Welcome to Ken's Guitar Workshop! I build and repairs guitars, been playing for over 40 years, been in bands, did the whole acoustic duo thing in the '90's. Played all over New England, but threw in the towel some 20+ years ago after I decided to go clean and sober, settle down and start a family. So now I focus on building the types guitars I wished I could've found when was playing out. I've built a few copies and now I'm focusing on building original design, and custom one off guitars. Thanks for stopping in.
Those welder tips are totally superior to expensive nut files for the low E to D strings. It takes a little longer but all the nut files including expensive ones do not have nicely rounded burrs but the cleaners do. Some files are flat like Hoscos which are crap but not cheap. These nut files take top prize for scam cost luthier tools. I'm surprised Hoscos stuff is so bad considering its Japan made. Gotoh guitar parts made in Japan are all excellent.
i have the opposite problem, my high E string is flat at the 12 fret, but in tune open. if i keep unscrewing the screw it will come out. its a fender strat.. and tips?
Now you made me want to remove the neck and the pegs and see if I get rattle from in there. Nah, not the pegs. I'll put chewing gum 😅 But I have an issue... My dots are not at the center 🤦🏻
I'm gonna be honest when you first pulled out that half pencil I thought, "this guy's fucking dumb, what the hell" but then you kept going and now I feel like the dumb one. That is a genius way to slot a nut. Thank you very much.
I purchased a set of nut files from Pit Bull Guitars, back when I bought a guitar kit from them. Only today watching this video I learnt that the 'nut files' are a set of torch tip files just like the ones you have, even down to the blue casing. To be honest I found them pretty useless for deepening the notches in the nut, and are only good for rounding / cleaning the notch after taking to it with a tiny hacksaw. Yep, a hacksaw. ( _Edit_ : I removed the hacksaw blade from the handle and filed by holding the blade directly between my thumb and index finger, otherwise the handle would have hit the headstock) With the finer unwound strings, I didn't even need to smooth the notches out at all. The end result is perfectly fine, with care.
Figured that out for the fist nut I made. No brainer. You can flatten a regilar pencil athough I purchased a carpenter pencil. String spacing for me is hard. If you have the old nut mark with it also.
Watched this last night and went and bought the torch tip cleaners today. I can't believe how few times it took to fix the nut. The G was hanging up horrible, and it's good to go now. Inflation has hit hard though, had to pay almost $11 at the parts store but it was money well spent. Thank you for the heads up!
HELP!!!!! Fender Bi-flex truss rattle tips PLEASE!!! My 30 yr old AM Standard is my first wife, Am Stan's. for some reason have a bad rap. I've played many over the years and I LOVE HER!!! 30 years I never had a problem until she got sick. :(
For builders: Most two-way truss rods available on the open market are trash. There should be no gap between the flat bar and the rotating threaded rod when the rod is in neutral, yet there it is. So even if the flat bar is flush with the top of the slot (and will touch the underside of the fretboard when that gets glued on), the treaded rod portion will still smack the underside of the flatbar if you whack the back of the neck. The gap between the two portions of the truss rod needs to filled up so that when in neutral, the rod won't ever rattle. It's very risky to introduce foreign material into that system. I'm thinking of just making my own rods at this point, to eliminate the design faults inherent in the mass market ones.
Fail. When drawing the line, you need to keep the pencil parallel to the centreline of the neck. The line you drew is too high on the bass side because you didnt keep parallel
You didn't really make a mistake at all 3 degrees is for guitars with the tunomatic or a trapeze style tail piece and tunomatic but for a wraparound yes it has to be less to be honest beautiful fucking work
I have an Epiphone Rumblekat bass, semi-hollow body and I’d like to pull and glue back in all the time inserts and change the 3-point bridge with a Hipshot. This will work? (Man, I hope you monitor your channel! But this is an OLD clip!)
I have a classical guitar which are more delicate and I'm worried that so much heat could cause issues. Since I would like to completely replace the fretboard with a new one, would it be safer to plane or sand off the fretboard so that no heat is involved ?
I bought these Hiroshima Uo-Chikyu files some years ago and really regretted it. They have worn out very fast, and I don't use them professionally, after 2-3 guitars I had severe problems. They are not suited for metal (which they should). The Ibanez files are much better, also diamond coated ones.
If you just back out the screw enough to lift the old saddle, drop in new saddle, push the screw back home then you don't have to deal with the spring, at all. I was hoping you would talk about the notching, too...
If you only needed to fill in a very small gap in the binding (from filing frets) what could you use if you didn't have binding? Do they sell plastic fill (similar to wood fill)? I'm talking like pinhead type areas that may need filling (white binding color). Thank you
This is what I need to fix. Most suggest to grind binding into a dust then sealing with superglue, but the space is so tiny. Let me know if you find solution.
Thank you for the brilliant tip! DIY at its best. Also very important advice towards the end, the screw method is known for cracking SG type guitars in the back, and you’re spot on, if that screw gets stuck that would be even more s*#t to worry about! Cheers mate! ❤🎸
I have an 11 year old gibson lpj with the thinnest nitro finish imaginable that i was hoping to put a poly clear over just to keep the color from rubbing away. Any chance that between being rhin and over 10 years old, tje nitro wont loft under the poly?
