Post Type Archives: SWD

Polymers are plastics used for Injection molding, thermoforming, extrusion, casting and film or sheets. Below are the common plastics used from guitar pickups to accessories. ABS: is a thermoplastic with good impact resistance and compressive strength. Acetals: are thermoplastics with applications similar to nylons. Has high impact resistance and ultraviolet radiation causes surface damage. Acrylics:…

Case hardening is a term that is used to describe a process in which changes the composition of the surface layers of ferrous alloys a hardened surface layer can be produced to made the surface harder and used on many bridges such as Telecasters, Precision Bass, Jazz Bass and others such as neck and control…

The plate used on the bottom of a Telecaster is made of a cold rolled steel and is copper plated to help keep the plate from rusting. The copper plating also makes it easier to solder the ground wire.

The brass bridge saddles standard on older Broadcaster’s, No-Casters, Telecaster’s and Esquire’s used a 5/16″ in diameter free cutting brass cut to the desired length and tapped 6/32″ in 3 places. The two vertical tapped holes are for height adjustment and the horizontally tapped hole is used for the string intonation. The early saddles were…

Some of the common head types are: Flat, Flat Undercut, Oval, Oval Undercut, Round, Fillister, Pan, Binding, Truss, Hex, Sems, Hex Washer, Socket Cap, Hex Cap, Elevator, Wood, Dowel, Stud, Slotted Set, Threaded Rod, Socket Set. The head of the screws can be: Socket, Hex, Slotted, One Way, Pozidrive, Phillips, Torx, Square. The most common…

There are many types of screws used in popular instruments and it would take a dozen pages to list them all. Most guitar and bass companies use the same types of hardware. Instruments can become hard to repair when you can’t find components that fit or are the same values. I wish instruments builders would…

A “bezel” or mounting ring as it is commonly called is a ring or surround that is used to mount the pickup for height adjustment. Mounting rings are very common in Gibson instruments and allow you to balance the output from neck, middle or bridge pickups. I usually adjust the pickups by first pressing the…

When players see a pickup with a higher DC resistance they automatically think the pickup will be much hotter than others. This is true at times but with steel guitars, the placement of the pickup close to the bridge turns the hotter pickup into a sustaining pickup with a nice tone. My friends at George…

The easiest way that I found was to carefully wrap masking tape around the edge of the knob to protect it from scratching. I carefully held it in a small hand vice and took my soldering iron and carefully held it to the metal shaft. As the shaft would heat up and softened the plastic…

I would radius the bottom of the mounting ring to the same radius as the arch in the body or close to it. I would use a piece of sand paper face up using an object with a similar radius. I don’t like using the top of the guitar because you have to remove most…