Ian Davlin The Looth Group
Forum Replies Created
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First things first. Light and camera angles. I’ve seen more than a few pictures of these repairs now and some of them are quite impressive, however, there are some things to be known about pictures. You can find a good angle to shoot just about any finish repair. Avoid the temptation to judge your repair based on other peoples pictures.
Second, some advice based on some guessing. There are 3 different colors here which are tricking your brain through the power of impressionistic art to make you misread your base color. The three colors are super light yellow-brown (the background that didn’t take up much pore filler and was probably dyed), light red brown (where the shallow pores picked up more filler), and dark, almost black-brown (where the deep grainlines were filled and picked up the most color).
Close up on the project you see these distinct colors, from a distance (as Amy Grant would say), you see the colors merge to form a color very much like the one you used.
The key to making this look better (from one angle at least) is to start over and hit those three colors and make sure you don’t obscure the light yellow-brown.
Now, unless this is a super valuable guitar, or you have a surplus of time to fart around squinting and huffing fumes, this is a pretty nice repair and one I’d call done in the right price range.
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The finish looks fairly thick. You may be able to level it and polish it out. If you were being extra cautious, you could use Fill n Finish to level it out a little bit to pick up the slack in the difference.
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This looks like a great first neck reset guitar. Have you had a chance to grab some of the foam cutters yet ?
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Is it possible to post some pics of the affliction ?
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Soon. Loothprints will be easier to add files to. When it is I’ll reach out. This is really cool Ian!
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@guitarspecialistinc this might be a good one for you to take a look at.
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I was just telling people to drop ship parts. If they asked me to send them a link and I already knew what the part was and where I would get it, I wouldn’t charge. That was 90% of the time. The other 10% of the time was thinking I knew, but then finding out that I didn’t.
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Been down this road hundreds of times.
Any guitar, with any action, with any frets can be made to buzz.
On other guitars that don’t buzz as much, have the customer bring that guitar in. Have them bring the guitar in for inspection. No one has ever brought the other guitar in when I offer to replicate the set up. I suspect, they test it to make sure and realize it’s the same. If they do, here are some under appreciated factors in fret buzz and why some seemingly similar guitars may have more or less fret buzz.
Scale length / actual length of string
Say you have two locking nut guitars with different scale lengths. The longer scale length guitar will have higher tension to achieve the same pitch. This means that the strings will not vibrate as widely under the same input leading to less perceived fret buzz.
Now take two guitars with identical scale length, one with a locked nut and one with strings free to the tuners. The guitar with the nut locked down will carry more tension in the strings and play with less perceived fret buzz. This isn’t because of the nut is creating tension. It’s because the tension of the string is reduced by being distributed to the amount behind the nut that is carried to the tuners. It’s why a 25.5″ Gretsch will play way looser than a 25.5″ Fender. Sharp break at the bridge on a Fender as opposed a ton of string between the bridge and the tail piece on the Gretsch. Also less string and sharper angle on A Fender peghead.
Radius of the FretboardIm attaching a picture of a string vibrating on a guitar to show how much lateral movement is involved in string vibration. Most example of string vibration show the vibration from the side, as though the pick force is from the top down. The pick force is from the side. A steeper radius will produce more fret buzz.
Some Woods will Exacerbate Fret Buzz
Maple acoustics for sure will really put those fret buzzes out there. Im sure the same is true for certain hardware, fret alloys etc.
One thing to remember is that all Electric fret buzz is to be determined with the guitar plugged into an amp.
Hope this helps.
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I’m sorry about my previous reply where in my reading comprehension was trash.
I think this is going to have to be one of those wishy washy answers where I don’t answer the question with the numbers your looking for but some lame Zen type philosophical bullshit.
My wife and I are thinking about retirement now and as my people are wont to do, we are looking at RVs, trailers a campers. There’s a great phrase in the RV community that I have started to apply to guitar situations like guitar action. “There are no solutions, only compromises”
My rule of thumb on action is to , if possible, make the person play guitar for me before I start work. I’ve had fingerstylers who had such a heavy right hand that they need bluegrass action and I’ve had bluegrassers who played so fast the string didn’t have a chance to buzz. What I am getting at is there is no one action for repertoire or technique.
It also good to get people to play their repertoire (if they have one) and not just noodle around for a minute. You can tell a lot from this. If they’re just hanging out in the first position playing cowboy chords so they can sing about their feelings, a little more relief and a little less saddle. If they’re playing chord melody up the neck and want lower action, a little less relief and a little more saddle.
Also, never underestimate how much nut height affects perceived action. I personally set the nut to the truss rod adjustment. Meaning that most of the time, if you were to take relief out of my set up, the nut would be too low. This is rarely an issue where I live because people in NJ are a bunch of dirty Al Di Meola fans and don’t care much for relief anyhow. Benefits of a low nut include that it makes the action look lower when first addressed,it plays much easier in the first position and leads to fewer intonation issues IMO.
Last thing, it’s important to remember, every guitar can be made to buzz with any reasonable action. This gets us back to those compromises. Sometimes customers don’t understand this and time needs to be taken to educate them. Hope this helps.
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Looks like fun !
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If it’s the type of saddle that looks like the old through saddle, but has rounded ends, I’ve had luck with making it black with a sharpie (so it absorbs more light), masking the entire area except for the saddle with aluminum foil and hitting it with a 250 watt heat lamp. This can take a while.
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Really cool !
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This is killer, mind if we add it to the useful links posts ?
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I have never resin printed, but I played a hunch and found this based on coloring epoxy resin. I would probably use a white resin and then mix in something like a vintage amber dye. If you try this out, let me know how it works. Looks like a cool project.
https://facfox.com/docs/kb/how-to-dye-resin-3d-prints
facfox.com
Many have asked if it’s possible to dye the resin they use for 3D printing. The short answer is yes. The longer answer – only if you do it right. Since
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One thing that might help is pulling on the neck in addition to pushing up on it with the neck popper. It’s probably just a mortise and tenon and will pull straight out too. You could put the neck, headstock end, in a vise and pull on the body too.
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Can you post a pic ? Might be easier to tell.
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If I am remembering correctly, those could have been those weird composite saddles. Like some kind of fiber/nylon or something.
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I suspect you would spend quite a bit less time stripping and refinishing. It looks like you could get under the lifting with a palette knife and just peel it off like a bad sunburn. After that, the whole lacquer process could be really quick. I’d just use the Stewmac rattle can nitro.
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It depends. DId you airbush on evenly ? If you did, then yes, sorta. Evenly applied color isn’t going to give the splotchy look of pore filler. Just like you mimic grain lines with the dark lines produced by the graning pen, you need to splotch on the color with the airbrush to simulate the light and dark areas.
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One thing that can happen on the edges is that your solvents can penetrated the edge of the lacquer and rewet those colors of the original finish. You might try leaving that in the sun for a day or two and see if it mellows the edges out.
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How did you lock in your color before clear coat ? It kinda looks like the solvents flowed out some of your color work. I’d also say, you’re still just a skosh red and a skosh dark on your base coat.
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If it’s your first time tackling something like this, this video might be helpful.
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You can get the Meguires from Harbor Freight now. Or you can order it online. Is this your guitar or a customer’s guitar ?
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yep
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To level and polish, you would want to go through the grits and polishing compounds more than that.
I would level it with 600 grit at least. Then go through the grits 1000, 1500 and then 2000 before polishing with a compound like #7 Maguires, or buffing it on a buffing wheel.
Is this your first time level sanding and polishing something back up to a high sheen ?
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Yep, here’s the link.
https://dev.loothgroup.com/useful_links/foam-cutters-for-neck-resets/
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It sounds cool! Whats a tracker document ?
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It is up. Let me know if I missed anything. Really awesome work ! Any chance you’re up on Nginx reverse proxies ?
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Good catch Holmes !
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Can you also pop in a pic of the afflicted guitar.
