actually this time I asked him about a strat, I said, what year? Because it looks 70s, but there are things about it that don't. Like the 70s strats have the poly, have the lacquer over the poly, and are usually really heavy. And this guitar is light and it's a four-bolt neck, and he said it's a 69, which is what I thought it was gonna be. And I said, just I said, Have you had this forever? And he said, forever, first owner. And I said, just so you know, I think this guitar is freaking awesome. And he said, Should I repaint it? And I said, No. And what's funny about that is I think if you bought the guitar new, um, and you look at all the relicing and wear as just that, as imperfection. And so I could understand why someone that's had it all these years might want it re I can understand the mindset, I wouldn't do it. And what I told him is, no, I told him, please, please don't, don't refinish this guitar. I said, please. And then I said, you know, if you ever want to sell this guitar, please let me know because I would be interested. And I kind of threw this out there. I'd said, I said, for the experimenting, I said, you know, I'll I'll build you a body if if you want, and you can continue to experiment to that one and kind of just give this one a break. And he just left. So that was the 69 strat. I also did a setup on a modern Mustang. Now it said fender on the headstock, and it was white, and it had a mint guard, and it had had some things done to it, and so um I got looking at it more carefully, and the bridge was a top loader, and it just looked like a squire. And I asked my co-worker who had a squire, and he said yes. This is either a bullet Mustang or he rattled off some other squire version of the Mustang, but someone had put a fender decal on it, and I could see the water slide where the edge was actually curling up a little. That's tricky to do if you're not used to doing doing it. So I set that up, and the owner came, he just happened to stop by, kind of regular kind of a guy, and he said, Oh, good, it's all ready to sell. And I was like, Oh, we're selling this, so I guess there was a miscommunication there. I didn't write up his tag, and so yeah, he was selling it, so at least it's set up now. Um, and then I got there's a Ventura, Les Paul, 70s bolts on neck. This one is Gold Sparkle, and it's another repeat customer. I guess at this point, I'm getting a lot of repeat customers here, and he wants me to just do my thing on it. He's a very interesting guy, he doesn't play family members of his play, and he's a collector. And I believe his deal, I think he lost a lot of guitars in a fire a few years back, and so he's just been buying guitars and he likes what I like. He likes 70s made in Japan stuff, and so he's got this Bolton uh Les Paul, and it's in a finish I've never seen. I don't think it's been refinished. It's a gold sparkle Ventura Les Paul, and he wants it refredded, and we're gonna do 6105s, and he's got new pickups for it. I think they might be the Billy Gibbons pickups, not 100%, but they're humbuckers, and uh, I think we're gonna replace everything on it 50s wiring, etc. So I finished refreding it, and the frets went in uh good. So it has binding on both sides, and so you have to inlay the fret and cut the tang and all that stuff, and um I thought I was gonna have to clean out the slot with my Dremel, but turns out I didn't. Um I cleaned them out the old-fashioned way with one of those hook blades and made sure there wasn't any dust in in there, and the fret tang really grabbed and seated fine. So all the frets are in. I just need to level crown and polish and then get to the other stuff. So that one is in progress. The same guy that owned that Squire Mustang also owns a Gretsch double anniversary, and this is like the greenish one, the two-tone and 60s vintage. It is so freaking cool, this guitar. So if you've ever wondered why they call it a double anniversary, and I've wondered, and the answer is the pickups, that's why I was like, why is there an anniversary and then double? Did the anniversary like the year did it roll around twice? And they were like, Okay, this is that didn't make sense to me. So it has has to do with the pickup. So the double anniversary has two pickups, and this guitar you can see burned into the finish where the tailpiece used to be, and it was a Gretsch tailpiece with a G branded on there, and um, but I don't have the tailpiece with me. He wants a Bigsby on there right up my alley. The only sad thing is that you're covering up that cool burned-in mark, but I think it will always be there unless it gets distorted by the footprint of the Bigsby and the ultraviolet light burning in, you know, the Bigsby on top of the other burn-in, you know. But anyways, that's gonna be a really cool one. I've just cracked it out of the case and I'm kind of looking at the parts that he provided. It has nothing on it, no pick guard, you know, the only thing that's there are the pickups. Uh the tuners aren't in it. Aren't on it, I should say. So yeah, that's gonna be a cool one, and I definitely will keep y'all posted on that. So now it's time for water cooler talk. I'm gonna go ahead and take a drink, not of water. Got me a the old fridge sig. So I guess I want to talk about uh building guitars to sell, and that would include putting together parts casters, too, or even you know, going on eBay and getting some MJT bodies or tonecraft or whatever you're gonna do and putting them together. My coworker said this the other day to me, and it was regarding a parts guitar that I'm putting together with the intention of selling, but I've always thought this in my head. I've just never really said it out loud, and he said it out loud, and now I'm gonna tell you all. He said, Yeah, just build that guitar like you wouldn't want it, so you could totally sell it. So I'm a rockabilly guy, I like TV Jones pickups, I don't really like strats, but this guitar is a pink cramer, I think it's from the 80s or 90s, and I put a telecaster neck on it, and um what I would do to it uh if I'm gonna enjoy the build, and after I might even want to keep it because it's so cool, is I'd probably put two TV Jones in there. Might go crazy because it's a strap body and put three TV Jones. It kind of reminds me of those old Univox strats that had like three humbuckers, but they were the Univox style humbuckers. Um, and then I might put a telecaster bridge, or you know, I'm crazy about the Mustang dynamic vibrato. Should I fill the cavity like I've done to the servicemen guitar with epoxy and make it a hardtail and put something like that on it? And he just said, build it so you don't want to keep it. And I thought, is that the key to really selling a guitar is to build it to where you don't want to keep it. I thought that was really interesting. I'm not really into metal anymore, and so I think to lean in, it's a pink, and it's not like Pepto Bismol pink. It is it it was like a uh a hot pink, a neon pink originally, and then the lacquer has kind of like yellowed, so it's almost orange-ish pink uh in some spots. Really freaking cool. And this Stratocaster body is I call it like uh bubbly, it's like rounded over like extra. So yeah, that's it's super cool. So what I'm deciding to do is I'm gonna put a Kaller on it. I have in my just parts, I have a Kaler flyer, a vintage one. So I am gonna have to hardtail it to some extent, and I'll probably use the epoxy method like I've done in the past. This time not spilling it over, you know, trying not to have it leak out of cavities and crevices that I don't notice. That's always a goal with that. But yeah, I think it's it has a telly neck, and a friend of mine gave me the telly neck, and um it actually was kind of butchered, it was rounded to fit a Stratocaster neck pocket, so you don't see usually you will modify the neck pocket, but in this case, they the square uh heel is kind of like uh boxy, you know, so they rounded the corners like a Stratocaster neck. So yeah, so it's it's a nice fender neck on a nice creamer body. Actually, you know, I looked in there, the body's plywood, and so like I think a lot of guitars from that era were, um, but the paint job looks super rad. So after it's done, I'll be excited to post it on my um on my YouTube channel short so you can see what that's all about, and that leads me to my next topic of conversation: building versus repairing. So traditionally, repairs bring in the money and it's really constant. Um, and I think repair guys they really always want to build, but they can never find the time to build. But I'm in a unique situation where like I'm at a shop, so I can build in my spare time and then put them for sale in my shop. Not only that, but I could see customers' reactions to it, and that can kind of shape like how I want to build my next one and what I would change. So I think you know, there's a bigger conversation there, but I'm gonna leave it short for now. But if you are a luthier, uh, do you want to build a repair or both? And I think it's really easy just to get buried in repairs, but that's good, right? That's constant money, the bridge re glues, the setups. Um, if you're doing neck resets, you know, more power to you, you know, that's constant. Um that can be stressful too. Actually, I found one of the owners of my shop gave me a little slip of paper. He liked to clip stuff out of magazines, like cartoons and stuff, and it was like some of the most stressful jobs. I don't know what year this was from, but the top on the top of the list was instrument repair person. And yeah, it is super freaking stressful sometimes. Um, you know, you're working on somebody's instrument and it's really expensive instrument, and you need to do a good job with all the knowledge that you have. I think the biggest thing is just to take your time, to not feel pressured or in a rush. And with an exception of some people, kill switch guy, or other people, um, yeah, most, you know, 98% are cool if you call them and say, Hey, um, the wrong part came, or you know, I didn't see this when I took in the repair, but it's gonna need, you know, XYZ. They're cool with it, and they want you to do a good job too. So, yeah, so repairs versus building. I think if you're doing, if you're swamped in repairs, it is good to try to push yourself to all always have things that you're working on that you're either building or putting together, whether it be a parts caster or what. In fact, I really don't think there's any excuse why you shouldn't, if you're a repair person, always have some parts guitars that you've built for people to check out and possibly buy, because you are in the know as far as what everybody is asking you to do all the time to their guitars. And as a repair person, you're showing off. There's not gonna be any sharp fret ends. The nut is gonna look immaculate, the you know, everything, the intonation just spot on. It's gonna play like really, really good and it's gonna sound really good. You might even use, you know, pickups that customers have given you in the past or that you've acquired, or pickups that you know sound good, you're gonna put in there. This might even be according to some trends that are go going around. Uh, I remember when the rubber bridge trend uh first broke, we got wind of it early, and I I made a good handful and they sold right right away, you know. And I also repaired a handful of people that had had them made elsewhere, um, but they liked my work and they wanted me to do to it what I did to other ones that I had made. So yeah, I I think it goes hand in hand, and I think it's a conversation that I would love to ask other people, which leads me to my next point. Should I interview people on this podcast? And if so, who? And I would like if I did this, I would like to do it in person here in my workshop, um, just because I'm all set up to do so, and because I don't really like listening to stuff where it's like on a Zoom call and it's bad audio, even though maybe I This point, it might not be 100% what I want. But at least to start out, small scale, this podcast is just starting. I already have a few people in mind, uh, local players that are always coming to the shop and asking me to check out things that they built and what I thought, and other people that have inspired me, mentors or other luthiers around town. I think it would be cool to have a conversation about everything from customer relationships to the number one issues or people that are, you know, a pain or whatever. I think it would be just interesting to have those conversations. Um so in my shop, some projects I have in the balance, uh, I have a lot. And I kind of took last week off because I was tired from the show that I had played, but I just kind of wanna I want to mention them again so I continue to make progress. And this weekend I hope to make progress on a lot of these. So I had mentioned probably in my first episode, I have a blue squire strat that I did the hardtail thing too with epoxy. That one turned out real clean, and I was gonna put a telly bridge on it. It has just the squire stock neck with a 70s-shaped headstock, and so it's gonna be a telly bridge, and I'm still haven't I haven't mounted the bridge on there. I've aligned it, I've took measurements, I just haven't drilled it on there, and I'm trying to think about what pick guard shape I want and uh what pickups I want. And so again, I think the question is I always want to make things that inspire me to make them, but I want them to sell too, so it's a balance. So with some of these, I'm not just gonna build guitars that I don't want to keep. With that Kramer, with the pink one in particular, uh, I think the idea is to lean in what it wants to be. It wants to be a shredder. Maybe it wants a kill switch, even though I don't like those. An arcade switch. I I have a couple extra from the kill switch guy. So, you know, lean into it. But with this one, it's a blue squire stratocaster. Um I'm just kinda I'm stalling because I don't know what to do. I think maybe, you know, like what goes good with blue? It's kind of stumping me. I might do an aluminum pick guard. I think that might be cool. I'd love to hear what you guys would think if you want to email me at allguitarsbuzz at gmail.com. I'd love to hear your ideas about a blue squire strat with a telly bridge, and the telly has six uh saddles, so it's not the you know the three. Um so yeah, there's that one. There's the serviceman strat guitar. For someone that doesn't like strats, I've got a lot of strats on the balance here. And that one I'm gonna put a Mustang dynamic bridge on with a high spirit, or I should say vibrato, and then a high spirit bridge. And um, yeah, so I just gotta, you know, I've same thing, I've taken the measurements, I just haven't mounted the bridge, and I do have to route for that for the Mustang. I think I was trying to hunt down a template. I think that's where I stalled there. And yes, I could cut one out. There's one online if you just look up. I don't know if it's called uh there's a guitar template website where they give you a bunch for free. And so I would just have to make that and cut it out. Or I saw someone selling it for 50 bucks, 50 bucks, geez. So yeah, make it definitely is the name of the game. And I already talked about that pink Kramer. Now, how that started is I was selling it on marketplace. So I'm getting a little ahead of myself with the marketplace talk, but I had it up for 50. I think I had it for a hundred, no bites, dropped it to fifty, started to get bytes. And this guy said, How about forty? And I thought ten less than what I want, fine. So it was really buried in my storage. I had to move a bunch of stuff out, and then I realized it was actually in an accessible place, and I didn't have to move all that stuff out. So I got it out before work. I took it to work, I texted him, hey, I'm available from this time to this time at my shop. You could roll by whenever and grab it, and then he messages me and he's like, I didn't know, can't you meet me halfway? That's kind of far. So this is the type of marketplace shenanigans that you get into. It's like, oh man, it's it's unbelievable. I woke up early to go snag that. So I told him, I said, Well, you know, no, I can't meet you halfway. I'm working, and he said, I'm working too. So, oh man, that is just that is so completely uh frustrating. So, one thing interesting about marketplace is that sometimes the AI will misunderstand when you're communicating with somebody and you'll get a rate this person pop-up. Now that is scary because when I buy on marketplace, I look at people's ratings, and sometimes there'll be a lot of one stars, and they say quit responding, you know. And I was thinking, like, I don't respond a lot, kind of out of spite because Marketplace has beat me down. But I was thinking, like, I checked my ratings and I've I've got all like five stars. I've got good ratings and I've sold quite a bit of stuff. And so, but I was thinking about all the people that I didn't reply to. And uh so yeah, that's just an interesting thing when you're messaging somebody and you're trying to find a time to meet up, and the AI thinks that you've already done the transaction and it says rate this person. It's just something to be aware of that uh you could potentially get a bad rating, but I guess you could rate them bad as well, anyways. That's the pink Kramer. Um, and then I have a Recording King dreadnought I talked about in previous episodes. The bridge is off. I just gotta sand the top and spray it a color that Recording King didn't offer because that's how I'm gonna sell that one. Recording King, the Dirty 30s, they did a lot of colors. They did, I think, like a I think like an army green, they did like a midnight or royal blue, they did sunburst, black, and I had the idea maybe I'll do a Buck Owens inspired paint job, and my coworker said they did that, and I checked, and yes, they even did that. So I'm trying to come up with a color, a custom color. You know, I have in a rattle can uh shearwood green and fiesta red, and so I think it's gonna wind up being one of those colors, and I'm definitely gonna put a magnetic pickup mounted on the soundhole with a cool-looking ring, and I'm gonna put two knobs, and that's just easy stuff to do uh to try to get it to sell. One thing I didn't mention a couple weeks ago, I have an upright base in my shop right now, and uh on my YouTube channel I repaired an angle heart, the neck was off, and I put it back on. Same guy, his son plays, the base got knocked over, and his bridge is uh basically in half. So I'm gonna put a new bridge on there, and I ordered the bridge and it finally came. And there's a little dilemma there, so the base has a I don't know if it's shadow, it has a pickup, but it's the kind of pickup that looks like um a piece of foil or tin underneath one of the feet, which I I really don't like because I don't like anything under the foot. I want it to make solid contact with the top, and so I've been thinking, I uh purposefully didn't get an adjustable bridge because it doesn't have one, and it's better tone without those adjusters because they're cutting the bridge um, you know, by it's it's not it's always better wood than having like a metal wheel interrupt the vibration transfer, especially for an upright, but you can adjust the action, that's the thing. But also I feel like they're a little less stable, they could fly off, and they're hard to fit. So I just wanted to replace you know what was there, which was a bridge that will that didn't have the adjusters, but I'm thinking like maybe I I want to make him a pickup too. I do mess around with Pizo elements, and I've made a bunch of pickups in the past, and not only for upright, but for guitar. And so maybe I'll just surprise him and and do that. So that's in the works, that's coming up due quickly. The soundpost is in, which is good. Don't want that to move at all because that is a pain. If you don't have to set the sound post, good. If if you have to make one or set one for my um bandmate Andrew, and if you're listening, what's up, Andrew? He had me put in two soundposts on one of his basses because it deadens the sound, and you might think to yourself, why oh why would you want to deaden the sound? Well, Andrew has multiple basses, and it's the use case. So the white bass that I did that to is like a rockabilly style bass, and he it's for feedback issues. And if you've ever seen Rockabilly guys play, sometimes if they have like an underwood or a Pizo style pickup, um feedback is your number one issue, and lots of people will squeeze the bass in between their legs, and it will uh stop the feedback. So um yeah, it kind of makes the bass deader, and so that's why you would install a second sound post. I got that in the works. I'm also doing uh my buddy Daniel's ESP that looks like a telecaster. That was the one that had the vinyl, not vinyl, but the poly finish that I took off. I gotta finish sanding it and then spray it with lacquer. And then, of course, the big thing is I am finishing assembling my CNC. So I got a lot of stuff to do, and you know, you just miss one kind of weekend of doing stuff and you feel like you're really, really behind. But um yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and wrap that stuff up. Hopefully this weekend, or I'll try to get done as much as I can, so I will have uh some more to talk about since I'm doing this podcast a little later in the week here. Alright, it's time for the most interesting part of the podcast, customer stories. Um this classical guy came in, well, he called first and he said he wanted a restring on his classical, and we had about uh uh 30 minutes left before closing, and or I think it was maybe it was an hour before closing when he called. And I said, Well, we need 30 minutes to do the restring, and um that's pretty fast for a classical, actually. So, you know, because we do it right, we tie all the strings, one tail underneath the other one, etc. We'll oil the board, polish the fret, so we you know, we do the whole thing. I'll even oil up the tuners if need be, you know, just do a general once over. So it's a lot more than just restringing the instrument. But he said he'd be in, and then he came in 20 minutes before closing, and we told him, uh, you're just gonna have to leave it and pick it up tomorrow. And then he said he pressed us, he said, uh, can't you just get it done? And my coworker was handling it, and he said, No, I can't. So he left it. Kill switch guy, uh fine funny update. Um he saw it, liked it, plugged it in, did the kill switch thing, dot dot dot dot dot, said, Cool, paid and left. He liked it, it was fine. So a really difficult person that didn't want to communicate with me on the phone, just wanted to communicate with me during email and changed the story and just was making it really hard to deal with, uh, liked it and it was fine. I had a really cool um story. A customer brought in his Martin D18, it's a 70s Martin, which you know, those guitars for a long time I feel like have gotten a bad rap, the 70s ones. Newsflash, some of them are really, really, really good. And I grew up playing my dad's 70s Martin, so I guess I'm a little biased, but that guitar sounds great. Um, and this one did too. And so when I opened the case, I noticed that it was signed right where his arm would go when you hold the guitar, uh, it said BB King. And then there was two others, I can't remember what they were, but they were heavy hitters. And I asked him, I said, are did you bring your guitar for to have these people sign, or were you playing with them? And I'm glad that I had the foresight to ask him if he was playing with those guys, because he said yes, he played with all those people, like on stage, a part of their band. I think I'd love to get more info about that, but basically he wanted a re-fret on the Martin, and I was looking at it, and there really was no divots on the frets, they were tarnished, and some looked like they needed to be reseeded, and so uh, and he had double pick guards on this, which looked awesome. So one on the bottom and one on the top, and the one on the bottom was curling up in a bad way, needs to be replaced, can't even glue it back down, and um, so I I told him I think I said, well, I don't think you need a refret. I think this needs a really good setup, and I think that we should just replace that pick guard, and you can keep the old one in your case for posterity. And I said, just so you know, um, I'm not gonna polish this guitar because of the Sharpie of the autographs. I and then he commented how in good shape they were for being so old, and I said, Yeah, I mean, yeah, they they looked really really good, and I just wanted him to know before he told me to not do it, that I wasn't gonna even, you know, shine the top at all, not with Sharpie there. And then he asked me for the back of the neck, so he turned the back of the neck around, or he turned the neck around to reveal the back, and it had dirt all over it. Dirt was caked on there, and he was asking me about cleaning that all off. And so I have experience doing this uh on Gibsons and other guitars, and I even have a funny story about my Gibson jumbo and doing it. But um basically, if you use something like mineral spirits or naphtha or some type of de-greaser, gunk remover, not goo off, don't ever use that, but I'm basically talking about mineral spirits here or naphtha. That's mostly safe on everything, they say. Um sometimes it can react to the gunk. So the gunk has kind of and the oil in your hand has worked itself into the lacquer all these years and it's almost become a part of it. And if you try hard to remove it, sometimes the mineral spirits or the naphtha can react to the dirt and turn it white or start to blush into the finish. And trying to get that out, you know, the best thing you can do is rub some carnuba wax in there, and you're really rubbing and buffing and just hoping for the best. So I told him, I said, I don't really want to get into any of that, but I can clean it, you know. I could just lightly clean it, you know, and I'm just gonna do that with some just guitar polish. We use Smith polish at the shop. I love it, I love the way it smells. I I love that stuff, I think it works really good. And so um, he was happy with everything I said, just a a really cool guy, um, an older gentleman, super cool. And I guess what makes this a customer story is after he left, there was a customer hanging out playing guitars, and I noticed him in the background as I was writing up the Martin, and um I heard him mention to one of the owners of the shop that we have really good luthier here. So he complimented me, b basically, because he he heard my interaction with this customer, and there's really no bigger compliment for me. Not only did he call me a luthier, but he I I think he liked what I was saying and how I handled that situation, and um, yeah, that's just kind of a feather in my cap. But when you deal with me, um I'm always trying to be thoughtful about the instrument and really try to understand what the customer wants done, and I think the important part is not doing stuff that doesn't need to be done to it. Don't be tinkering around. A lot of times it's best just to leave stuff, so we're gonna leave that grime on the back, most of it, and uh yeah, we're just gonna give it a really good setup. And so another one of my uh customers, a regular, Will, what's up, Will, if you're listening, um wants me to build him a telecaster, and so we went ahead and had this conversation. Um, it's cool that he respects my opinion about teles because teles have become one of my favorite guitars. I grew up playing a strat, and then I had a Gretsch and Harmonies and all kinds of other uh 60s Japanese guitars and you know cool arias and all that stuff. And later in life, I come to realize I love telecasters, I just love them. I think they could do everything. I love how utilitarian they are, and he wants to go ahead and put a humbucker in the neck, and I think that's a great idea. And he was asking me about the three barrel saddles versus the six, and this is just my opinion, but I'll go ahead and share it. That what makes a telecaster a telecaster is the traditional bridge, those three brass saddles. There's something about the two strings pulling on the one barrel and the fact that the pickup is mounted in the bridge. There's something about that whole situation there that makes a telecaster a telecaster. And traditionally, the neck pickups on telecasters have been really muddy, like extreme mud, which makes the middle sound interesting. But um, and so people try to brighten them up, but then they can sound too ice picky, so it's really hard to get a good neck pickup. So a great um solution to that is just by installing a PAF, you know, a really good one, in in the neck, and a la Keith Richards and so many others, and that's what I have on my offset telly, and I love it. So we're just gonna talk about it. He was he wants double binding. He was talking to me about where to get the body, and there's a bunch of places. I think this is the third time I'm gonna mention MJT in this episode. But if you go on eBay and type in MJT bodies, they do a lot of cool relicing. However, we looked and there wasn't a there was not a double bound one. So that leaves you kind of open to going on reverb and uh Squire does a lot of double bound bodies, and that's a really affordable option. You get a good paint job, you get double binding, and then the necks are kind of you know, whatever neck you want to put on there. I think he said he wants a C shape or like a slimmer C. So then you're gonna look at all parts or tone craft or whatever to get the neck that you want. Um, that's probably gonna be more expensive than the body, I would say. Then you're looking at the pickups, but I I told him also, like, you don't have to get the perfect pickups and stuff like right away. That's the joy of a true parts caster, is that you know, you get stuff good enough to start, you could keep upgrading it maybe your whole life, just like the 69 strat guy does, or he just keeps on with it. Um, I think that's really fun and really cool to do. So we'll go ahead and do that. I got a comment from a regular customer of mine. He's uh more than a customer, he's a friend, Dustin. What's up, Dustin? If you're listening, he said he enjoyed my last episode, and he said it just went by. And I thought that was really cool. Last episode was a shorter one. This one is more on the longer side. But um yeah, so thanks for that, Dustin. Got one more customer story. Uh, a regular of mine, his name's Jose. He plays all over town, been playing forever. He shared with me um a picture of. Of him when he was 18 years old playing a Gretsch. It looked like a Tennessean, but it but it wasn't. But you know, real deal 60s Gretch in Mexico City. And he was playing that guitar uh I think for you know a little while out there. He had a gig out there. He's been a professional musician from what I can gather his entire life. And then somebody offered him double what he paid for it because I guess it was hard to get American guitars in Mexico City. So they offered him something he couldn't refuse, so he sold it. Then he said he came back like a little while later with a Rickenbacher, John Lennon style. Same thing happened. Someone offered him like double or triple, and he just couldn't couldn't refuse, sold that one too. But this story is about the Gretsch. So he brought in today. He said, This is the last guitar I think I'm gonna buy. That's always hard to believe from us guitar players, but he had a Gretsch and then he showed me the picture of him when he was 18 playing that Gretsch. It was black and white. He said, I bought the same one. He said, I think the other one had a gold pick guard, this one has a black pick guard, and it had silver rings, and this one has gold rings, but it's the same thing. And he brought it for me to check it out, and um that was real really nice. I could see that uh he was touched uh, you know, to have uh felt I think it felt like a piece of him back. So that just about wraps it up for this app episode. I was gonna talk more about marketplace, but I already did that. I sold an Anvil Road case, uh, wanted 50. It's been up there forever. Someone offered me 40, took a bunch of measurements, and it sold. The Cordoba classical sold. I'm not sure if I mentioned that last time. The guy came into my shop, played it, loved it, asked me about the work I did, the crack and the hole, and I said this is just a project I've had forever, and I finally got around to fixing it. I sprayed out the electronics, new strings, everything is good on it. And I was off asking 250. He offered me two. Nice guy. I said, sure. Um, I got pretty big news. So I've been working on a YouTube video about a smashed Martin X series. It belonged to my cousin Steven. I said it would be out last episode, uh, but it wasn't. Just took me a long time, probably a year, to film and edit and do the work. So it's finally out now. It is out, and it's on my YouTube channel at Hillington Guitars. And so you can see that there. And uh you can always visit me on Instagram, Kenneth underscore Hillington. And if you want to contact me about anything you've heard on this podcast, any questions, or you want to weigh in on anything like what a luthier is or whatever, uh, please feel free to do so. I'd love to hear from you. My email is allguitarsbuzz at gmail.com. And until next time, see ya later.