This was an interesting project for the month. In comes a set-neck style guitar, the problem being a truss rod doing a bit of rattling. The guitar still played well, but the truss rod was at an almost relaxed position, with just enough room for minor adjustments but not enough to get a few good turns on the rod and quiet down the rattle.
So the task was figuring out how to fix the problem without an exhaustive amount of labor. The worst case scenario was basically a new neck, which would have been a huge undertaking – neck removal, making the replacement, fitting it to the guitar, repainting the instrument, as so on. We’re talking many hours and a massive repair bill, so we opted for a simplistic approach. I had run into this type of problem once before and in the process, devised a cool little trick that is friendly to the guitar, repairperson and the customer’s wallet – all with excellent results and no damage to the integrity of the instrument or its value. In this case, the guitar featured a standard Gibson-like truss rod. We noticed that a few turns on the truss rod made the noise completely disappear before the repair, but made the neck back bow to the point of being unplayable. As a result, we knew we didn’t need much to make it right.
Keeping with the GK metal cabinet theme, I planned to dig up some light gauge steel and have it bent to create the bottom and two sides. Being a budget project, I was calling in favors and willing to use remnant materials to build it. My buddy Scott scavenged up some ¼” aluminum diamond plate, so bending it became out of the question, but the cool factor skyrocketed, so we cut three pieces for the bottom and two sides. The front and rear baffles were made from MDF with pine braces which connected the front and rear.
We taped off the fretboard to keep any mess from getting on the guitar, then fired up the paraffin wax crock pot and popped out a ¼” pearl face dot by drilling it out with a 7/32” bit. The dot basically disintegrates and a little acetone can help soften any remaining glue. A light whisk, if needed, around the edge of the hole with a small Exacto blade to remove any final debris and we’re good to roll.
Once the dot was out, we drilled down through the fretboard until we entered the truss rod slot – using a 7/32” drill, this worked nicely to keep our soldering iron from resting on the edge of the ¼” dot hole and distorting our hole size. With the Exacto, we again cleaned up any fuzzy wood debris, so we could see the truss rod inside the just drilled hole. After all that drilling, it was time to fire up the soldering iron. You will want to stick that iron down into the hole, resting it at the bottom, on top of the truss rod and just wait awhile. You’ll feel the fretboard and the rear of the neck warm up noticeably when ready, which takes around 7 to 15 minutes. The idea is to heat up the truss rod so we can pour wax into the hole. The preheated truss rod will naturally draw the wax in, basically wicking itself into the slot and filling any voids to eliminate the rattle.
When ready, just pour a small bit of wax into the hole; you can watch it sieve into the slot quickly. You can always stick the iron back in and reheat, adding wax until you think it’s gone as far as it can. Depending on how bad the rattle is, you may have to perform this on one or more face dots until you get rid of it all.
We noticed immediately – before strings even got back on the instrument – that the rattle had disappeared without any pressure on the truss rod. The repair was completely invisible once we stuck a new face dot back into the fretboard, sanded and polished it back out. The end result was beautiful and only about 30 minutes of work. Another job well done! I hope this simple repair saves you and your customer some grief some day down the road.
Gene Baker
Any questions or comments visit
www.finetunedinstruments.com
www.meangene.org
email me at b3gene@verizon.net
Fine Tuned Instruments LLC, home of his “b3” instruments.
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Peterson StroboStomp Mini Pedal Tuner
| The StroboStomp Mini delivers the unmatched 0.1 cent tuning accuracy of all authentic Peterson Strobe Tuners in a mini pedal tuner format. We designed StroboStomp Mini around the most requested features from our customers: a mini form factor, and top mounted jacks. |
But by gosh, if delay—and its sister effect, reverb—haven’t always been perfect for the music I like to write and play. Which brings us to the Fishman EchoBack Mini Delay. The EchoBack, along with the standard delay controls of level, time, and repeats—as well as a tap tempo—has a toggle to alternate between analog, tape, and digital-delay voices.
I hooked up my Washburn Bella Tono Elegante to my Blues Junior to give the EchoBack a test run. We love a medium delay—my usual preference for delay settings is to have both level and repeats at 1 o’clock, and time at 11 o’clock. With the analog voice switched on, I heard some pillowy warmth in the processed signal, as well as a familiar degradation with each repeat—until their wake gave way to a gentle, distant, crinkly ticking. Staying on analog and adjusting delay time down to 8 o’clock and repeats to about 11:30, some cozy slapback enveloped my rendition of Johnny Marr’s part to “Back to the Old House,” conjuring up thoughts of Elvis trapped in a small chamber, but in a good way. It sounded indubitably authentic. The one drawback of analog delay for me, generally, is that its roundness can feel a bit under water at times.
Switching over to tape, that pillowy warmth evaporated, and in its place came a very clear replication of my tone—but with just a bit of the highs shaved off the top. With the settings at the medium-length mode listed above, I could see the empty, glass hall the pedal sent my sound bouncing down. I heard several pronounced pings of repeats before the signal fully faded out. On slapback settings (time at 8 o’clock, repeats at 11:30), rather than Elvis, I heard something more along the lines of a honky-tonk mic in a glass bottle. Still relatively crystalline, which actually was not my favorite. I like a bit more crinkle—so maybe analog is my bag....“That pillowy warmth evaporated, and in its place came a very clear, pristine replication of my tone—but with just a bit of the highs shaved off the top.”
Next up, digital. Here we have the brightest voice, and as expected, the most faithful repeats. They ping just a few times before shifting to a smooth, single undulating wave. When putting its slapback hat on, I found that the effect was a bit less alluring than I’d observed for the analog and tape voices. This is where the digital delay felt a little too sterile, with the cleanly preserved signal feeling a bit unnatural.
All in all, I dig the EchoBack for its replications of analog and tape voices, and ultimately, lean towards tape. While it’s nice having the digital delay there as an option, it feels a bit too clean when meddling with time of any given length. Nonetheless, this is surely a handy stomp for any acoustic player looking to venture into the land of live effects, or for those who are already there.
