The Haze Guitars domain has now moved to its new hosting provider with no interruption in availability.  Yay.

As per the previous post, I have now deleted the Haze Guitars page from Facebook.  Damn their errant ones and zeroes and ridiculous, extortionate policies.

You might have noticed that Haze Guitars has been on Facebook for a bit.

Well, no longer.

I am planning to delete the Haze Guitars Business Page because Facebook is buggy, poorly designed and effectively hobbles business owners who do not wish to create a personal Facebook account too.  I will delete the Haze Guitars business page in the next couple of days but wanted to post this first.

My reasons are as follows:

• Facebook has failed to properly or consistently import my own blog posts into Facebook Notes (including, ironically, the post mentioning that Haze Guitars was on Facebook).  This has been ongoing and repeating and, if the number of similar complaints in the support forums are any indication, is endemic and shows no signs of being resolved.
• In an attempt to work around this issue, I have attempted to install one of the 3rd party Facebook apps to allow RSS feeds be imported.  Facebook, however, will not allow me to browse applications, much less install one.  An attempt to browse Facebook’s application directory won’t even load the page – it simply displays a spinning, please-wait cursor until I get fed up and eventually close the page.  Sneaking around the back door to a particular application’s page doesn’t provide any method to install it.
• It almost goes without saying, the same goes for the FBML application which I wanted to install to create a landing page.
• Attempting to claim a Facebook username tells me that it is available and prompts me to claim it.  The process fails to complete, however, and hangs with a ‘Loading…’ overlay.  Waiting is pointless – it doesn’t load.
• Many settings cannot be changed unless the ’standalone’ business page is linked to a personal Facebook account.  I don’t have a personal Facebook account.  I had one but got rid of it in a similar, simmering fit of annoyance.  I don’t want a personal Facebook account and resent being forced to have one in order to properly manage a business page.
• The iPhone Facebook application will not allow me to login and, in what is becoming a familiar theme, hangs on the login screen.  Again, I have found mentions of many users suffering this problem as far back as 2008.
• It’s worth mentioning that I’m no luddite.  This isn’t a some sort of computer-literacy issue.  Also, these issues are cross-browser (Safari, Firefox, Opera) and persistent. And, if you’re thinking I have some sort of grudge against Facebook, that’s probably a fair observation – I believe it’s warranted though.

As I mentioned, I don’t have a personal Facebook account but felt that having a business page on Facebook was a shrewd thing to do.  Whether or not that is the case, the fact remains that life is too short and contains enough stress without having to try work around Facebook’s many limitations and annoyances.

If you’re interested, I’d really like it if you could check out the other spots I hang out online.

You can subscribe to the Haze Guitars news feed (effectively what you’re reading now) or simply pop back here from time to time.

You can follow Haze Guitars on Twitter (because stuff works more often there)

20th August, 2010.

Over the next day or two, some clever internet people with giant, Tefal foreheads will be transferring the Haze Guitars domain to another provider.  This may lead to a short interruption in site availability as the back-end stuff works itself out.

If you pop by in the next few days to find any site problems, please try again later on.  If there are any issues they should be short-lived.

Sorry if this causes you any hassle.

UPDATE: Haze Guitars is no longer on Facebook.  I had quite a few issues – technical and ethical with how Facebook does business and treats its users and have decided to delete my account.  I’ve expanded on these issues here but, the upshot is that I have deleted the Haze Guitars Facebook page.  I’m really sorry if you had popped by or followed us there.

As an alternative, I can say that being the up-to-the-minute instrument repair business we are, Haze Guitars is fully paid-up there over on Twitter (where things work more often).

It took me a little while as, on the first attempt, Facebook refused to properly import the news feed from this site.  Truth be told, I’m not 100% certain it did it properly the second time around but it’s close enough that I can drink tea and pretend to myself that everything’s fine.

I can now announce, however, that Haze Guitars is the proud owner of a Facebook business page.  Well, not proud exactly.  Somewhere between proud and ashamed.  Closer to the latter, though.

So then, if you use Facebook (in any fashion, embarrassedly or happily – who am I to judge?), skip on over the the Haze Guitars page and follow us, become a fan, like us, or whatever the hell you kids do these days.

You’ll often hear musos talking about a neck reset (or neck set) on acoustic guitars. As this is something that tends to be required on pretty much every steel string acoustic eventually, it’s worth understanding why it happens and what’s involved in a neck reset.

The top of an acoustic guitar is under a lot of stress. String tension exerts quite a pull on it. Over the years, the wood of the guitar top succumbs to this tension and begins to belly a little at the bridge. This effectively raises the bridge and, with it, the action or string height along the neck. As the guitar ages, it becomes harder to play.

The solution is usually a neck reset. The neck is removed and some wood is removed from the heel to modify the angle at which the neck joins the body. This basically alters the geometry of the neck/guitar to compensate for the higher bridge. It’s a pretty big job but one that most acoustic guitars will need at some stage in their life (when depends on a lot of factors) if you own them long enough.

If you think your guitar’s action has been (very slowly) increasing over a number of years, you might have a candidate.

I’ve written an article for Guitarless outlining the reasons and the neck reset process so feel free to take a look – it goes into a bit more detail.

Incidentally, if you’re considering buying a used or vintage acoustic, it’s worth asking if it’s ever had a neck set (which is a good thing if it’s been well executed) and/or checking if the guitar needs it. If it does, you should factor that into your bargaining process as it can be a relatively expensive job.

One of the great things about repairing guitars is that, every so often, you get an absolute beauty through the workshop.  This was one of those guitars.  It’s a pre-war Martin and it’s just fantastic. It’s had a few bumps and scrapes over the 75-odd years of its life but it plays beautifully and sounds amazing.  This guitar has the blues seeped all they way through its mahogany and rosewood and when you play, it seeps back out again.  Brilliant.

This is one of the, occasional, instruments that I hate giving back to the owner after it’s been repaired.

Anyway the issue with this was a broken bridge.  The wood in front of the saddle had snapped off (and not for the first time as evidenced by signs of a previous repair).  After discussing the options, the owner settled on having a replacement bridge custom-carved for his baby.

In a three-part article over at the Guitarless blog, I step through the process from making this decision with the owner to removing the damaged bridge, carving a new one and replacing it.

Have a look here.  Hope you like it.

Some of you guys may already know that, from time to time, I write articles on guitar repair and on some of the various ins and outs of guitar hardware.

These articles are written as time allows and, sometimes, as interesting jobs come through my workshop.  Recent examples are published on the Guitarless blog. Guitarless is a guitar news site and, if you’re interested in guitars and basses, you could do worse than pop over and have a read.

As new articles get published over there, I’ll update here too so you can take a ganders.  Lots of these are ‘how-to’ features with instructions for working on your own guitar.  Some of them, however, are a bit more advanced than most people will be comfortable trying at home – these ones are mainly intended for your interest only.  If you’re reading this though, odds are you’re as much of a guitar geek as me and hopefully you’ll find something in them that will appeal.

Who knew this internet lark would catch on?

In the spirit of the times, I’ve given up kicking and screaming and have decided to embrace this crazy technology thing.

I’m now hanging with the cool kids on Twitter.  You can follow the occasional (and they probably will be occasional – I’m a very, very busy man) tweets by popping over there or by searching for Haze Guitars or @hazeguitars on Twitter.

I’ll tweet from time to time with (hopefully) interesting bits of news or advice.  If you’re a Twitter-type person, it’d be great if you could come over and follow me as I’m deeply needy and require constant validation from internet strangers to feel good about myself.  I hope to do the same thing with Facebook soon – keep an eye on this news stream if you’re a Facebooker who hates Twitterers in the same way the Mods hated the Rockers years ago.