You’ve got yourself a nice electric guitar that feels comfortable, looks great, but sounds… meh…  The thing to do is get some new pickups in there.  It’s an upgrade we love to do here, but we’re not big fans of those big mega-store brands. We prefer the workmanship, relationships, and above all superior results we’ve found with smaller pickup companies. But the price can admittedly get pretty steep. So what would you say to a USA-made, hand-wound pickup that doesn’t make you smash your kids’ piggy bank open? Check out our newest line of Porter Pickups!

Brian Porter & Co. make each pickup completely by hand. Why, well in Brian’s words,

We have no plans of ever changing the way our pickups are wound. Part of the reason for this is tradition – by making pickups how they used to be made, and part of it is the advantages it can offer the customer to have a pickup custom wound specifically for them, tailored to their styles and with the materials we believe will best achieve what they are looking for. We feel that our process of hand winding pickups results in a truly custom product, which also has our touch put into each pickup we make.

Anything made with that kind of dedication costs money, but you’ll find Porters to be priced right around the most popular big store brands.

But how do they sound, right? Well, here’s a PRS SE Santana. We installed a set of chrome-covered Porter Classic humbuckers and they sounded great. Compared to the stock pickups, which sounded rather dull and lifeless, the Porters sound very articulate, sparkly, and clear. They break up nicely, with smooth overdrive when you lean into them a bit, particularly through our tube Deluxe amp here at the shop. Big thumbs up.

We like to compare pickups to wine here. The store-bought stuff is fine; does the trick, and can be pleasing enough. But once you try the good stuff, you understand the difference. Trust us, Porter Pickups are good stuff. Check out their website and full line here. Give a call to see what we have in stock and if we don’t have it, we’ll get the ones you’re looking for.

The 1952 Goldtop is where it all began for the Gibson Les Paul. Guitars from this first year of production have an obvious historical importance and, as with all vintage pieces, the conscientious repairman does not make an irreversible alteration to one without just cause. This one was sold to the current owner with full disclosure of some previous repairs to the headstock. Those repairs were well done, solid, and the guitar sounded amazing (vintage P90’s really are something special.) But they simply did not look right and that’s where we come in.  It took heating, sawing, chiseling, filing, and painting to get there, but this is how we made this vintage classic look and perform the way it’s supposed to.

The beginning: It looks pretty good. There’s no arguing that. But what this guitar’s owner noticed is that this headstock just seemed a little … short. And sure enough, it was.

Here’s why. The headstock had clearly broken at some point – a common occurrence with Gibson necks.  It’s usually a relatively simple repair consisting of gluing the pieces together and touching up the paint. But this repair looks strange – with a black “stinger” painted on the back. Why was that done? A closer look revealed that for some reason, the repairman who fixed this break decided to add several steps.

First, he took the broken end piece and the remaining neck section and smoothed out both surfaces- possibly on a belt sander. This is the step that shortened the headstock, as it removed some of the wood. We can see this already by looking at the break line (below the low E tuner) which is uncommonly straight. Usually this is a naturally jagged-looking fracture line. Next, he removed some of the back of the headstock and used a piece of maple to add strength to the repair. You can see where that piece terminates at the far left of the  picture above – just below the black stinger. It’s hard to see here, but there are even drawn-in grain lines to make the brown part of the maple look like mahogany.

A line in the finish between the low and high E tuners shows where that maple piece ends.

So at this point, we’ve seen enough to make the decision. We’ll remove this very strong but unattractive repair and replace it with an entirely new headstock that will look more historically correct.

Step one, we heat the fretboard to soften the glue that joins it to the neck and gently remove the whole thing – carefully removing and preserving the original inlays beforehand.

We decided to take a closer look at what was underneath the paint on the old headstock and discovered that our theory was correct.

The above picture shows that straight cut between the low tuners.  It also shows that the logo overlay – made of holly wood – was sanded away below that cut, probably to make the two surfaces line up smoothly.

The back of the headstock reveals that maple support piece the whiter area – painted brown first and then over-sprayed with the black stinger.

Next we stared at the neck for a few hours. Drew a few deep breaths. And sawed the neck off a 1952 Les Paul. Gulp!

No turning back now. Time to make a new headstock. We begin by band-sawing a piece of mahogany to fit the angled cut. The direction of that angle is critical as we want the string tension to pull the repair closed. If we were to leave the fretboard on and saw the other direction, the string tension would be pulling the repair open – making it much less stable.

We were lucky to acquire an original Gibson holly headstock overlay complete with a period-correct inlaid logo. When it came time to cut it to size, we wanted to get all of the dimensions correct. So we went right to the source – Gibson Guitars. While the company did not keep complete records at the time with all the relevant measurements, one of the workers in the repair shop actually owns a very similar 1953 LP. He was kind enough to take the measurements himself and email us a tracing of his headstock. Huge thanks to Timothy and Phil at the Gibson repair shop for helping us get it just right!

As luck would have it, and just when we needed it, a customer of ours brought in another 1952 gold top which we used to confirm all of our measurements. Always good to have more than one source for this sort of thing!

The Gibson headstock profile begins to take shape.

Once the neck looks and feels right, Dan strips the remaining finish from the neck. As much as we would like to preserve every bit of original finish, there just isn’t a way to finish the new section and blend it in with the old without refinishing the entire neck.

First comes dark brown pore-filler to make the grain jump out and more importantly, produce a level painting surface.

Next some brown stain matches the old and new portions of the neck.

Then precise measurements are marked for tuner placement.

After drilling the holes for the tuners, we’re ready to paint the face of the headstock. Dan uses a clear adhesive to protect the inlaid Gibson logo from the black paint (hard to see, but that’s what he’s trimming here.) At this point, we’ve also re-glued the fretboard, replaced the inlays, and installed new frets.

The final touch is applying the water-slide Les Paul logo and spraying a few more light coats of clear finish.

We made a new bone nut, used the original tuners and truss rod cover, and did some light distressing of the finish to blend the appearance in with the rest of the guitar.

The new scarf joint is visible; we’re not trying to fool anyone here.  But the color and finish match makes the seam look natural and, well.. seamless.

1952 Les Pauls did not come with a stamped or inked serial number so we left that area alone.

Here we are, strung up with new frets. One non-original part that makes a big impact with this guitar is the addition of a Joe Glaser-designed tailpiece end which fits easily onto the old trapeze. It sits lower and has an intonation ridge – solving the well-know problems of poor action and bad intonation that accompany 52’s. This guitar plays beautifully and the pickups just sound incredible.

This was a lot of work for a rare and classic instrument. The end result was completely worth it however. We restored the original look while protecting as much of the original features as possible. It’s going to be making music for at least another 60 years!

This is one scary looking headstock break. The headstock is completely off the neck and with a close look, you can see that someone attempted to repair it with both glue and wood screws! If you do that glue-up right the first time, there’s no need for the screws (which didn’t hold anyway.) The dry glue poses a problem because it seals the broken cells of the wood, making it impossible for new glue to do that.  And that’s just the beginning…

Here’s a close look at that original “repair.”

But there’s more problems here than just the headstock break. These frets are loose, worn flat, and covered in tarnish. They’d need to go too.

Some heavy water damage at the base of the guitar tells us that this once proud Les Paul probably spent a lot of time in that basement. But the wood is still strong and repairing the finish is at the bottom of our priorities on a repair like this.

The owner gave us the go-ahead to attempt regluing the headstock.  We”ll use a heavy-duty wood epoxy and cross our fingers. If it holds with some strength, we’ll continue with the refret, touch-up to the headstock, and put it all back together.

The epoxy held fast (we tested it under string tension for a week to be sure.) So we began filling it the areas where wood had gone missing.

And got to work replacing the old and worn-out frets. We planed the fretboard to clean it up and to insure a level playing surface for the new frets.

Now we’re ready to touch-up the area of the headstock break, blending it in with the original sunburst finish.

A little clean up of the top and this is starting to look like a real guitar again.

We replaced the rusted and twisted old bridge with a new nickel bridge from TonePros (keeping the original in the case of course.)

A fresh set of strings and we were ready to try this beauty out through an amp!

The vintage mini-humbuckers sound great!

This was a fun rescue to perform. It’s always rewarding to bring a guitar back from the grave and have it turn out this nicely.

We were more than a little surprised to learn that  this 1930’s era Gibson A Style mandolin (which was built a mere 100 miles away in Kalamazoo, MI) traveled more than 8,000 miles to get here from South Africa. Unfortunately, the instrument repair options there must be pretty thin, as it had one of the strangest looking attempts at fretwork we’ve ever seen. We cleaned it up and gave it a proper refret along with a new set of tuning buttons for the original tuners. Take a look.

The previous repairman may have not had access to replacement fret wire or maybe just didn’t know what he was doing. Regardless, the fretboard was in bad shape. It appeared as though the frets had been removed, then raised up on little hills of dried glue. The entire fretboard was caked with glue and the frets themselves were badly dented and misshapen. They obviously needed to go. The other clear need was for new buttons on the vintage tuners. As often happens, the old ones had dried and crumbled until they were unusable.

We heated each fret and pulled it out, leaving a strange-looking surface like we’ve never seen. No wonder this thing didn’t play right!

Next, we straightened the neck, cleaned off the loose bits of glue and spent quite a while leveling away what was left until the fretboard was even and clean.

Here’s the fretboard after installing and dressing the new frets. It’s now perfectly level and free of every bit of the old residue.

Finally, we replaced the old crumbly buttons with new ones that the owner sent along and gave it The Works set-up.  Much better.

Once complete, this vintage beauty sounded fabulous. …Well, maybe not fabulous (since the two of us only know a few mandolin chords!) But in the right skilled hands, it certainly will for many more years.

And now for the long trip home!

This late 60’s Les Paul Deluxe has had lots of work done to it over the years. Its original P90 or mini-humbucker pickups were removed and replaced with full size humbuckers, it has had mini toggle switches installed and removed, and its original gold top was refinished as a burgundy shaded burst. The current owner discovered that a hairline crack had appeared in the top, extending from below the tailpiece all the way into the neck pickup cavity. He asked us to repair the crack and refinish it to it’s original goldtop color.

These two small holes between the control knobs probably once housed coil tap, phase, or series/parallel switches.  They’ve been filled, but are still completely visible.

The body crack is barely visible – running through the tailpiece and bridge post holes and continuing all the way into the neck pickup cavity. To make the repair really look right, we knew we’d have to refinish the top. First, we completely strip away the old finish.

This close look at the pickup routs shows the original P90 routs, widened to fit full size humbuckers and (if you look closely) some remaining patches of the gold finish it once had. We opted to stay with the current humbucker pickup arrangement but to restore the gold finish. The one electronic alteration  we made was to wax-pot and cover the pickups.

Here’s a better look at the body crack after repair.

The refinish begins with sealer and white primer coats.

Then that distinctive Gibson gold-top. Here we peel away tape that kept the gold paint off the edge binding.

After amber top-coats and some light relic touches, it’s starting to look the part again.

Once the work is complete, there’s no evidence of the body crack or switch holes anymore. It’s just another great looking Gibson Les Paul Gold-top.

Chicago winters kill guitars. The weather gets dry and cold, so we turn on our furnaces – drying out the air in our homes even further. Many will see their indoor relative humidity drop below 20% . That’s 25-30% lower than the factories where guitars are made and the wood just doesn’t like it. Like the skin on our fingertips and the seams on our hardwood floors, dry guitars can split open without ever being dropped or otherwise mishandled. Other symptoms we see include:

• rough fret ends that stick out past the edge of a fretboard
• loose bridges and braces
• loose neck joints
• separations along the many glue joints that hold a guitar together
• dramatic changes in playing ‘action’

So what can you do to prevent costly repairs to these problems? There’s so many choices hanging in guitar stores that it can be hard to tell which one to buy. We may kick ourselves for giving away the secrets that keep us in business – but here’s a look at the products that will best help you keep your guitar healthy and happy this winter. You’ll also find a simple formula for how to effectively use them.

We’ve heard some interesting home remedies over the years – from leaving a baggie with a wet sponge in a guitar case to putting an apple or potato inside a case (NOT recommended by these two technicians.) And we’ve seen lots of products too -from film canister size humidifiers with clay inside to rubber tubes with a sponge inside to space-age devices that  can offer protection for months. When selecting products to carry here at Chicago Fret Works, we applied the lessons we’ve learned over the years and chosen these winners:

Best Choice For Acoustic Guitars – Planet Waves Humidipak*

($30) We were thrilled when Planet Waves (D’addario) recently re-released the Humidipak for guitars.  It utilizes sophisticated modern technology for a low-maintenance, long-term solution to keeping fine acoustic guitars properly humidified. Three removable packets hang in black mesh pockets (two for the soundhole and one for behind the headstock,) releasing just enough moisture to keep the inside of your guitar case at 48% for 3-4 months. The moisture is all in those packets – no need for constant refilling with water. Read more about it at www.planetwaves.com . While you’re there, be sure to check out the video of Bob Taylor from Taylor Guitars to see what he thinks.

*Planet Waves did recall this product twice in the past few years for design flaws. They’ve spent lots of time and money eliminating those problems and we are happy to report nothing but success in the 2009-2010 season. Here’s Planet Waves statement on that subject.

Runner-up Choice for Acoustic Guitars – Oasis

($20) We really like these humidifiers. They hold enough distilled water to last from one to two weeks without needing to be refilled. Special crystals inside expand into a super absorbent paste that should be replaced each year (replacement kits are available at CFW for $6.) One advantage Oasis holds over every other product is that it will tell you when it’s time to refill by collapsing into a raisin-like appearance that says “Yo! Gettin’ a little dry over here!”

For the tight budget – Planet Waves Humidifier

($8) If you play your guitar every day or two and don’t mind refilling a sponge that often, Planet Waves’ original guitar humidifier is the least expensive option. It’ll work as well as the others but will need more attention.

Humidifying F-hole guitars on a budget

($8) Finally, we do keep a few of the old-style tube humidifiers for guitars and mandolins that have F-holes or for those who just like this style. Fill them up every one to two days.

The Recipe For Keeping A Guitar Properly Humidified:

• A FULL humidifer
• Inside the guitar
• Inside the case   (NOT hanging on the wall or on a stand.)
• From October through April (or as long as the heat is on in your home)

…Or let it go and come see us in the spring for the best structural repairs anywhere!

A neighbor of mine brought us this 1960’s Epiphone Casino that he was thinking about selling. But he was rightfully concerned that a few obvious alterations would make it hard to sell at its full value. The first concern is the out-of-place humbucking pickup that someone installed to replace the original P90. The second concern is the missing pick guard. We helped locate appropriate replacements for both that will make this guitar more valuable and  more true to its original look and sound.

We decided it was important to use an authentic pickup from the same time period as the guitar since that would be essential to getting the right sound out of this vintage classic. We  found both an original 60’s P90 and the correct chrome cover in online auctions. They worked perfectly and sound just right.

On the other hand, the owner opted not to go after an original pick guard because of its high cost and lack of impact on the actual sound of the guitar. We found an inexpensive replica that fit well and looked the part after some light distressing and coloring. Maybe the next owner will want to find an original.

The final touch was applying the signature “E” logo on the pick guard.  With the vintage look now complete, this vintage classic is ready to find a new home.

Here’s a project with humble beginnings that grew into a full vintage restoration. The owner picked up this very old Epiphone Devon at an estate sale (along with several other groan-worthy items I won’t even tell you about.) It had been rather sloppily stripped and refinished and the binding had entirely peeled off. Initially, we planned only to add the binding to the body and unfortunately didn’t bother to take pictures. So the photos here begin after the new binding was already in place, when the owner decided he’d like it completely refinished to look like it did originally. It was a good decision.

Here, Dan prepares the body for finishing. The previous finish job was topped off with some white paint or nail polish inside the F-holes, an apparent attempt to make the holes look bound. Based on some good photos of a Devon in its original condition, we decided to clean off the white paint and leave them unbound. After sanding away the old shellac or varnish, Dan sprays a sealer coat, taping off the fretboard.

Next comes the sunburst on the top. Below, he scrapes the dark brown finish off the white binding by hand.

Then full darkening of the back and sides and a vintage amber top-coat.

Once finishing is complete, the new binding blends in and looks beautiful.

The final product fully assembled.

Originally, a Devon would have had a thick and fully-bound tortoise-shell pickguard. Since a hand-made bound guard would have cost $300-400, we opted for a more affordable 3 ply tortoise reproduction. The shape is right and the white middle layer gives a satisfactory illusion of binding.

The original tailpiece and bridge and some period tuners made the whole thing look just right.  The thin lacquer finish helps bring out this guitar’s full, rich tone. A real beauty.

We had a couple of unusual projects recently that required some creative work with color. The owners of both this 70’s Fender Precision Bass and a modern Gibson SG knew they wanted to refinish their instruments, but wanted to do something a little more unique than just choosing a standard Fender or Gibson color.  Interestingly, both ended up with colors more reminiscent of  vehicles than other musical instruments.

The bass started out with a stripped body. It was a Precision Bass that had been routed at one time for an EMG Jazz pickup and a battery compartment on the back.  We filled both routs  and sanded them smooth to fit the texture of the rest of the body.

For our custom color, we improvised a sort of ‘Granny Smith’ flavored candy apple. It looked a little odd to the two of us on a color sample stick, but our customer loved it and said to use it. By the time it was put together with the original pickguard, pickups, and a new Leo Quann Badass 2 bridge, we were totally convinced he was right. It received a unanimous thumbs up from all parties. It matched perfectly with an owl strap from Chicago-based Souldier Straps.

After staring at this bass for a while, we figured out what it reminded us of:

A 1973 Honda CB500!

Next up is a late model Gibson SG that came in almost completely stripped of it’s original cherry finish.

The owner has a vast collection of green guitars and wanted this one to join that group. He asked us to match the color on a dark metallic-green pool cue and to inlay stars for the fretboard markers.  The new inlays required removing the frets so we could eventually smooth and level the entire fretboard.

Next we prepped the mahogany body for finishing by removing all the old paint and applying grain filler to the pores. This will insure that even a very porous wood like mahogany will have the smooth-as-glass surface look that we want.

After matching that green pool cue’s color and applying top coats of nitro, this SG is uniquely beautiful. Check it out.

So where did we find that killer racing green finish? From Porsche!

This 1960 Gibson Les Paul Jr. is a terrific playing and sounding specimen. But it sure didn’t come in looking this great. After the owner picked it up in an auction, he emailed us some rather scary pictures of some truly scary looking “repairs” he hoped we could correct. We assured him we could make it look great and, more importantly, play great again. When it arrived from Florida, we took some deep breaths and assessed the damage.

The first thing that jumped out was a nasty headstock break with an awful looking mix of glue, epoxy, and maybe some bondo caked around the outside. Yuck.

Next there was a deep crack in the neck heel…

…and a large chunk that had broken off and been glued back onto the lower bout.

Finally there was an odd look to the ends of the fretboard. Can you see what’s wrong?

The fretboard has been removed and re-glued – in the wrong spot! That gap between the fretboard and pickguard (above) tells us that the previous repairman slid the board to the back of the nut shelf rather than the front, leaving A) no place to put a nut and B) a scale length that is off by nearly a quarter of an inch. So we knew the fretboard had to be removed and re glued in the right position.

The dots come out and the board comes off. The rather stingy amount of glue residue under the fretboard is yet another mark of the sloppy work that was done before.

At this point, we noticed another problem; the neck itself was loose where it joined the body. So we steamed it off the rest of the way and reglued it properly.

Once the neck and body are properly joined, we can move on to leveling the gluing surface between the neck and fretboard materials and gluing the fretboard on again.

With the fretboard in the right spot, there is once again a nut-shelf.

Now we can start cleaning up the messy headstock. We begin by smoothing away the rough globs of paint and glue from the previous work and using a leveling compound to make the surface level and smooth.

We do the same for the back of the headstock – which already makes it look much better.

It’s still an ugly looking repair, but to make sure it would hold, we put strings on and applied even more clamping pressure (to see if it came open.) It surprisingly held fast and strong. So the previous repairman avoids the shutout and manages to at least get this part of his repair right!

After applying some red finish to match the original color, Dan draws in grain lines by hand.Then he shoots clear top-coats of nitrocellulose lacquer, blending it in to the original finish. He does the same for the crack at the neck heel.

For the body crack, we wanted to take a minimal-impact approach. So we used a colored filler to level the area around the break and again sprayed a light coat of nitrocellulose to blend it in.

Once the new nitro finish is cured, we can level and prep the fretboard and hammer in new frets.

Finally, we go back to the crack repairs and distress the new finish to make it look like nothing ever happened.

This classic guitar looks great again and is ready for many more years of music.