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Guitar Shop 101

DIY: Easy 4-Step Guitar Setup Guide
DIY: Easy 4-Step Guitar Setup - Adjusting Neck, Setting String Action, Filing Nut Slots & Intonation

Nashville luthier and repair tech Dave Johnson from Scale Model Guitars leads you through a simple process to improve your guitar's playability by showing the steps to execute a neck adjustment, dial in your string action at the bridge, improve your nut slots, and lock down stable intonation.

Steve Albini in the control room at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago.

Photo by Kevin Tiongson

Words of wisdom from the legendary engineer, proprietor of Chicago’s Electrical Audio, World Series of Poker champion, and, in the band Shellac, the compass for brutal guitar aesthetics.

“All day every day, we’re grinding it out,” says engineer Steve Albini of his team at Electrical Audio, the Chicago studio he built and has run since 1997. “We’re constantly in session, constantly under fire.”

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It’s not for everyone, but locking down a Strat trem can resolve many tuning issues.

Having endured for more than half a century—and still going strong—the venerable Stratocaster has delivered great tone to generations of guitarists. One of the instrument's strengths is how easily it can be adjusted to suit different playing techniques and musical styles.

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This handy tool can be a guitarist’s best friend.

A digital multimeter (Photo 1) is the perfect tool for testing many components on a guitar or bass. We use them in the shop for testing pickups, output jacks, switches, and batteries, and you can also use them for testing cables and wiring harnesses. Best of all, you don’t need to spend a fortune to get a good multimeter. I still use the one I bought at Radio Shack 23 years ago, and such luthier supply companies as Allparts and Stewart-MacDonald have excellent multimeters designed for working on a guitar, priced from $25 to $35.

Let’s explore five ways to use a multimeter:

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Put some shimmer and spank into your dual-humbucker guitar with this alternative wiring scheme.

Recently a client brought in a 1995 Fender Strat and asked me to replace its two humbucking pickups (Photo 1). The original pickups had been upgraded years ago with a set of Seymour Duncans—a JB in the bridge position and a Jazz in the neck slot. These are excellent pickups and typically sound great in most guitars, but my client said they were too dark for the type of music he plays.

It was tempting to sell him a new set of pickups, but instead I recommended we rewire the pickups in parallel (more on this in a moment) to see if that would provide the brighter tone he was looking for. Because both pickups have a 4-conductor harness, I knew we could pull this off using the existing 3-way blade switch and without adding any extra switches to this guitar—an important consideration for the owner.

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