I have been playing guitar for about three years and I know the basics of setting up a guitar. (action, intonation, basic truss rod adjustment) however I recently purchased a les paul clone from a friend of mine, and this guitar has issues that go beyond the scope of my experience. The three main problems I have are as follows.
1 The action is at about 1/4 of an inch, The guitar is equipped with a tunomatic bridge, unfortunately it is already as low as it can go, it is touching the guitar body. As far as I can see there are two options, 1 use a router to make space below the bridge to allow it to lower farther, or use shims to raise the neck. I could use any advice on either method, or if theres something I havent thought about. (either way I have a woodshop with the tools do just about anything.)
2 near as I can tell the original strip type tuners were at some point replaced with a decent set of grover tuners, however they are the strat type and the three high string tuners were simply flipped and installed upside down. At some point I heard that this is really bad for them and that it destroys the gears. I haven't had the chance to really test how well they hold tune, so I don't know if they are still worth keeping. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated, If they are salvagable then I will probably install them on a squire strat that I have and put the right type of tuners on the clone.
3 The body is made out of 1/2 inch boards glued together, something in it either the glue, the wood or the finish reeks! It's only on the inside of the body and i guess the best description of it would be that it smells like turpintine, it's not really a criticle problem but it's kind of annoying and I would greatly appreciate any ideas for removing it.
Like I said this guitar has issues, however I want to eventually learn how to make my own guitars, and this seemed like the logical way to practice my skills, and in anycase I only paid 50 bucks for it. and it should be an interesting project.
wherever you go, there you are.
It sounds like the neck is either seriously bowed, at a bad angle, or possibly even loose.
I assume that you have checked the neck relief but you didn't say what that measurement was so I would check that first. If the neck is bowed it may be beyond the truss rods ability to bring it back but worth a shot.
If the relief is OK that means the neck itself is straight so check the angle of the neck in relation to the body. It should be slightly lower at the headstock then the body or dead even. Hard to say what the amount should be but the answer is shimming and/or re-seating the neck.
If the smell is just in the electronics cavity you can gut it and paint the inside to seal it again.
Let us know about the relief and whatever else you find.
Welcome to GN.
the neck relief comes out to .oo6 inches, as near as I can tell the neck is straight, it's just mounted really low in comparison to the guitar although it's not at an angle, any recommendations on the type of wood i should use to shim it up?
wherever you go, there you are.
the neck relief comes out to .oo6 inches, as near as I can tell the neck is straight, it's just mounted really low in comparison to the guitar although it's not at an angle, any recommendations on the type of wood i should use to shim it up?
Any kind of hardwood veneer will do the trick. Some people even use newspaper or anything else that started it's life as a tree. Here is a good site for additional information on mounting and aligning necks and anything else related to building guitars. http://www.projectguitar.com
thx dude, I think i'll pass on the newspaper but the hardwood veneer sounds good. any advice on the tuners? think their salvagable or DOA.
wherever you go, there you are.
Can you post a front and rear picture of the headstock so I can take a look at it? My gut feel is they may look funny but should work.
If the smell is local to the pot cavity, it may be that the previous owner tried to clean the tone & volume pots with turpentine or whatever - and splashed it everywhere.
I started with nothing - and I've still got most of it left.
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okey... first thanks for all the excelent advice. as of now my lp clone is back together, the veneers worked really well in getting the neck back to a normal height. currently the action rests at about 2/32 of an inch, still a bit higher than perfect, however i can't level the fretts anymore because they appear to have had this happen to them before, and I don't want to have to refrett tthis guitar.
Uh what else... the smell is no longer a problem because I painted out the inside of the guitar with shielding paint, which killed to birds with one stone, the smell is gone and the pckups don't sound nearly as bad. The tuners are no longer a problem, I have a friend at a local music store who fixed me up with a set of les paul replacement tuners. Other than that I replaced the wiring, repainted some major dings using nail polish (I was les concerned with the look on these parts because for the most part there on the back, I just wanted to seal the wood, however the colors actually matched rather well, and the finishes were about the same.)
Oh and I cleaned and polished the whole thing....A LOT!!! (when I started you could actually draw pictures in the crud that was caked on the surface of this guitar.)
All in all not to bad for my first complete rebuild. I wish I could post pictures but alas, i am poor and I don't own a camera.
oh and one odd thing about this guitar, the knobs on it instead of being the usual 1-10 are numbered 0-10, are these specific to one brand or am I just showing my inexperience with the les paul style? I'm curious as to what brand of guitar this is, but it has no brand markings, only a serial number.
wherever you go, there you are.
Hmm, yet another mystery guitar, does the bridge have thumb screws?
My Epi Elitist has volume and tone markings from 0-10 so I'd guess that part is common.
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