soapbarstrat

I know of guys who keep most of their stash in a shed or garage (where it at least doesn't get rained on), and then bring it into the climate controlled shop about 6 weeks before they want to use it. I've got maple, etc, in my garage where it doesn't get wet but is subjected to high summer humidity and freezing cold in winter, but that doesn't seem to cause any problems with it, that I can tell. Yes, best bet is to have a small shop that you can easily get a handle on the climate control (yeah, I know some of you guys have quite an idea climate, but you might want to keep quiet about it, or the rest of us might decide to pull some kind of "eminent domain" on you. hehe)

Well, maybe good reason why. Rick Turner once said he knew a few (or a lot- I don't remember) guys missing fingers and such from power tool accidents. I then asked him if he knew the particular reason why those accidents happened, and his reply was : " they had a joint for lunch".

It's certainly one way that some do it. I have found it to be a more solid feel, when hammering frets into a board backed by nothing but a solid workbench top, although it ain't often that I'm able to do it that way. I like the simplicity of doing it that way, but prefer the results of doing it the other way.

First fret/board leveler I made had a glass bottom. Found the glass in my sisters garage. Didn't have a really good way to check it's flatness. It did a horrible job at leveling a board. After I bought a proper SE, I found it was wavy as gravy. But now, I have glass that's perfectly flat, so it does exist, but you have to be able to check it or no telling what kind of glass you'll have.

Well, if you're doing that, then I'm going to have a 1/4" plug welded onto the truss-rod adjustment nut at the heel end of a Fender neck, and I'm going to plug that right into the amps input jack.

I'm assuming when you do the leveling, you're getting the neck as straight as possible with the truss-rod, while there's no strings on. Well, sometimes that works well enough. But sometimes after leveling like that, you go string it up, then some hump or rising develops around the body joint area.

To me, 7th fret relief is too much if you can really see it. I listen for it, and by that I mean I fret the string at both ends of the neck , then reach to the 7th with my little finger and tap on the string. I can hear a click if there's a hair of relief. If your strumming is so heavy to cause buzzing, I say raise the action at the bridge. But all what I said above only works out if the frets are all on the level. Erik, from across the room, your avatar looks like you're anti Obama.

Gosh, makes me want to do away with the cable altogether and use a little 1/4 to 1/4 jack adapter piece about 2.5" long.

Well, main problem with someone making a plug without having the guitar, is that they would have to rely on you for exact measurements, such as the diameter of the hole the plug is going into. I don't even know if it's metric or what. Too tight of a plug and you won't get it in there. Too loose, it will likely look like crap. I would bug Fender about it. A plug made by Fender has the best chance of working without them examining the neck. I mean, it's working without the plug. Probably should leave it that way unless the plug fix can really be done right. Why bother with something half-way there ?

I'm pretty sure they are end grain showing, but what really makes it a problem for someone with little or no wood-working experience is that it's a "plug" with a hole perfectly centered through it.

I was only joking about the black plastic. That would be a shame to "downgrade" your guitar like that. Seems to me, if Fender sells the truss rod nut, they'd be the best bet for the walnut plug. If you contact them, be sure to tell them that you have already removed and destroyed your hollow walnut plug. It's such a small piece of walnut. Maybe you can find someone local who does woodworking, and they'd have little scraps of wood and might even make the plug for you.

How about black plastic tubing for that authentic MIM look ? Speaking of that, has anyone ever removed the black plastic sleeve in the truss-rod adjustment hole in a MIM neck ? I'm only wondering, 'cause I have a MIM neck where they didn't sand the curve behind the headstock far enough, so I have some strings laying on a fairly wide plot of fret-board real estate on the headstock side of the nut. You know how that little bit of fret-board is suppose to be no more than 1/8" wide ? Well it's a heck of a lot wider than that on this sucker and there hasn't even been any fret-board sanding done since it was at the factory, and I know when I refret it, that area behind the nut is going to get even wider, because the neck has a little bit of a twist. So, if I ever re-sand the headstock contour, I thought maybe first I'd take that plastic sleeve out and put a wood one in there, just 'cause I like the look of the wood one's better and I deserve some kind of reward for having to do such an annoying repair.

Ok, 1/8" wrench makes it likely that it's a bi-flex. If you really like this guitar, and since you obviously don't have experience with this repair, you really should send it to someone to do it right. First guy that comes to mind is John Suhr. I know he has done this repair before, and he recently threw a hint that he wanted to take on more repairs. look him up.

Hmmm. Don't know about the frets being plastic. I could have my wife do as perfect of a translation as could be done, but I tread lightly with that stuff, because I hate when I have to help her translate something from English to German. Boy does she know how to find English words that I really don't know the meaning of (and I even USE some of the words - oh the American way of just taking a word and suddenly giving it a completely different meaning ! ) Anyway, I know that the board has the T slots, and the frets have these added T pieces below the crown, and then there's an O-ring added to make 'em fit in the T-slots more snug. Plus he has them bent in a slight U shape so that if the player pushes the string a little toward either side of the neck, it compensates for that.

What size wrench did it take when it worked ? Have an idea how it got stripped ? Maybe that StewMac special tapered wrench is what you need. Might be bi-flex if he has already looked into it, and found out the walnut piece needs to be removed. Like this

And shouldn't dive into that until there's a good amp around. I was going to suggest that you have vinyl siding put on, but that might have only gone over well if I had been the first to respond. Hard to tell from a photo, what it could really need.

The solution is simple. First, forget about bending strings, then mill T-slots into your fret-board and have special frets that fit into those slots. Then you can move 'em around. http://www.geigen-und-gitarren-chouard-fre...ret-mobile.html

I've got real feeler gauges out the whazoo (do they make an ointment to help with that ?), but when it comes to checking under the string clearance at the 1st fret, short guitar string pieces are far superior to real gauges. Well, that's assuming you don't need a gauge under .008" or whatever (I guess some 8's pan out to be .007" and someone told me they heard of a .006" gauge string made, but I've never seen any proof of it) Guitar string/nut slot, is like a slowly running machine to me. a little lube will really help keep it running long and well. I think a lot of crazy trem up-pulls will do the most damage fast. So, get all case-hardened metal for that stuff.

I'm willing to bet money that half the PG members came here because of exactly that. Well, maybe a whole bunch of 'em are those : " My Mom won't buy me a guitar, but she will buy me a Dremel, so walk me though a scratch build with a Dremel" .

The "plastic" they use for those nuts is pretty tough stuff. I can hardly get myself to call it plastic. A lot better than the PVC nuts you'll often find on Asian imports. Sometimes the nut action is so high, that if you mark out where the excess material is, and file that off, you can end up with no slots on the unwound strings and very shallow slots on the wounds. Makes a pretty good base to start out with. But I've also seen some where some bozo (apparently at the factory) filed just one string slot too low and at a weird angle and ruined the nut (at least made it too undesirable for a properly tweaked nut). Anyway, I don't think you can surpass the tone those stock nuts produce (after they're tweaked). Of course you can *match* the tone with nuts of other materials.

Hey Man, no need to apologize. I think you've suffered enough having to deal with such high action at the nut. Makes my fingers hurt just thinking about it. In case you didn't know, StewMac has some pretty good online articles on nut-work and in one of them, they list 'set-ups of the stars' and you can see the nut action specs on those, and there's a bit of a range there. I think the lowest I ever got away with on a High E was .006" over the first fret. Some guitars will allow that. Just depends on the guitar and where the string energy wants to go and how fast that energy dies away (or something like that ?) I've also tried to go that low on other guitars that wouldn't allow it, so I aim more for at least .008" up to .011" over the 1st fret for the high E. I can't remember what the lowest for the low E is, that I ever got away with. But I often go for .014" to .018" for the low E. Of course another factor to consider is how the nut slots will wear down lower with use of the guitar, so that's a reason I try not to go as absolutely low as possible.

Or a stomp box that gets rid of fret buzz, like an MXR Buzz Buster

Well that hideous headstock is what reminded me that I had seen that in some catalog. Probably rare because of that. You'd think they would have had a clue that the Fender Performer guitars tanked partly due to a similar looking headstock. Oh, I don't want to come across like I'm running it down. Just saying why it didn't go over so well. Can't rely on craigslist to give an accurate idea of what something is really worth. last time I put an ad on there, the item sold within 3 days and then I'm pretty sure I killed the ad. So I figure if you keep seeing an ad, nobody is biting. Try looking it up on finished ebay auctions. Better for real world, 'what's it worth' info. And of course the Charvel forums, although you have to be careful on some forums how you word stuff, 'cause some places don't like even a hint that you're trying to sell something. Oh yeah, another thing, it's got a weird part ; the "roller nut", stuff like that doesn't help.

Found it in an old 1990 catalog I have. ST Custom $449.00 Came in Sunburst, trans black, trans red. Each pu is a stacked HB, so they say it has 4 HB pu's EI Rose board, 2 piece Ash body scanned it.

I know the cheap import Charvels of the 90's (CX series ?) had pickups that looked like those.