Tecolote Guitar Works

July finished out as our best month ever at TGW. Despite the gas prices and gloomy economic news, we saw a steady stream of very nice guitars and made many new friends for the shop. My personal favorite guitars include a gorgeous Martin 000-21 from 1942. I want that guitar, NOW! The other standout was a spectacular Brazillian Rosewood/Italian spruce 000 built by South African luthier Mark Maingard. Maingards are rare as paisley Yetis in the U.S. but very impressive. The example on my bench had a spectacular fretboard of bookmatched Brazillian!

Some of our customers told us that TGW has received some praise on the Acoustic Guitar Forum in a couple of threads so thanks for those kind words. That kind of notice is invaluable in building our business.

OK, enough of that, let’s get back in the shop and shine up a filthy flattop. Questions about how to keep a nice instrument looking its best come up all the time, so I’ll let you in on my methods and materials.

When I need polish and clean up supplies I don’t go to a guitar accessory supplier, I go to an automotive detail specialty shop. For light clean-and-shine tasks on glossy finishes NOTHING beats a high grade auto detail spray buffed with a microfiber towel. My snake oil of choice is Meguiars Pro Final Inspection. This product is great for fingerprints, beer drool, and all the other routine crud; it’s non-abrasive and has no silicone content.

Stubborn cloudiness and fine pick scratches need a more aggressive cleaner and once again Meguiars has a terrific product called “Deep Crystal” that can be found at Kragen Auto. Deep Crystal is a 3 step system…just buy the Step 1 product. I apply it with a paper towel, rub till it squeaks and buff with microfiber. Deep Crystal #1 is close to magic and has no silicone.

Silicone is a major disaster as it compromises all finish and repair procedures. Nothing will stick to it, ever. Silicone contamination from those silly Lance Armstrong “Live Strong” wristbands became a problem at a certain well-known guitar maker whose name I’ll never mention. It seems many employees on the final sanding line were dragging these wristbands over raw wood just before the finish process began. The manufacturer paid out many many thousands of dollars in warranty claims and lost productivity to repair finishes that would not adhere to the wood.

One last thing for shiny surfaces……sometimes we see sticky residue that standard cleaners or polishes won’t cut. A common solvent available at Home Depot and paint stores is naptha. Naptha is a standby, constant use solvent in all guitar repair shops and it will not damage normal guitar finishes. A few drops on a cloth or paper towel will cut most all gooey, sticky residue. Old fashioned liquid lighter fuel, like dad used in his Zippo, is the same stuff.

The raw wood on fretboards lives a harsh life: skin oils and acids, salsa from that burrito, and more beer drool will take a toll. If you see a little bead of this nasty DNA building up along the frets, it’s time to put on the biohazard suit and get the decon unit ready. Naptha is the frontline. Use a stiff bristled toothbrush (for you gun nuts, grab an M-16 brush… they’re perfect), dampen the bristles with naptha and start scrubbin’ right along the edge of the frets. Wipe off the sludge with a paper towel, let it dry and repeat as needed.

The clean fretboard may look a little dry, so a sparing application of a moisturizing oil is needed. Every guitar tech has a favorite fretboard treatment: lemon oil, orange oil, linseed oil, they all work fine but the key is to just use enough to darken the raw wood slightly. Too much is a bad thing. Just use a little and don’t let it remain on the board for more than a minute, then buff it off with a paper towel. It’s not a turkey so don’t baste it, ok?

Frets often get corroded but can be cleaned up nicely with fine grade woven abrasive (Scotch Brite), but only use fine grades. Grey is the color of the most useful. Stay away from maroon unless you really know what you’re doing. Abrading the fingerboard is not the goal, just a light polish on the frets. Stay away from steel wool… that stuff leaves metal particles EVERYWHERE, especially in the pickups of your electric guitar. I won’t allow steel wool in my shop. Lots of techs use it but they won’t be working at TGW. If you choose to polish up your own frets, mask the fretboard off with low tack tape first. If this seems like too much tedium……it is. Just bring your guitar to me and I’ll make them shine.

There are many cleaning and polishing products marketed especially for guitars and most all of them are just fine. A little trade secret is that many, if not most of them are actually automotive products in a different package, perhaps with a different scent and priced way up there. What you choose is not the issue as much as how you use it.

Martin guitars from the 1970’s are somewhat controversial but easily available on the used guitar market, and often the prices are attractive. I see just-purchased examples come in regularly and I thought a little information about them would be helpful.

The 70’s were a very busy period for Martin; the folk boom and the late 60’s rock revolution spawned a bumper crop of customers, and the factory was building many more instruments than ever before in their history.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that when quantity goes up at an unprecedented rate, quality can suffer. Any manufacturing firm can be subject to these challenges and Martin was not immune. It is not unusual to see a small but significant percentage of these guitars cursed with substandard materials and a few cases of production line errors.

After handling and working on countless Martin instruments from this era, I’ve gotten a pretty good sense of what the trouble spots can be.

On any guitar 30+ years old, many routine problems come up. Loose braces, poor neck angles, cracks, etc. are straightforward repair and maintenance issues that can be dealt with.

There are other problems that may make a particular guitar from this era undesirable. The neck and the soundboard are the two most important components of a guitar and these are exactly the areas that can be trouble on a small percentage of Martins.

Neck problems were very rare on Martins until the late 60’s when someone got the great idea to replace the time tested steel “t-bar” neck reinforcement with a flimsy square section hollow tube. You have to wonder why this got past the drawing board but it did, and they stuck with it until the late 80’s.

The problem with the “new” neck rod did not affect all the guitars, but with the increased production, now and again the bottom of the barrel was dredged and this produced some very weak neck blanks which, in turn, produced very flexible necks. The neck reinforcement was not adequate to support the substandard necks, and weak tone along with excessive neck relief was the result.

Most of the necks from this period held up well but just enough were “noodle necks” to damage the company’s reputation for quality. This may have been the first widespread instance of Martin screwing up, and many players and techs got up in arms over it and concluded that all production from that era was flawed. Of course, that was not the case, but once that kind of news got around, there was no stopping it.

Soundboard quality was the second major issue to come up. Once again, increased production seemed to strain the stock and supply of quality spruce, and a depressing number of guitars had soundboards with poor grain orientation. So-called vertical grain produces the best soundboards. Take a look at the edge or the soundhole on your flattop, viewing from the bridge toward the end of the fretboard. The edge grain should run from 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock or very close. If you see a grain pattern leaning over to the side, it is less than ideal. If it leans WAY over, like 45 degrees or so, the strength of the board is compromised.

The weak boards exhibited problems such as excessive bellying behind the bridge and often significant dipping in front of the bridge. Sound quality usually suffered and many of these guitars exhibit boomy and indistinct bass tones with weak, tinny trebles. Not why people buy Martins.

To complicate the problem, sometimes a very weak neck met a very weak soundboard, so we ended up with significantly impeded tone production AND necks that had very pronounced relief or up bow. Terrific, eh?. Weak tone and impossible action.

One last nail in this coffin was the number of guitars that had the bridge saddle located about .100 short of where it should be.

If you own an instrument that exhibits any of these symptoms, all is not lost. Despite the less than ideal materials and workmanship, many of them sound fine. The beauty of Martins’ basic design (and why virtually everyone who builds flattops copies it no matter what they claim) is that it is a very reliable recipe for nice sound. It’s hard to build a really bad-sounding flattop.

The weak necks can be stiffened but usually at substantial cost. The faulty bridge location is a fairly simple fix. The weak soundboard……..well, you’re going to have to live with that one.

If you’re shopping for a Martin from this era, I’d have to say be very cautious and insist on an inspection/approval period. If you know a tech who is VERY EXPERIENCED with Martin guitars have him take a look at it.

My personal opinion?………I have to say that unless a particular instrument had markedly superior tone, I would take a pass on the entire decade, extending it even up to the eighties when Nazareth finally woke up and began to use their excellent adjustable truss rod. I’m speaking here as a hands-on tech and builder; bad design and execution annoys the hell out of me no matter how many other virtues may be exhibited. I’m funny that way.

In closing, lest you think I’m a Martin basher…..no, I’m just realistic about them. I remain very much a Martin fan, and I think they are building their best guitars right now. If I were in the market for a flattop, theirs is the line I’d consider first and what I’d compare every thing else to.

Finish repairs, refinishing, and finishes in general are high on the list of the most common inquiries a guitar tech deals with every week. The typical problems are dings, scratches, chips, dull spots, and cracks in the finish caused by structural damage. Less common (thankfully) are flaking and peeling finishes caused by flawed preparation and/or defective materials.

I’ve dealt with all of the above annoyances many times and I’m currently of the opinion that the most critical aspect of any finish work is the customers’ expectations. Obviously the technician needs a good understanding of the materials and techniques involved, but sometimes even a finish repair wizard (yes there are a few) will not be able to make a scratch or ding totally vanish.

When a customer brings in a finish repair job, just about the first thing I say is “You’ll probably always be able to see where the damage was.” I don’t say this to lower his expectations, but rather to establish a “reality” baseline.

When we are upset over a wound on our baby we’ll likely obsess a little and constantly be looking at the area that was damaged. Virtually no repair can stand that sort of scrutiny. Most of us do this. Last year my pristine (and obsessively polished) car suffered a minor collision……ARRRRRRGHHHHH!!!! It was well repaired by a good shop but guess what? I know where the damage was and I cannot help but examine that area umpteen times a month and sometimes I think I see the dent and scrape…….go figure.

So, what can you realistically expect when that gorgeous 335 or the near mint ‘55 J-50 encounters a blunt object? Let’s examine a few typical categories of finish damage.

Scratches are the most commonly encountered finish repair tasks. Here’s the good news: they can frequently be made to disappear if they are not so deep that the wood underneath is damaged. Nail marks, pick scratches, and minor abrasions, even really ugly ones are often repairable with careful buffing. Sometimes deep scratches will respond to careful wet sanding followed by buffing.

The worst scratches are found on the soundboards of acoustic guitars when overzealous playing leaves what we call a “zipper” where the pick skids across the grain, leaving dents in the wood under the finish. On light colored wood this is nearly impossible to eradicate. We can fill the finish damage but removing the dents in the wood can get very complicated, needing delicate local steaming and occasionally demanding a complete refinish on the soundboard. That this can get VERY expensive is obvious.

Dings and dents are generally in need of filling, leveling, and buffing. The technique known as “drop filling” is effective and when done properly can pretty well hide some nasty dings. A drop fill is just what it sounds like: a drop of appropriate finish material is flowed into the ding, allowed to cure, then carefully leveled with the surrounding area and buffed to match the rest of the finish. The main problem with drop fills is compatibility between the repair material and the original finish. Guitars finished with nitro cellulose lacquer respond well to a drop of nitro which usually melts into the original finish nicely. The downside of a nitro fill is the relatively long cure time before leveling and buffing.

Fills can also be done with cyanoacrylate (super glue) which eliminates the long cure times but introduces some other problems and often looks like a little island of alien material. It cures clear and hard but its transparency does not always equal the original finish. Super glue is often the only material to use with modern poly finishes such as those used by Taylor, Goodall, and others.

Chips can sometime be filled, but usually chips or peeling areas indicate an adhesion problem which might be the top layer of gloss finish or a problem with a sealer/primer. Most of time this sort of difficulty can be traced to a problem at the manufacturing stage and might be covered under a warranty if luck is with you. This kind of problem often needs a complete refinish and that is in the VERY, VERY EXPENSIVE category.

In a future post I’ll cover some aspects of original finishes and refinishes, pros and cons of nitro cellulose lacquer vs. modern polys and a few other finish topics that guitar geeks (you know who you are) love to argue about.

At least a couple of times each week the question comes up and it starts something like this:

“My buddy has a $4500 Custom Shop Strat and I have to say that my $700 Mexican made example plays just as nicely and sounds terrific. What am I missing?”

I own and play an Ensenada built ‘72 Thinline and cannot figure out one reason why this instrument is inferior to most of those high-priced vanity specials. Every week I meet more players who are seriously asking why any bolt neck solid body should cost more than $700 to maybe $1000 for a real fancy item.

These are really wonderful times for guitar players. They may not be so great for retailers and some guitar manufacturers but the plethora of very high quality but low cost gear from amps to mandolins, archtop guitars and everything in between is good news to any player who gets terminal sticker shock when he sees the price tag on a new ES 335.

Some terrific guitars, both acoustic and electric, are available in the $350 to $800 range these days. Not too many years ago the typical story on imports in this price range was ” pretty good workmanship but inferior pickups, tuners, jacks, pots, etc”. It’s getting harder to say that with any certainty in 2008.

I have been very impressed with a couple of lines in particular. The Guild acoustics from China and the Ibanez Artcore electrics made, where else, in China, exhibit very high standards of workmanship and nearly always come out of the box needing nothing more than a careful set up. How good are they? Well, I own a Hamer USA Newport Pro which is as close to perfect as any electric I’ve seen and side by side with an Artcore semi hollow it’s very hard to justify $2000+ compared to $350. Guitar snobs will find (or fabricate) reasons to complain about the pickups or the interior finishing or peghead logo but it’s getting hard to justify the prices asked for many well known brands and models.

I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression here. I admit to being a guitar snob. I love my Hamer Newport, I’m crazy about my Guild Bluesbird, I think a Collings 000 12 fret is worth every penny that crazed Texan asks for one. The flattop I’m building right now will be worth the $3400 I’ll get for it but if $350 or $500 or $800 are all the bucks you want to spend you can buy an ax that will get the job done, if your hands, head, and heart are in your music. Remember, a guitar is a tool to make music and like any other tool, the main component is the hand that guides it.

Trust your ears.

The last post closed with setting up the new drill press and go-bar deck (ok, I’m a tool geek, so what?) and both tools are a pleasure to work with. The next addition will be a serious heavy duty sander; more on that later.

The new Jack Straw 12 fret is well under way with blocks, sides, and kerfing done. The top has its rosette and will be run through the thickness sander before the bracing goes on.

Speaking of Jack Straw guitars, Dave Franco, who owns a deep body 12 fret I built called up the other day and he’s the latest in a long run of former customers who continue to find me and the new shop.

Bob Czarnowski came in with one of his Goodall guitars, Neil Daener left a sweet little 00-21 for a neck reset, Mike Hinostro’s 1890’s New York Martin is on the bench, John Gennaro came by with a Goodall and is pestering me about a new Jack Straw M-body, and Ray Morisaki came in to ask about a reset on his lovely 60’s 000-18.

Joshua Blatchley has been hanging around so much I’ve put him to work on his own 1930 2-17 Martin and today I got him started on doing a neck reset on the little mahogany marvel.

The last month has been mostly Martins with a sprinkling of Goodalls. Life is good.

Aside from the daily work load I continue to fine tune the shop. Every day I do at least one “infrastructure” addition whether it’s just hanging a tool in a better place or, tomorrow, installing the terrific new Jet air filter/recirculator unit.

After years of working in a place that was too funky for butchering chickens, I take daily pleasure in a “clean, well lit space.”

It’s been a month since I’ve posted anything because I’ve just been too busy fixing guitars. Thanks to all my new customers and special thanks to all my previous clients who have found their way into TGW, often without knowing that I’m the guy they knew at “the big store in Carlsbad”. Every day for the past few weeks someone comes in and says “so, here you are”. It’s great to get re-acquainted with the likes of Ron Franklin, Jerry McCann, Kirk O’Brien, Tom Stoltz, Mark Quint, Jim Arnegard, Joshua Blatchley, Rich Scott, King Thompson, and many others.

New developments in the workshop include a big pile of new tools and fixtures that will make life easier and more fun but the main event is a new guitar I’m building. Many of my previous customers remember my Jack Straw flattops; I built a bunch of them but have been on a long hiatus from building up until now. The new shop is so nice to work in that it encourages new projects and I’m very excited to start building again although I’ll limit it to no more than three or four instruments over the next year and a half.

The first “new” Jack Straw will be a straight forward traditional 12 fret 000 on which the client has requested a sunburst top. I’ve always wanted a 12 fret ‘burst so it will be a great project.

The second Jack Straw will be my interpretation of a Martin Norman Blake and this will probably be one that I’ll have to duplicate for myself. If you have played an NB you know how special the sound is when a 12 fret neck is combined with a 14 fret 000 body. I’ll use a similar formula but with a little surprise when it comes to the body.

That’s it for now, I need to get to TGW early today to set up the new drill press and starting building the go-bar deck!!!

It would be easy to write 100 pages or more about frets and fretwork. Dan Erlewine of Stewart-MacDonald has a terrific 125 page book on the subject. My intent here is to simply outline some everyday fret problems and solutions.

One of the most frequent inquiries from acoustic players concerns the fairly deep grooves that develop on the first three to five frets of the E and B strings. I’ve had customers who were convinced that this common fretwear problem required a complete fret job to the tune of $250 or more. Nope, those grooves can be really deep and really ugly before fretwork in necessary. I advise dressing or replacing these frets only when the tone is suffering. Buzzing and/or the dreaded “sitar” sound means you need to spend some money but don’t let anyone sell you a fret job if YOU don’t hear a problem. Trust your ears and your fingers.

Another common problem, especially in low humidity conditions are sharp protruding fret ends. I won’t go into the many aspects of how humidity affects instruments in this post but the sharp fret end problem is generally a simple fix with a modest price tag.

Frets that are lifting out of their slots are frequently encountered on older instruments that have been refretted a couple of times. These can be problematic but very careful use of super glue can secure them if the slots aren’t too sloppy. Often a gentle tap with a fretting hammer will do the trick but super glue is generally needed. Don ‘t try this on your own without a lot of practice as super glue is very thin and will go EVERYWHERE making a world class mess.

Frets that are corroded and discolored are ugly and they feel just plain terrible. Cleaning and polishing will solve this problem and should be part of any full setup or detail cleaning.

These are some of the simple-to-deal-with fret problems that can be rectified without the expense of a full refret. There are plenty of reasons to have a full fret job performed but don’t assume you have to drop the $250 or more for a quality refret if you have some (or all) of the symptoms I’ve mentioned. If a guitar tech recommends a full refret don’t be afraid to question that recommendation or to ask if there may be an interim solution. If the answers you get don’t seem to make sense it may be prudent to get another opinion.

In a future post I’ll go into more detail on when and why to refret and how to make sure you get what you want.

Wow, TGW was famous for 15 minutes (or less) on “Fox In The Morning”.

Fox reporter Ruben Galvan spent a couple of hours with us this morning doing several live spots for the morning newscast.  Click here to watch a short video.

Kat and I have always enjoyed the energy and enthusiasm Ruben brings to his Fox 6 reporting so it was really fun to have him at Tecolote Guitar Works this morning. The segments feature a nice look at the art gallery and Kat helped Ruben begin a mosaic project on one of the little guitars used in our Altered Guitars exhibit. Later Ruben and his camera operator, Rolando, found their way back to the workshop and had a peek at a couple of jobs on the benches.

Several good friends and customers of TGW were on hand to add to the festivities; thanks to artist Cecilia Linayao, Molly Kirby,  Adam Gimbel, guitarists Joshua Blatchley, Joe Selveen (aka Funky Rashid), and James Spring, and last but not least, Ruben Galvan and the Fox 6 crew.

There is a lot of hot air expended on various internet forums on this subject. I’ve expended my own share so first I’m going to cover what I think is the most important thing about these two critical components; the material, whether it’s bone, micarta, Tusq, ivory, or fossilized dinosaur tooth, is not nearly as important as the proper shape, fit, and in the case of the nut, slotting.

You can spend a hundred bucks on a fossil ivory nut and saddle blank set and if they are not properly made, the results will be inferior to the O.E.M. fitment. The labor charge by a good luthier can easily be $150 or more to make the two parts. Before you spend all that dough make sure you’re well informed about the subject. Many players I know who have dropped the dollars on this sort of job, often against my advice, have been somewhat disappointed by the results vs. the money spent.

Many players assume that replacing the composite (that’s an elitist term for plastic of some variety) saddle and nut with bone or ivory will give better tone. There are many suppliers of these materials who claim great improvements will be yours if only you buy THEIR stuff. True or false?

There are some aspects of tone that can be slightly adjusted by a material change. Let’s say you have a small bodied Martin 15 or 17 that is just a little too bright; a fairly soft micarta saddle may take the edge off. If you play a guitar with a Koa soundboard a Tusq composite saddle or some very dense, hard bone might give you a little more snap. Note I say “may” and “might”. There are no guarantees that you, or your audience will notice a difference.

Changing the saddle material might make a noticeable difference. OK, how about changing the nut? The nut is one of the most important and least understood components on a guitar. It looks simple; just a piece of bone or plastic with some slots in it, right? Wrong, those slots must be the proper width, cut to a precise depth and a precise angle for good sound and intonation. As far as tonal change, remember that as soon as you fret a note the nut is removed from the equation. Unless you play a lot of open string notes there will be very little if any improvement in tone.

A poorly made nut will ruin the playability of your guitar so if the original nut seems to work fine don’t replace it. Yes, I’m telling you NOT to spend the money with me, or any repair tech, unless you understand that a good nut is expensive to make and may not be cost effective in terms of results.

Factory nuts are rarely perfect but a little time and effort can usually bring them up to snuff. Reworking the original nut is often the best way to go.

There are some good reasons to replace a nut: severe damage, improper “adjustments” by an inexperienced tech, and, once in a great while, a factory nut is just too messed over to save. Sometimes a player just wants a slightly wider or narrower string spacing to suit his playing style.

Next post might be a little “straight talk” about fretwork.

Of all the routine questions I field during a week, the hardest one to answer is “what’s the best pickup for my acoustic guitar”? It seems that every month there is a new “perfect, best sounding ever” pickup on the market. If it seems crazy, if the choices seem baffling, if the claims all sound too good to be true, sit down and pat yourself on the back because your B.S. detector is working fine.

After installing over a thousand pickups in acoustic guitars, I know only three things with any certainty. First, active, single source pickups are usually the best choice for 95% of my customers. Second, the pickup that sounds great in your friend’s Collings D1A may not work well in your identical instrument. Third, and what has given me much more grey hair than I deserve, 5% of my pickup installation customers will NEVER be happy with anything I or anyone else puts in their instrument.

Some of the things a player has to sort out when choosing a pickup are passive vs. active systems, under saddle vs. bridgeplate transducer, volume and equalization controls, and then there are the dual source systems. If it sounds confusing it is.

Active pickups usually have a preamp integral with the tailpin jack. The preamp is powered by a battery and about once a year the battery has to be changed. Passive units omit the preamp and battery and are often somewhat lower in price. If a player uses any signal processing a passive unit MIGHT be desirable, but for my customers I recommend active units.

The pickup systems I sell use one of two styles of transducer; an under saddle piezo unit or a bridgeplate mounted unit. Modern guitars with drop-in saddles can use either style. Vintage guitars or many reissue instruments, like a Martin OM 28V, use the old style glued in/scalloped saddle which is not a happy fit for the undersaddle unit; the bridgeplate mounted transducer is the choice for these instruments.

As far as on-board controls go if you can accept a huge plastic dashboard on the upper side of your instrument there are some effective units from Baggs and Fishman that have all the sliders and knobs a geek could want. I hate these things and I will charge lots of money to cut a hole in the side of your guitar for the control panel. These units offer lots of EQ control but for many players they offer “every sound but the right one”.

The dual source systems generally have a microphone as the secondary source which can be mixed in or out while a conventional pickup is the main source. It seems like a great idea and the mic can offer some variations in tonal color but fully half of my customers end up dialing the mic signal out because of feedback if the overall volume gets high. I will sell and install these systems but I think they are a waste of money for most players.

At this point, if I haven’t put you all to sleep, some may ask what I sell and install. The official TGW endorsement is bestowed on two units both from L.R. Baggs. The Element Active for the undersaddle style and the I-Beam Active for the bridgeplate style. Are these the perfect pickups? Nope, but they’re really good, and Baggs is based here in California and I’m a native and I think the locals do it best.

There are many really fine pickups for your flat top: Fishman, K&K, B-Band, and 7300 others. All of them claim to have the best sound. If you really must have one of these, I’ll order it and install it but my first recommendation remains L.R. Baggs.

Next topic……hmmmmm. Maybe frets, maybe nuts and saddles, maybe the Chargers.