James IV Guitar

A no-load pot has several cool uses in guitar wiring. For one, it can replace a standard tone pot. Typical tone controls still have an effect, even when turned all the way up, but a no-load pot will essentially take the tone control out of the circuit, when turned up to 10. You can also use one as a blend pot to blend pickups into each other. You can buy a no-load pot, or you can make one out of a regular pot. Here's how I turned a standard CTS pot into a no-load pot to use as a blender. Tools you need: Tiny flathead screwdriver, or something similar Needle-nose pliers Xacto knife Steps: Start taking apart the pot by using the screwdriver to pry up the four tabs circled in red in the picture below. Then use the needle-nose pliers to bend them back. Don't bend them too far, or they might break - just bend them enough so that they're about straight. It should look something like this: Next, take the threaded shaft off. Then take off...

Just recently I had to fix a strat where the wood was badly cracked around the two mounting posts for the bridge. The wood was practically busted out, causing the posts to lean sharply forward. It was pretty bad structural damage, but it was actually fairly easy to fix. One set of the cracks with the post removed. (I forgot to take "before" pictures, so this is while I was working.) First, I drilled out the entire damaged area with a Forstner bit. Before drilling, I centered the bit on the hole by replacing the mounting post and lowering the drill bit down until the point was centered on the top of the post. Then I clamped the body to the drill press, removed the post, and drilled.   After that, I plugged the hole I had just drilled with a piece of a hardwood dowel rod. I glued it in very firmly with Titebond II wood glue and then left it clamped for 24 hours. I didn't drill out the second mounting post hole yet because the drill might have torn out the...

And now for a sometimes overlooked part of a good setup: pickup height. After you've set your guitar's action/string height, you need to set the height of the pickups too. If you haven't already set the action, take a look at my previous post here:  How to Set Up a Guitar Basics: Pt 2 - String Height Changes in the distance between the strings and pickup will affect its sound and possibly the guitar's playability. Adjusting their height is how to get the best performance and sound from your guitar's pickups. Like string height, you just need to find what works best for you, but there are some guidelines that I use. Keep in mind, however, the affects of pickup height are subtle; it isn't like turning a tone control. Yet that subtle difference can sometimes be the "lacking" in your tone that you can feel but can't put your finger on. Adjusting pickup height is done by turning the two screws at the ends of the pickup to move either side u...

So after you've adjusted your guitar's truss rod you can now set the action, or height of the strings. This is where you really get to customize the feel of your guitar. If you haven't already adjusted your truss rod, or checked to see if it needed adjusted, check out part one of this series here:  How to Set Up a Guitar Basics: Pt 1 - Truss Rod Adjustment The string height (distance between the strings and the frets) is adjusted at the bridge. On Fender style guitars, this is set by individually adjusting the height of each bridge saddle via the little set screws in it. Use an allen key to turn the screws, and try to keep the saddle level as you raise or lower it. On a Gibson style guitar, the string height is set by changing the height of the two mounting posts, which is done by either turning the posts with a screwdriver or turning the thumbwheels on the posts, depending on the type of bridge. Now you could just go and randomly start raising and l...

Just recently, I was working on a very cool 1980's Jackson (above). The pickups had been upgraded to Seymour Duncans, and I got to rewire it. The guitar had already been to two different places, but neither of them were able to figure out how to get the wiring to work because the 5-way superswitch (below) is different from others. (Note that the picture above is not the original wiring. It's one of the failed attempts.) Apparently, this switch was unique to 80's era Jackson guitars. They called it the JE-0005 5-Way Switch, and it was a big selling point that they advertised in their catalogs. Looking through a Jackson catalog from 1987 on their online archives, I found a picture of a guitar with a similar paint job and a section telling about the switch. You can see the catalog here:  http://support.jacksonguitars.com/catalogs/us/Jackson1987_catalog.pdf Neither of the places that worked on this particular guitar were able to find information...

Setting up your guitar is the number one - if not the only - change you can make to your guitar that will automatically make your playing better. Other modifications, such as changing the pickups, can make your guitar sound better, but a good setup will make your playing much easier and more effortless. A basic setup has four steps, which should be performed in order. I'm going to dedicate a separate post to each step. Adjust the truss rod (this post) Set the string height Set the pickup height Adjust the intonation Adjusting the truss rod : Contrary to what some people think, the truss rod is not something you turn to make the strings higher or lower. Rather, its purpose is to adjust the straightness of the guitar neck. The pull exerted by the strings bend the neck, as a general rule, in the same way that a bow and arrow bend when the bowstring is pulled. The truss rod controls how much relief (bend) the neck has. Turning it to the right will straighten the ne...