Guitar

OK, I know it’s not a fair contest.
The Yamaha FG200 is from another millennium, when budget guitars were made from plywood (sorry, laminated tonewoods ) and the Freshman is made of solid woods throughout, 21st century and designed to…

Gulp! I’ve bought a new guitar…
As if things weren’t confusing enough already, with all this technology updating faster than my learning processes can cope with, I finally decided that my 30 year old plywood Yamaha FG200 just didn’t cut…

With a replacement bridge in place, all is well with the world. I have a Wilkinson ‘vintage’ bridge with 2 1/8 inch string spacing and 2 3/16 inch spacing screws and that seems to work very nicely thank you. It…

I’ve always delighted in the fact that Leo Fender was a radio repairman and not a luthier, and that the Gibson versus Fender debate could also be seen as an argument over traditional luthier skills versus a funky engineer’s inventions.…

Yup. I got around to it.
I threatened in the last post to supply some audio files which would help to illustrate the process of building the James Bisset 50th Anniversary Strat. And hey Ma! I done it!
I’ve also…

I’ve been looking through my web stats recently, and noticed some interesting terms used in the search queries which result in people visiting my site. “Sir James Bisset”? “Fiddling Electricity Meter”? Actually, I think I need to research that one…

I restrung the James Bisset Fiftieth Anniversary Edition tonight and it’s working a treat. It’s still not particularly loud, but it’s clean and clear and sweet. Now all it needs is some serious breaking in.
I’ve made a pdf of…

Well, having procrastinated for weeks over the guitar re-wiring, I managed to get it done this evening.
It was actually much simpler than I thought, and I think I’ve learned a useful lesson about soldering – just start from scratch…

Well, the nuts and files finally arrived and I’ve strung the James Bisset 50th Anniversary guitar, opened up the current nut with the files to suit my strings and played it for a while. I’m afraid it makes the old…

Yes, the headstock is finally finished. The sanding and polishing was completed tonight, the guitar has been re-assembled and I fully expect the nuts and files to arrive tomorrow.
Let’s just hope it sounds as good as it looks.…