A sad H-575

[DetroitBlues]

On 10/28/2020 at 11:49 PM, rwinking said:

I also believe that the bridge pick up is unnecessary on any kind of jazz box.

Unless you're like me and play rock and blues on anything you play....

[tfb]

I'm not sure if I should start a new topic, but when I get the guitar back I'll have an opportunity to do two things which will be hard later (I don't like destringing guitars, especially with floating bridges...):

• clean the fretboard of finger grease;
• check to see if the pickup is an HRW or an unmodified Schaller.

Does anyone have recommendations for stuff to clean fretboards which is kind to them (I'd rather leave it greasy than damage it), and/or pictures of the underneath of an HRW pickup?

Thank you

[pressure]

F-1 oil. Just wipe the fretboard down with it and then buff with a clean cloth. Don't let it sit and soak in. I treat my fretboard to a F-1 oil wipe down everytime I change strings which is about once a year. My fretboards are mostly Ebony even my Telecaster.

[Steiner]

Or just use this:

Same stuff, much lower cost.

[barrymclark]

@brentrocks may have be able to give you some idea of what a repair like this can set you back plus what you might reasonably expect from it.

[rooster]

• clean the fretboard of finger grease;
• check to see if the pickup is an HRW or an unmodified Schaller.

To clean the fretboard of grease, zippo lighter fluid works very well, and doesn't harm the wood at all. Many people will call it "naptha", but that is what high quality lighter fluid is. Then, I use this stuff called "Fret Doctor" to oil the board. A couple drops is enough to do the whole board, let it sit for 10 minutes or so, and then buff it. It is actually "bore oil" used to restore Civil War era flutes made out of, you guessed it, rosewood. No greasy residue, a bottle will last about 20 years of heavy playing (you only want to do it once or twice a year), and will absolutely not harm the fretboard, but it will eventually darken it a tiny bit at a time.

As far as I know, the pickup can be identified as a Schaller rather easily, as one side of the mounting bracket will have 2 holes in it to allow the angle adjustment; I don't know of another pickup made this way. As to whether it is an HRW, if your toggle switch cap has a black dot on top of it, that signifies that Rendell (Rendall?) Wall rewound it.

Hope this helps.

rooster.

[bobmeyrick]

HRW pickups have a sticker on the bottom...

[tfb]

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions on fretboard care & picture of the back of an HRW pickup (no pickup selector on my single-pickup H-575, but my second H-150 does indeed have the black dot).

[Gitfiddler]

Ren said he made the unique HRW pickup selector by drilling a small hole in a regular switch tip; then painted the dot on it.

[MartyGrass]

I would pull the pickup out if you want to know.  The strings are out of the way already.  The HRW should have the sticker on it.  Usually there is scratching on the back also to let you know if it's a bridge or neck pickup.

The toggle switch tip is clever.  What Ren actually did is drill a small indentation on the top of the switch tip and put a side marker for a fretboard in it.  Then he sanded and buffed it flat.  If you got the tools it takes about 2-3 extra minutes.

I'm often fussy about minor cosmetic issues after a guitar injury.  But most of us have seen serious professional musicians with instruments that are beat to hell.  I just saw a string quartet when all instruments had dings, scratches and very obvious wear.  Didn't bother them at all.

 

 

[Gitfiddler]

Ah, that's right!  You are correct about the side marker dot, Marty.  Thanks for the clarification. 

A mind is a terrible thing to lose.

[bobmeyrick]

8 hours ago, MartyGrass said:

I just saw a string quartet when all instruments had dings, scratches and very obvious wear.  

A relic'd Strad clone?

[tfb]

25 minutes ago, bobmeyrick said:

A relic'd Strad clone?

Somewhere there are companies making road-worn classical instruments, aren't there?  If there are not now then there soon will be.  Rich amateurs will then be able to say, when people comment on their battered cello in the corner 'yes, of course, I toured with the LSO from 1983 to 1985.  Don't play much any more – the bank keeps me busy, don't you know – but I keep it for old time's sake.  It's not, I think, a Montagana – perhaps it was his workshop, and there are rumours ... I suppose I should get it insured ...'.

Come the revolution ...

PS just to be clear I own a road-worn guitar (although I feel bad about it).  Occasionally I pretend to be Jimmy Page to the cat.  Come the revolution I will certainly be up against the wall.  I'm poking fun mostly at me!

[tfb]

9 hours ago, MartyGrass said:

I would pull the pickup out if you want to know.  The strings are out of the way already.

I'll do that, if the papers in the case don't say.

This makes me think of a thing: when I get it back it's going to have had no strings on it for the best part of a month.  I generally avoid taking all the strings off guitars unless I have to, out of some kind of paranoia about keeping the thing under load all the time rather than releasing it all and then reloading it.

Is this just paranoia for a well-made recent guitar (obviously for something ancient with no truss-rod the story might be different), or should I be careful when restringing it & do it in stages?  I suspect it is just paranoia.  I'm probably going to have to muck around a bit to get the bridge in the right place anyway, unfortunately.  It's going to have 12-52s (wound 3rd, probably flatwound if I am brave enough to try really dark strings) on it which are I think the same strings it had previously (though the old ones were roundwound, I think the tension is the same).

Obviously there is also the issue of the repair, but I just mean the neck/guitar in general.

[ElNumero]

1 hour ago, tfb said:

I'll do that, if the papers in the case don't say.

This makes me think of a thing: when I get it back it's going to have had no strings on it for the best part of a month.  I generally avoid taking all the strings off guitars unless I have to, out of some kind of paranoia about keeping the thing under load all the time rather than releasing it all and then reloading it.

Is this just paranoia for a well-made recent guitar (obviously for something ancient with no truss-rod the story might be different), or should I be careful when restringing it & do it in stages?  I suspect it is just paranoia.  I'm probably going to have to muck around a bit to get the bridge in the right place anyway, unfortunately.  It's going to have 12-52s (wound 3rd, probably flatwound if I am brave enough to try really dark strings) on it which are I think the same strings it had previously (though the old ones were roundwound, I think the tension is the same).

Obviously there is also the issue of the repair, but I just mean the neck/guitar in general.

Too bad you are in the UK. Brentrocks (as Barry Clark mentioned) is very competent at those kind of repairs. He is a professional carpenter. 

[ElNumero]

On 11/14/2020 at 3:31 PM, Steiner said:

Or just use this:

Same stuff, much lower cost.

I think Gorilla Glue would be stronger to hold it Steiner

[tfb]

1 minute ago, ElNumero said:

Too bad you are in the UK. Brentrocks (as Barry Clark mentioned) is very competent at those kind of repairs. He is a professional carpenter

Yes, I suspect that there is more choice in the US.  However I'm very confident that the Brook people will do an excellent job: they came highly recommended and I went to meet them (just in time before it all became impossible again here) and they were just obviously good (and their workshop ... well, when things are better again I'm going to see if I can take some large-format pictures of it as it's a fantastic place).  Current state is that it's mended but they're redoing lacquer to hide the repair which will take a while.  Definitely will post an update here when it's back.

[Steiner]

1 hour ago, tfb said:

I'll do that, if the papers in the case don't say.

This makes me think of a thing: when I get it back it's going to have had no strings on it for the best part of a month.  I generally avoid taking all the strings off guitars unless I have to, out of some kind of paranoia about keeping the thing under load all the time rather than releasing it all and then reloading it.

Is this just paranoia for a well-made recent guitar (obviously for something ancient with no truss-rod the story might be different), or should I be careful when restringing it & do it in stages?  I suspect it is just paranoia.  I'm probably going to have to muck around a bit to get the bridge in the right place anyway, unfortunately.  It's going to have 12-52s (wound 3rd, probably flatwound if I am brave enough to try really dark strings) on it which are I think the same strings it had previously (though the old ones were roundwound, I think the tension is the same).

Obviously there is also the issue of the repair, but I just mean the neck/guitar in general.

The glued headstock will be stronger than before in about an hour.  Once left overnight, it will have set to full strength.

 

17 minutes ago, ElNumero said:

I think Gorilla Glue would be stronger to hold it Steiner

Personally, I'd use Titebond simply because I've never cleaned up a gorilla glue joint.  The MCT is a wood treatment for the fretboard.

[ElNumero]

15 minutes ago, Steiner said:

The glued headstock will be stronger than before in about an hour.  Once left overnight, it will have set to full strength.

 

Personally, I'd use Titebond simply because I've never cleaned up a gorilla glue joint.  The MCT is a wood treatment for the fretboard.

Yes sir, I would agree!

[tfb]

So, I am due to pick the guitar up later today (UK time): I will post pictures of it when it arrives.  I'm absurdly excited to finally be able to play it.

On my 175 I have always uses 12-52 round-wound strings, but I bought a set of 12-52 flat wounds to experiment with in April, which I haven't yet used (the normal strings are D'Addario EJ21, the flat wound are ECG25).  The intention was to try them on the 175 to get less finger noise and also to make the back pickup a little less bright as it's a pretty toppy guitar, but I'm now thinking about trying them on the H-575.

Question for people with more experience than me: given this guitar has a neck pickup only, and given I'm not a proper jazz player (I'd like to be but I'm nowhere near good enough), are these likely to be very dull sounding?  Obviously I can experiment, but I don't want to spoil my first impression of the guitar, and also the flat wound strings are brutally expensive, so if I end up changing them in a week I'll have wasted a lot of money.

Thanks for any advice.

[tfb]

So, it's back and my previous question about strings has been superseded as Andy strung it.

And the repair is just superb: from the front it is simply not possible to tell the neck was broken at all.  From the back, as the finish is slightly translucent, you can see – but not feel – the mark where the break was.  This was a bad enough break that the truss-rod cover was torn away from the headstock, destroying it.  Andy made a new one, which I didn't expect him to do and without charging any extra to do so.  He also polished away a weird mark on the back of the guitar, again without charging for that.

I can not recommend Brook highly enough: I was expecting them to do a good job but this is just superb: I don't think it would have been possible to do a better one.

And after all this time, it's just a lovely guitar: it does have an HRW (there is documentation in the case it turns out), and it just sounds really nice, and gratifyingly different than my 175 on the neck pickup.  It's strange to play a guitar which in some ways is so like the 175 but in others really is not – thinner for one thing, much nicer acoustically.  I keep reaching for the pickup selector at the moment!

I managed, just, to avoid looking too closely at the guitars in the Brook's workshop, but I can see at some point I will give in and get them to make a Taw (which runs a few hundred yards from our house) for me.

Thank you particularly to houndhome for recommending Brook, but also for everyone here for being so helpful.

After all the worrying about it, I've got a bargain, I think.

 

[Gitfiddler]

That really came out nice! 

Play it in good health.

[houndhome]

I'm so glad (and a little relieved that my suggestion of Simon and Andy worked out) that you are so pleased with the result.

The repair to my 1925 Martin 0-18K was also beautifully done.

The mistake when I went to Brook was to look in their woodstore.I thought about it overnight and went back the next morning

and ordered a 12 fret Lyn with Adirondack top and Ziricote back and sides,sunburst,extra abalone and torch headstock inlay,having

picked the actual pieces of wood to be used.I suppose the price today would be about £4500 but what a guitar.

With regard to strings on the H575 I prefer round wound to flat wound but its just a personal choice,and I normally use D'addarios.

[tfb]

21 minutes ago, houndhome said:

The mistake when I went to Brook was to look in their woodstore.

I have so far narrowly avoided this.  I am inevitably going to succumb at some point (but I have to sell some less-wanted/used guitars first as I'm now comfortably over my limit).

[TalismanRich]

That repair looks to be first rate!    Hopefully you'll get many, many years of enjoyment from it.