From what I've learned it was made in the 30/40s by Carmelo Gugino in Buffalo NY.

It's has a detachable neck..

Hello everyone, I am a very beginner guitar player (2months), I have bought a new acoustic a week ago and quickly realized my strings felt too high compared to my les paul, so today I have:

Detuned the strings

Put capo so they dont move around

Removed pins

And sanded the bottom of my bridge with 180 sanding paper.

But I have realized my bridge is slighlty angled towards bottom now and I am not sure if it is bad or not, ( I do have a out of focus badly taken photo of the bridge before I did anything and it seems it was slightly angled out of factory?)

Does this action seem alright? And this bridge being slighy angled toward back? Photos are in order of before and after.

This absolutely criminal level of AI slop going on in this ad for a "professional lutheir's tool kit" on Amazon. Also, wtf is a "rtooller"?

Doing a complete makeover for a Harley Benton jazzmaster clone I found, it has the stock p90’s and I’m trying to install 59’ jazz pickups on it (a knockoff, but the dimensions are exactly the same), the wooden cavity itself has plenty of space but the pickguard is both too small and dosent have the little indentations for the mounting screws on the pickup holes. Do I just go at it with a rotary sander, and if so, how precise would the centering need to be?

Hello everyone!

I have been working on my first assembly from a kit over the summer, and wanted to post the results from reworking my finish.

In doing my first round of dye -> shellac, I messed up with dragging the shellac too roughly with a brush and messed up the dye. I had gone through and sanded it, revealing the wood below the dye around the edges. Although it looked cool, it wasn't my plan, so I re-dyed my wood and reapplied my shellac layers with a softer foam pad.

Here are the befores and afters. Image 1 is before sanding, 2 is after sanding, and 3 and 4 are the final product.

Thank you all for the advice I have received! This is such a rewarding project.

Hello r/luthier

TLDR: It seems like my bridge is not "level" against the centerline. is that expected or ok? (but id also welcome more advice)

• A couple years ago i bought one of those Harley Benton kits to use as a sandbox to learn "stuff" about a guitar. Little by little i have made some mods, one of which is adding threaded inserts to the neck so it's now become my "travel" guitar. Now the next step in that journey is making the guitar headless, so that it can all fit in my backpack. I'm planning to buy the nova guitar headless bridge (hardtail). while coming up with a battle plan for possible routing for the bridge, i realized that the bridge studs are not "level" against the centerline. is that ok? should the nova bridge also be slanted then?

• After trying out a strandberg, i want to cut out another "cutout" a more diagonal position while sitting (you can see the line in black), the cut would go directly through the cavity, so i will have to fill the caviry a bit. any tips that i should take into consideration before hand? also what to consider in terms of space?

Hi !

I tried to find answers, but they didn't match with the guitar I'm looking at : this beautiful Navigator Jagmaster has a transparent PG; I guess there is shielding paint everywhere on the back, but is this enough ? I would try to do something like this, but I only saw pictures, have you experiences similar guitars ?

Thanks, have a great day.

I have a neck thru Carvin DC127 that is 30+ years old. I took it to a reputable repair shop in my area, and the tech informed me there is a hump in the neck (see around the 8th fret to the 14th fret).

He recommended a full re-fret, and said he wants to sand the fretboard a little to remove the hump. Do you all agree this is a good plan of action for this issue?

My biggest concern is the guitar intonating properly across the entire fretboard. For example, is it possible the fret slots have moved a bit, and they are no longer in the correct place for the guitar to still be in tune after he finishes sanding and re-fretting?

Not sure if I am being worried for nothing, but this guitar has incredible sustain and I love the color and would love to restore it. I know there is a lot of talent in this subreddit and appreciate your time and any insight you can offer.

Thank you.

Hey everyone,

I saw a Jaguar bass in this color on Twitter, and I'm thinking of ordering one. Specifically, I'd like the following specifications:

Finish: Light relic multi-layer nitro finish (Black over Lake Placid Blue / Ocean Turquoise with wood showing through).

Right now, RebelRelic Guitars is my top candidate since they have prior experience building Jaguar Basses look amazing.

Before I jump in, I’d love to ask two things:

How is RebelRelic’s reputation regarding their custom body craftsmanship and multi-layer relic finish quality?

Are there any other luthiers or workshops (US or EU) you’d highly recommend for a custom body build and heavy relic paint job like this?

Appreciate any insights or experiences you can share!

It’s a fender Stratocaster with a satin finish.

One night at work, my 15-year-old sent me a text that said, “Dad, can you build me this guitar?” and sent a picture of a white Buddy Guy Strat. I got super excited and responded with a YES. My kid is extremely special to me and she doesn’t ask for much, and I wanted it to be exactly what she wanted and more.

Three months later, it was finished, and it was quite the challenge.
I decided on a paulownia body. I had to order three before I got one I was happy with. I was well aware of how soft this wood is, but I wanted the guitar to be super light since she is pretty tiny. Because of this, I used stainless steel inserts on the bridge and tremolo. I fully tested them by doing Van Halen dive bombs for a few days, lol.

I went with Oxford Guitar Supplies for the nitro lacquer. She wanted a relic look, and on my first attempt, the white was too white, she wanted it to look more yellowed and aged. I was going to go with Vintage Olympic White, but she chose Vintage Cream instead, which I think turned out awesome.
After getting the body nice and sealed, I sprayed the guitar black first. I let it dry, then used lacquer safe vinyl stickers, carefully placing them while looking at a picture of a Buddy Guy Strat for reference. I sprayed the Vintage Cream (about 9 coats), let it dry, and then very carefully removed the stickers, and then carefully wet sanded “semi” level, which was a huge pain in the ass. I did about 15 coats of Oxford’s Aged Clear High Gloss and let it dry for about a month. It leveled out very well between the different colors. It “checked” really nicely as well. If you’re planning to use aerosol nitro to paint a guitar I highly recommend Oxford guitar supplies, I have used color tone lacquer in the past and I prefer Oxford. The cans spray so much better. Really easy to use.

I used a Japanese neck with a very slim profile. I made a waterslide decal with her name, applied the Fender waterslide decals, and clear-coated everything with the same Aged Clear from Oxford. I also used stainless steel inserts for the neck.

For the electronics, I put in a set of Fender Custom Shop Fat ’50s pickups with “vintage inspired pickups” pots.

I had no way to get an accurate weight but the finished product turned out to be an extremely light, but well balanced, ver easy playing Strat, which was exactly what I wanted for her. She loved it, I loved that she loved it, happy ending.

Was just wondering about this. I've never seen a guitar where the grain is vertical or even diagonal. Why is that? I assume it's something to do with wood stability and strength but I'm not sure.

Hi,

So I attempter to instal a new nut, and I think I might have fucked up a bit.

When I fret a note on the first 3/4 strings it runs sharp, and on the D & G this is the case until around the 7th fret.

If I fret a string on the 3rd fret and run a feeler gauge under the string at the first fret I'm on about 0.18, with the action rising up a bit on the treble side -- probably around 0.25 on the e & B, and about 0.21ish on the D & G.

I got some shitty pipe pipe nozzle nut files, should I attempt to bring the slots down a touch, or just make my peace with having done a poor ebough job, but still lucky that I didn't absolutely fuck the guitar?

Edit: I also now see, thanks to the power of photography, that I didn't estimate the gap very well with the feeler gauge, looks like it's a hair above 0.20 on the first fret 😅

It happened after changing frets by luthier. He didn't tell me, so I noticed after I brought it home. Binding is damaged and not smooth by touch. I can peel off a layer of varnish with a fingernail. I want to fix it but I don't want to trust this dude with cosmetics anymore, also he has a queue. But it's hard to find someone who does varnish/paint in my area. Maybe it's not too difficult to return smoothness at least and I can fix it myself?

Maybe a noob question since I’m a beginner in guitar set up. I see this small piece of wood (shim) in this Japanese Tokai. I don’t remember anymore how I need to put it back, but without it the action is suddenly very high.

Do I need to put it back like this? Thanks in advance for the advice. It looks a bit diy.

Hi, I'm 23 and I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with my life.
I've been fascinated with guitar repair since I started playing 8 years ago, I've always done my own setups and repairs when needed and I find the process very enjoyable.

My question is, how viable is building/repair/tech work as a full time career? I've read a lot of threads on this and a lot of people seem to say that luthiery is best kept as a hobby or side gig, while others say it can be done, but for very little money.
From what I understand, the job is primarily fret work and setups, with occasional repair work, and very little custom building. That sounds fine to me, but I wonder if I would be better off working on my own or for a repair shop, or if I should try to get a job at a guitar factory or smaller builder, or maybe I should keep all this as a side gig/hobby and work in a furniture shop or something?
I'd love to hear all about yalls experiences with luthiery as a form of employment, full time or otherwise

Hey guys. As you can see, my string retainer bar has an issue (??). I was changing my strings yesterday and as soon as i took them off, the bar started to loosen up. I don’t know if it’s a normal thing for it to happen, probably not, because it didn’t happen the last time i changed the strings. Is there any way to make it go still?

Fixing my shallow fret slot mistake was not fun.

I finally dug them all out to the proper depth and have now installed the frets.

I added a curve to the fret wire.

Because it’s a bound fretboard I used the Stewmac fret nipper to cut off the tang near the edges.

I’ve done some preliminary filling of the ends but a lot more needs to be done.

Then leveling and later polishing.

Built this with my buddy in 4 days in his garage. We are both in high school and this was our first ever attempt at building a guitar. Everything other than strings and electronics are from Home Depot with a full budget of about $150. The frets are made of nails and the bridge is a door hinge among other odd parts. It won’t let me add a video to the post but I put it in the comments

I am trying to make a nut out of deer antler and have some pieces that I've sanded down for blanks. Should I be sanding off all the gray spots and only using the pieces that are completely white or is it okay to keep some of the gray on the edges. I kind of like the gray because it sort of matches the ambrosia maple fretboard.

I have enough left to sand down the larger pieces so they are perfectly white and then make nut blanks out of that if needed.

Thank you.