Repairing Top Cracks

As time goes on, I'm sure you'll here many of my gripes about customer repairs. Almost all the repairs that I see are climate based damage, and was easily preventable. I think the three most common repairs I get back are Lifting Bridges, Sharp Fret Ends, and Top Cracks.

Top cracks are absolutely the worst. No one ever happy with top cracks and they always end up lose-lose. We lose because the customer thinks the guitar is faulty (and in turn will never buy one of our guitars again), the end-user loses because his guitar is damaged and will never look like new, and the guitar loses because its owner neglected it. Then you always get to hear from the customer how "He has 10 other guitars and none of them have cracked so it must be your fault"

If you've ever repaired a top crack then you know how frustrating they can be to repair, particularly with modern UV polyester finish (Which we use). I actually prefer to receive the guitar totally dried out with a big honkin wide open crack, rather than a guitar which has normalized and the crack closed up. When the crack is open wide its easy to shove glue in there and seal it, but when its closed it is so much harder.

When I first started repairing closed top cracks I tried all kinds of different tactics. I tried using Thin Crazy glue (CA), watered down carpenters glue, think epoxy. CA would hold the crack closed, but was too brittle and the crack would re-open easily during the next winter. Watered down yellow glue was impossible to get into the crack fully, you just couldn't get it thinned down enough. Whatever happened you always ended up with a weak join.

Well two weeks ago I phoned Dan Erlewine to talk to him about truss rod wrenches and he gave me the most brilliant idea I had heard in a while. It was like an "A-HA! Why didn't I think of that?!" moment. He suggested rubbing carpenters glue onto the crack, then placing a small suction cup on top and forcing it up and down like a pump. This forces glue into the crack with pressure, unlike just rubbing it with your finger. You just use a small 1" diameter cup. Something like you hand your Christmas lights with. So simple a monkey can do it.

Uni-bits (aka step drills)

These little bits are just awsome. I cant believe how often I use these things. We started using them about 3 years ago to drill 1/2" end pin jack holes in the guitar. They drill a perfect hole without tearing out the paint and destroyting the tail block. I believe they are meant for sheet metal but boy does it make short work of wood and plastic. They make them in several sizes, but the 1/2" one sold at sears works frickin amazing.

PAF Mystique.

One of the things that has really peaked my interest over the last year is the original PAF pickups. I think one of the things that I find so fascinating is discerning whether or not they really are "All That"... I often wonder if their reputation is earned or if its hearsay - i.e. "Others say this pickup is amazing, so it must be the case". Every pickup maker out there makes a pickup in the PAF style, but in my belief they are copying a "version" of the PAF.

I don't think that there is a specific "PAF" sound .. other than "Clear & Bright", so any take on a PAF is really just a shot in the dark and one persons interpretation.


The truth is that the real PAF's are sloppy in their construction, and quite random in tone - Particularly the early ones. The bobbins would shrink different from one set to the next, the metal "keeper" bars were hand made, and the number of turns on each bobbin was totally random. Most people who wind pickups today wind coils in one main format: Bridge pickup is hotter than the neck pickup, and if the maker offsets the two coils they usually put more turns on the screw coil. The original PAF's had the bobbins wound until "the bobbins were full". This meant that they didn't wind specific coils for specific pickups. It is in fact quite common to see old LP's with strong necks rather than bridges, and stronger slug coils as well. Also, depending on the tension of the wire the bobbin would fill differently.. More tension meant a higher ohm rating when the bobbin was filled because the wire stretched.

I've read that many people believe that there are many good PAF's out there, but also many not so good ones. I find this perfectly believable because of all the variances in them. One of the biggest variations in the pickup is the magnet. In a magnetic pickup, nothing can immediately change the tone of a pickup more than the magnet. In the late 1950's gibson was a very practical company, they were not shopping for the best, they were shopping for the cheapest. They bought magnets from multiple companies, and often bought reject magnets. I've personally seen pictures from the heritage factory of pallets of old magnets - the boxes came from several vender's and were all different kinds of magnets. Alnico 2 from one magnet maker doesn't sound the same as Alnico 2 from another maker.

Today most pickup makers who make a PAF style pickup have a magnet they like: Seymour Duncan uses Alnico 2 in the 59's and Seth Lovers, Jason Lollar uses Alnico 5's in the imperials, Lindy Fralin uses Alnico 4. The list goes on and on. So which one is correct? Who makes the closest PAF pickup?

The answer is they all do.

A Visitor

Well this was a nice little surprise today. One my girls was about to pickup a frame to begin sanding the kerfing when she spotted this little guy. She just about pooped herself! You sure get some wierd things in SoCal. I still maintain that the worst are the potatoe bugs, with the stink beetles being second worst.

Another day at the shop

This is going to be a brutal day.

The economy has us pretty short handed so it's multitasking time today. My Goals today are to tackle the 175 E-mails to answer in the customer service inbox, wind 40 humbucker coils, and assess 20 customer repairs. From the looks of the repairs so far it looks like its going to be a difficult batch. Most of them are cracked tops and backs - Dehydration. Which means im going to have a bunch of angry customers think thier guitar is somehow faulty, when in reality they didnt maintain thier guitar properly and it dried out and cracked. Fun.

Well here I go

This should be fun!

The first post of my new blog. I'm a guitar maker in southern california who builds both electrics and acoustics. For the last 20 years I have been eating, breathing, and sleeping guitars. I've seen alot of interesting things over the years and alot has happened to our industry. I want this blog to be a sort of recorded history of guitar building and the guitar market. I intend to use the blog to act as a diary of sorts, but to occasionally cover broad topics. I'll use it to vent frustrations, show cool new tricks, and sometimes just post random items that I find interesting.

In a small family business, you have to learn to operate in Chaos. You're both the janitor and the cook. My father started the buisness 40+ years ago, and it will someday pass to myself and my siblings, and down the road I will pass it to my children.