Have you boiled your pickups?

Effectively, that’s what I’m doing here. These Jag pickups are taking a bath in a pot of hot wax.

When we talked about pickups a little while back, we discussed the fact that they were, for all intents and purposes, a big coil of wire and some magnets. Sometimes, the windings of that coil can move around a tiny bit (sometimes vibrating in sympathy with the note being played or just as you jump around the stage). This movement can be ‘picked up’ and added to the amplified sound which can result in nasty feedback. Pickups with this issue are often referred to as being microphonic.

Soaking in hot wax—called potting the pickup—allows the liquid wax to seep through the gaps between the windings and the other hardware (base-plates and so on). Once the wax cools, it solidifies in these gaps and helps prevent that movement. It’s important that the pickups are soaked for a while. When they warm to the same temperature as the wax, that ensures good penetration deep within the coils. You’ll notice a bubble in the photo—these continue to pop out slowly as the wax penetrates.

Wax tends to be the most common potting material as it’s easy to apply and makes it possible to disassemble the pickup in the future if the need arises. Lacquer and even epoxy have been used from time to time but neither penetrates as well as wax (they’re too thick) and they cure into impenetrable, hard, pickup-shaped lumps. Forget about disassembling one of these.

There are a couple of things worth mentioning on this subject:

Firstly, many of the most sought-after tones come from un-potted pickups. Some tones/styles can benefit from a very slight microphonic edge.

Secondly, it’s not necessarily a panacea. Potting can help reduce microphonic feedback but there can be many other contributors to feedback. If you’ve a problem, it’s worth considering everything in your signal chain.

This is a particularly handsome Heritage 535. It would be even more handsome if it were in one piece instead of two, though.

The neck’s come off and a little bit of investigation shows that it never stood a chance. This neck joint was weak from the start.

These joints are referred to as ‘mortice and tenon’ joints. In this case, the tenon (the bit at the end of the neck) was too small for the mortice (the ‘pocket’ in the body). As well as having a relatively large shim on one side, the tenon didn’t make contact with the bottom of the pocket. There’s an gap of a couple of millimetres between the two.

You can see the circled bits in the image. On the left is a chunk of mahogany from the tenon that’s split off and the glue line is visible on the right. You can see the gap.

That gap means no glue joint there. Only the sides are glued (well, those and the ‘face’ of the joint but that’s not providing a lot of strength).

This is a weak neck joint that was much more prone to fail that it ought to have been.

Rather than just gluing it back together, I’m going to build up the tenon to get this joint to where it should have been from the factory.

First off, that little chunk of mahogany that’s still glued to the side of the neck pocket has to be removed and glued back to the neck tenon. Once that’s done, I nab a new bit of mahogany and thickness it so that it will fill the gap.

In the right photo, you can see I’ve glued this on and cut it to match the shape of the existing tenon. The thickness of the added wood gives you an indication of how much of a gap there was.

I removed the old glue from both parts and re-glued the neck to the body. Because the break was quite clean, only a little touch-up work was required to get the guitar looking its best.

This repair looks good and, importantly, has actually resulted in a better, more sound, neck joint than when it left the factory.

The Blue Collar sale is proving popular and I’m getting a couple of questions that are asked quite frequently—frequently asked questions, if you will. I’ll attempt to answer a couple of them here (mainly to save myself some effort in typing it multiple times as I’m terribly, terribly lazy).

• How much will it take to get my mitts on a wonderful Blue Collar?
  If you place an order in January, you’ll pay €350 as a deposit and, when the guitar’s ready, there’ll be €600 due—a paltry total of €950. Pretty good, eh?
• How long will it take to get my mitts on a wonderful Blue Collar?
  Depends a little on how many orders are on but if you assume 12-16 weeks, it’s probably a safe bet.
• Can I change the specs of my Blue Collar?
  Yep. No problem. That’s the beauty ordering a custom, hand-built instrument. Although the Blue Collar is fantastic as it is, you can tweak stuff. Want a different pickup or a second one? Sure thing. Want a mint green pickguard, gold hardware, shiny lacquer? No worries.
• Will it cost more if I change the specs?
  Depends what you’re looking for but, probably, yes. Give me a shout and we can discuss things and work out a quote.
• How much will the Blue Collar cost after January?
  After January, the cost of the Blue Collar will be €1150. You’re saving €200 if you stick in an order in the next week or two.
• Can I have a play of a Blue Collar to see how great it really is?
  Oh, you’re all flattery, aren’t you? Yep. No problem. If you pop around to Some Neck Guitars on Aungier Street in Dublin, you should find a Blue Collar to demo.
• How do I place an order?
  Just drop me a line and we’ll have a chat. Only the deposit is due on order. Bank transfers, cheques, drafts, and grimy wads of cash in brown envelopes are all ok. Once that’s sorted, I’ll start hammering nails into lumps of wood.

If I’ve missed anything, feel free to give me a shout.

Oh, right… The spec.

Haze Blue Collar Specifications

2-piece solid ash body
Maple neck (bolt-on)
Rosewood fingerboard (12″ radius) with 21 jumbo frets
Bone nut
Kluson tuners
Intonable wraparound tailpiece/bridge
B/W/B pickguard
Side mounted output-jack
Volume and tone control
Duesenberg Domino P-90 style pickup
Oil and wax finish.

Let’s be honest, that’s not an attractive bridge. It’s seen a lot of action over the years and it’s cracked and, somewhere in the distant past, it’s had some gunky filler splodged in to try extend its life.

And it’s actually a slightly odd bridge. Although it has six holes for bridge pins, you can see along the back there are some filled holes as if this bridge were once strung from the top. There are also two little pearl dots which are usually present to hide small bolts (as they do in this case). These bolts are generally used on bridges that string from the top. But, then, why the bridge-pin holes?

It seems likely that the manufacturer repurposed this bridge from another model, filled the string holes and installed with bolts as normal. Fair enough.

This is all an aside anyway. On to the real work.

The owner wants this sorted but I wasn’t able to source an off-the-shelf replacement. This means custom-malking a replacement.

Getting these things off is a pain—as well as the two little bolts under the pearl, this manufacturer epoxies the bridge in position. I may have used swear words.

Once off, though, I grab a nice piece of rosewood and thickness it to about the right height. I carefully measure and mark off the important dimensions, particularly the pin holes and the bolt holes—if these are misaligned or misplaced, the bridge has to go in the bin.

Some careful drilling and we’re ready to shape the bridge. In this case, it’s a (relatively) easy job as the original doesn’t have a lot of sharp edges to curves that need to be replicated. It’s easier to replicate those sweeping lines.

Re-attaching the bridge, in this case, means epoxy again. There’s a major risk of the bridge sliding about as it’s clamped so some very careful preparation was necessary to ensure this didn’t happen. Pin-holes and the bolts came in useful in this.

And, you can see the end result in the last image. As it’s a nicer piece of rosewood, I think the new bridge actually looks better than the original but, that aside, it’s certainly more sound.

Yikes.

If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while, you’ve probably spotted a few different examples of neck breaks. Most of these have been up at the headstock end as that’s the more likely place for a break.

It can happen down the other end too, though. This Les Paul took a tumble and broke in a nasty way. The exterior damage is obvious but it’s pretty certain that crack extends into the neck tenon too (the tenon’s the bit that gets glued into the neck pocket in the body).

This neck needs to come out to be properly repaired.

It’s not too often that I need to remove a Les Paul neck, which is lucky as it’s a relatively involved job. With a strong cup of tea to steel myself, I set to work.

First up, a few frets need to come out. To remove this neck, I need to soak and steam the glue out and that means getting access to the internals of the neck joint. I do this by drilling small ‘access’ holes. These are drilled in the fret slots. When it’s all done, I’ll fill the holes with rosewood plugs and re-cut the slots. All of this is hidden by the refitted frets.

Your eagle-eyes will have noticed a little dot on each (numbered) fret. These frets will be refitted and the dot tells me which is the bass end.

Keeping fingers crossed, I take a look under the neck pickup, hoping for a long tenon. No luck. If I could have seen the end of the tenon, I’d know exactly what size it was so I could position my holes to accurately access the sides of the neck joint  (if it’s not clear what I mean here, a photo later on might clarify things).

Since all of this tenon is hidden, I have to measure out the usual Gibson size and position for this guitar and hope that it’s built properly to spec.

In the photo, above on the right, you can see the pencil marks I’ve used to plot out the tenon and the holes I’ve drilled to get access to the joint.

This one’s a bit weird-looking, I’ll admit.

In the left image, I’m using a syringe to insert boiling water into the holes I’ve drilled. I give it a few seconds and then suck it back up again. What comes out is cooler water with some manky-looking dissolved glue. I repeat this process a lot over the course of a couple of days. A Les Paul neck joint is a hell of a strong joint and doing this gives me a little bit of a head start before I hit it with the steam.

Which is what’s happening on the right. That nozzle lets me get piping hot steam deep into the joint. The heat and moisture helps to dissolve more glue and, after some time and work, the glue eventually lets go…

…Leaving most of the bloody tenon still in the pocket. D’oh!

The heel crack extended into the tenon as we thought. Now I have to keep working to get this piece out with pretty much no leverage.

More tea required, I think.

Some steamy swearing later and it’s out. Now, in the side of that neck tenon, you can see the tracks of those holes I drilled earlier. We were right on the money with the positions too—nice.

And here’s the jigsaw we need to get back together. You’ll notice a small shim in the neck pocket. This was installed at the factory (it’s not uncommon) and I’ll reuse it for this repair.

All of the old glue is cleaned from the mortice and the tenon and then, the two bits of neck are glued back together. Again, the tracks of those access holes are clear in the photo on the right.

Once it’s sound again, the neck is reattached to the body. Those frets are reinstalled and all the frets are levelled to ensure clean playability.

Then, it’s just some touch-up to hide the evidence. As the rear and neck of this Les Paul are black, the opaque colour easily disguises the repair.

It took a bit of thought, a lot of work and twelve buckets of tea but this job’s a good ‘un.

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.

It seems like my internal organs have barely recovered from last year and Christmas is here again. Ho ho ho.

While it would probably be cheaper just to pay someone to kick me repeatedly in the liver for a week, it is traditional to take a little time off to ruin my health the old-fashoined, Irish, way.

With that in mind, Haze Guitars will be closed for the Christmas period. Other than a couple of collections I’ve already arranged, Haze will be closed from 23rd of December until the 2nd of January.

I will be answering the occasional email as family/turkey sandwiches/hangovers allow so feel free to drop me a line. 

Come January, I’ll continue to follow tradition by holding the Great And Marvellous, Definitely Going To Kill Me This Year, January Setup Sale. More info on this—and some other exciting news for January—over the next week.

As I always do at this time of year, I want to say an incredibly massive thank you to everybody who’s trusted me with their instruments over the last year. I know what it means to hand over your precious and I genuinely appreciate your trust. I hope I was able to help.

Thanks for everything this year, and have a great Christmas.

I rambled on about acoustic guitar intonation a while ago and mentioned that sometimes, the proper intonation point for a particular string falls somewhere fore or aft of the actual saddle.

In some cases, all of the instrument’s other strings do likewise and this can be an indication that the saddle slot may be in the wrong place. Often, however, it’s just one outlier. One lonely string, steadfastly blazing its own out-of-tune trail. An intonation maverick, if you will.

It’s not always a big deal. Perhaps it’s just a little out or, perhaps your ear/brain isn’t particularly bothered by it. However, if you’re one of those cursed with tuning-sensitive ears or if your poor, perfectly-pitched brain screams in discordant agony when you play certain chords or intervals, you might want to consider drastic action like this.

Well, it’s not terribly drastic, really. I’ve made a new saddle for this tenor guitar from a bone blank and all strings except the third intonated quite happily. The delinquent string wanted to intonate miles away from the saddle.

So I extended the saddle.

There are a couple of options for this but the most straightforward is an additional piece of bone that’s been glued to the rest of the saddle. It’s half the height of the saddle itself—it lacks a ‘bottom’ half and it actually rests on top of the wooden bridge so it’s completely reversible (just pop a new saddle in). It gives me the additional scope needed to shift this string’s intonation point forward.

Looks odd but sounds much better.

The Haze Burlesque has been revealed.

This probably means the teasing images of the build process aren’t really needed anymore.

However, I quite like them, so I’m keeping them around (I hope you like them too). Here you go, then: a photo-journal of the birth of Burlesque.

The teasing is over, ladies and gentlemen. Step right up and allow me to introduce the Haze Burlesque.

The Burlesque is a brand new model from Haze Guitars.

And it’s pretty stunning. A figured-wood top and a curvy, mahogany body give an irresistible look, but the Burlesque’s beauty is more than skin-deep. The two humbucker pickups are wound to vintage PAF specs for a sweet, classic sound. Their smooth tones coupled with a wraparound bridge mean the Burlesque can sustain all night.

A 630mm scale-length and twenty-two, gold EVO frets—along with a wonderful, bend-friendly setup—make the Burlesque something you won’t want to keep your hands off.

A volume for each pickup, a master tone and a three-way toggle control things. Gotoh 510 tuners and a bone nut with straight string-pull keep the tuning solid.

Sweet tones, wrapped in a beautiful package. Be seduced by the Burlesque.

And remember, all this week you can tune in to Radio Nova to learn how to win your very own Haze Burlesque. There are some more images on Facebook and some more will be added over the next few days so pop over and Like Haze Guitars to keep abreast (ahem).