We are extremely stoked to be doing some custom guitars for Fernandes!  It is an honor to do work for them and their endorsers. 

Our first project for them was a left handed V Hawk for Ryan from Municipal Waste.  His custom specs included one bridge humbucker (Duncan JB) with a single killswitch as it’s only control, leaving an extremely simple electronics layout, with a Kahler locking tremolo (far superior to Floyd-style bridges if you ask us), Gotoh tuners, and a custom paint combo.  

Here are some photos, along with a video of Ryan playing the guitar live this past week.

After a few setbacks, we are finally done with this heavy metal monster! Absolutely the best build we’ve done up until now. You can check out photos of the whole process at our facebook page.

Here’s something you don’t see every day. Gary brought in this 12 string electric by Fullerton (is there a Fullerton, Taiwan?), that just wouldn’t intonate correctly. We tried to give it a basic setup, and even with the saddles maxed out everything was coming up sharp. After measuring the guitar’s scale length, it was clear that this bridge was installed about 1/8″ too far forward on the guitar. Gary didn’t want to trash this guitar, so we decided to “relocate” the bridge for him.

Since a tune-o-matic has two big posts mounted into the guitar, this would be no easy task. First we have to plug the old holes with dowel.

Then, we have to locate the guitar’s center line so everything lines up correctly, and then find our corrected point of intonation to know exactly where to drill holes for the new bridge location.

Then, after touching up the old holes with paint to try and make them as invisible as possible, the moment of truth…..

After a basic setup, the guitar now stays in tune and plays “Stairway” well enough to bring a tear to any Guitar Center employee’s eye. And thus, we all lived happily ever after. The end.

People are often curious to know what exactly goes into a refretting, and when it is time to have it done, as opposed to the much simpler fret dressing. Well, we’re going to show you!

This is a 2004 American Fender Tele. The owner of this guitar plays professionally on a cruise ship, so this guitar has been played A LOT in the past seven years. Notice these huge divits in the frets. A simple fret leveling and recrown (aka fret dressing) wouldn’t leave much fret to play on, and with these divits, there is simply no way to have accurate intonation or to avoid fret buzz, not to mention all the discomfort that comes with playing on frets that feel like cheese graters.

The short version is this. We remove the old frets, re-redius the fingerboard taking the polyurethane finish and vintage yellow stain with it. This is to rejuvenate the fingerboard after you’ve been digging into it for who knows how long, and to make sure the surface is nice and flat before putting in the new frets.

We then re-stain the wood and re-finish it, making it smooth and shiny and all new-like before putting in the new frets. Once the new frets are in, we level, crown, and polish those suckers up.

At the end of the day, you go home with what feels like a brand new instrument, for only $300!

Check out this cool piece on us (me), courtesy of www.iamlosangeles.com!

Strings of Success from I Am Los Angeles on Vimeo.

We’re back from vacation, so hit us up!

Thank you to everyone who took advantage of the free setup special in April. It was great to meet all kinds of new people and work on lots of great guitars. I didn’t even have time to update this site, being so busy!

(seeing this in the morning makes us happy)

Leon’s guitar is coming along nicely as well. Here’s a photo of the pickguard being cut out: