It’s here again: the Massive and Brilliant, Haze Guitars Super Setup Sale.

That means Haze-quality setups for stupid prices.

We’re talking any guitar for €25 (which includes fresh strings*) and any bass for €20 (strings extra if needed as some bassists only change strings twice in a lifetime).

This craziness applies to any instrument dropped off at my workshop between 2nd and 31st of January

Pretty great, eh?

So, I’ll be spending the month under a deluge of guitars. Every year I run this sale and spend all of January wondering if I’m a strange sort of masochist. Seriously, the effect is much like having someone spend the month beating me with a pillowcase full of stomp-boxes.

But I’m the selfless type with only your welfare in mind so I’ll make myself blind and mostly insane getting your guitars playing their best.

Guitar setup €25. Bass setup €20.

Frickin’ bargain or what?

*A Note on strings: D’addario on the electrics, Martin on the acoutics—if you need something else, I can use yours or source them and sort out any difference in cost.

The string tension on your acoustic guitar depends on a few factors. String gauge, scale-length and tuning all play a part but if you assume somewhere around 200 pounds of pressure, you’ll be in the ball-park. 

If you sat there with 200lbs on your shoulders for years, odds are you might begin to buckle a bit. Your acoustic guitar holds up better than you would but that tension can take its toll. 

If you have any steel-string acoustic guitar for long enough, chances are good it’ll need a neck reset at some point in its life. That string tension alters the geometry of the instrument and the most obvious way is that the action creeps up to a point were it’s uncomfortable or awkward to play. When a reset will be needed is anyone’s guess. Different guitars are, well, different. Could be five years, could be fifty. 

Most guitars have some additional height in the saddle to allow it be lowered, taking the action down with it. This buys some time but, eventually, the same thing can happen. It’s not unusual, on older guitars, to see a saddle that’s been lowered repeatedly and is little more than a sliver, barely above the bridge. 

Might be a good time for a reset, then. 

A reasonable rule of thumb is that, the plane of the frets should be at the same height as the top of the bridge (that’s the wooden bit and not the white saddle). Putting a longish straight-edge on the frets can show you what the story is, as in the photo above. As you can see, it contacts a few millimetres below the bridge-top. Sighting down the frets from the headstock can give you a good idea visually if you don’t have a long enough ruler. 

What happens in a neck reset?

Basically, we’re trying to re-adjust the geometry of the guitar and neck so that straight-edge in the photo gets raised enough to touch or clear the bridge. That means changing the angle at which the neck joins the body.

To do this, the neck has to be removed and some wood taken off part of the heel. 

Carefully.

A neck reset on a bolt-on acoustic

Ahh, a bolt-on neck…

Dubious arguments about tone aside, if your acoustic guitar has a bolt-on neck, it does make a neck reset a little easier. The first step, you see, is getting that neck off and the easier that is for me, the cheaper it is for you. Bolt-on necks mean less hassle trying to get glue-joints to release.  

The first image clearly shows the bolts in the neck block (we’re looking inside the acoustic guitar here). Straightforward. Excellent.

The second image is the inside of the ‘top’. The image is taken with a mirror lying inside the guitar. It’s always a good idea to get an idea what’s going on in here before starting major surgery, especially as bolt-on necked guitars from different manufacturers vary in how the handle things in this area. That block of wood glued to the extension and shoulder-brace, for instance, is worth some consideration. 

A little work to get that block to disengage and some work on the fingerboard extension is all that’s needed here. You can see the way neck and body fit together relatively clearly above. 

Something I wasn’t expecting was to encounter an epoxy-like material in the body mortice around the neck tenon. It was in the area around that white tape (marked with an X in the photo on the left). Because it wouldn’t adhere well to this tape, I’m guessing its job was simply to act as a sort of gap-filler to ensure help ensure a solid connection here. Whatever, I noted it for reassembly and cleaned up the residue. 

Incidentally, I noticed a hairline crack in the heel between the two sockets for the bolts. It was pretty small and probably unlikely to cause problems but I made it good before proceeding to work the wood in this area.

The reset itself is done by removing a ‘wedge’ shape of wood from the heel—more at the bottom, graduating to none at the top where it meets the fingerboard. Calculating the amount to remove can be done by a relatively simple formula but I tend to do that only to get in the ball-park and then finish by eye. 

The tape in the left photo gives me a line indicating the wood to be removed. There are a few ways to go about this but I like to bevel down to this line and then bring the sides to meet it. 

Like this. Wood is carefully removed from the sides of the heel now. Very carefully. It would be very easy to mess this up. I don’t want to remove any wood from that far end where the heel intersects the fingerboard. Doing that would actually move the neck closer to the bridge and muck up the intonation. What we want to do is to take out that wedge shape I mentioned earlier. When that’s gone, the neck joins the body at a slightly increased angle and this means better action.

Most of the work is done as shown in the left photo. When the bulk is gone, I’ll test fit to the body and I’ll remove the remainder of wood using sandpaper between body and neck as in the right image. This helps perfectly shape the heel-fit to the body. 

It’s important to check alignment often. As well as the set angle, I’m checking for side-to-side alignment to make sure I don’t take too much off one side of the heel. That would point the neck too much to one side or the other—not good. 

Once I’m happy with the fit and alignment, it’s time to reassemble. In this case, thanks to the construction of this guitar, it’s an easy job. Bolted back on and a little glue in the appropriate places—especially on that little block of wood we found earlier on the end of the neck—and we’re good to go.

And this is what we’re looking for. The straight-edge along the frets just skims the top of the bridge. I’ll need to make a new saddle to replace this one that’s now far too low but that’s no problem. We don’t need to do any fretwork on this guitar as a consequence of the neck reset (frequently that’s not the case) so, all in all, it’s been a good day. 

I’ll try to pull together some photos of a more involved neck reset soon. Anything with a glue-in, dovetail neck involves messy work, steaming out the neck.

For now, though, I’ve strung up this baby and it’s sounding (and more importantly), playing great. 

I suspect this deserves a celebratory tea.

I joked over on Google that the Fantastic Super Haze Setup Sale was speeding my inevitable nervous breakdown and descent into madness. It’s true. It can only be a matter of time until I climb a tall building with an air-rifle and begin to seriously smart the skin of innocent passers-by.

If you’re the sort who’s been desensitised to this kind of awful violence by TV and the internet and would like to speed my crazed, pellet-shooting, lunacy, then you should remember there’s still two weeks of January left.

That’s two weeks to pile guitar and bass setups on my sagging, tired shoulders.

And, as if ringside seats at my psychotic incident aren’t enough, remember that you can get these setups done for equally crazy prices. Seriously: €25 for any guitar setup (even those pointy ones with fiddly Floyds) and €35 for a bass including strings*.

It’s like I’m encouraging you to push me over the edge. It’s like I want to shoot plastic pellets at random people. “All the clues were there. He was a quiet type—kept to his workshop mostly.” That’s what they’ll say.

Those things can really sting, you know?

*See here for more

It’s that time again.

All through January, Haze Guitars will be running our Super Setup Sale. Hurrah!

Seriously, hurrah!

For the month of January, you can get a guitar or bass setup done for half-price or even less.

Good, eh?

Why not take advantage of a slow-gig month, or maybe get the best from that new guitar that Santa stuffed into your stocking? Drop me a line and we’ll get your guitars or basses playing their best.

If you’ve a guitar, a setup will cost €25 and will include a fresh set of strings*. This will apply to acoustics, electrics, trem-equipped and even pointy, Floyd-equpped axes for the duration of the sale.

If you’ve a bass, a setup will cost €35. As this one also includes fresh strings, I reckon this is a mega-bargain*.

These crazy-person, sale prices will apply to any instrument booked-in and dropped off at my workshop in the period from the 3rd to the 31st of January.

There’s no upper or lower limit on the number of instruments you can bring. One or forty, whatever works for you.

Surely that deserves a ‘hurrah!’

*A little necessary small print about strings. The strings I’ll be fitting as standard are D’Addario and Martin for the guitars and Rotosounds (four-string) for the bass. If you prefer/need something else, I’ll be happy to use yours or supply some and sort out any difference in costs.

January is over and the Ridiculously Mental January Setup Sale is at an end.

And it was fairly mental.  January passed in a whirring blur of setups. It was a bit like one of the training montages from Rocky IV, just with guitars instead of logs. Oh, and less cheesey music. My setup muscles are looking pretty good though.

I still have a bit of a backlog of January instruments to get through but the next week should see the last of the half-pricers back with their owners. Thanks to everybody that’s allowed me to work on their instruments this month – I hope you’re happy with how your babies are playing.

Of course, the sale may be over but I think even the non-crazy setup cost is pretty reasonable. If I can help you out with your guitar woes, feel free to drop me a line.

So, hopefully you’ll have heard about my Insane, Clearly-Mental January Setup Sale.  I’ve done a lot of setups in the last couple of weeks.  This has meant some long hours, fitting them in with the usual repair work and nail-hammering but I’m certainly not complaining.  Many guitars were setup and much tea was consumed (Lyons Tea are going to put a plaque on my wall).

We’re a little over halfway through January now and as I appear to be some sort of setup masochist, I’m just reminding you that there’s still time to contribute to my breakdown.  If half-price guitar and bass setups sound like your thing, or if you simply want to see a grown man weep, drop me a line and we’ll see what we can arrange on both counts.

Remember though, the offer is only until the end of January or whenever I collapse in a gibbering heap muttering the word ‘intonation’ over and over. This could be any day now so get your skates on.

A little more information on the Amazing Super January Guitar & Bass SETUP SALE.

First off the costs:

For the month of January, a guitar setup will cost €22.50. This crazy, half-price bonanza includes fresh strings.

A bass setup, during the same period, will cost €30 including fresh strings (a mega-bargain).

As mentioned, these costs include new strings (which is why there’s a disparity between the bass and guitar setup costs).

If you if you prefer to provide your own brand of string (for instance, if you use some sort of long-life, coated, platinum-plated, strings made from the hair of virgin goats or something), you are welcome to do so.  In this case, the cost for both guitar and bass setups will be €20.

Then the timing:

This offer applies to instruments booked-in and dropped-off at my workshop during the month of January, 2011.

Officially, Haze Guitars opens for business again on the 4th but I’ll take emails and calls now and I’ll be happy to take drop-offs on the Bank Holiday Monday (if you want to do so before you have to go back to work). Just give me a call to arrange a time.

That’s it.  Easy-peasy.  I think this is a pretty good offer so feel free to take advantage of my Harvey-Norman-style madness.  Drop me a line and get your instrument sorted.

Half-price or 2 for 1 on guitar setups.

We know that January can sometimes be a slow month for gigging musicians.  Why not make the most of that downtime to have your instruments professionally set-up?

And, we also know that for some, January can be the first month with a spanking new Christmas guitar or bass (you lucky people, you).  Well, a good setup can help get the most from your new pride and joy.

So then, for the month of January, Haze Guitars is offering:

The Amazing Super January SETUP SALE.

Any guitar or bass setups booked and dropped in January will be charged at half-price.  If you’ve more than one guitar, this means it’s two for one.

You can get yourself two guitars setup for the, non-princely, sum of €45.  Halve that for one.

Make the most of a slow month.  Make the most of your guitar.  Drop us a line and get set up.

You’d be mad not to.

UPDATE #1: More information and costs.

UPDATE #2: Setups Are Making Me Blind.