I found this very wonderful guitar tech on utube who is a little different. I have learned a few things from his experience.

 

Yes, the pickups, they are too noisy.

I must recognize that fender basses, at least the higher level of the Jazz bass are good. But for the same money you can have much better more versatile basses, and not so noisy. There popularity is in great part due to some people thinking that if they buy the same instrument than their adored star they will play the same.. LOL But they forget not only the personality and technique, but the fact that most of these guys are playing vintage Fenders that have been shielded by specialists (with the added cost) to avoid the noise.

A brand like Cort, doing their basses in Korea are offering very good quality for the money. Then, in Europe, you have guys like Adrian Maruszczyk who is making incredible basses for the same price as top en fenders, but much better. And many more, like Sire too, who have partnered with Marcus Miller to make and sell affordable good basses, even though , from them I prefer the M serie to the Fender copies.

 

Last edited: Nov 30, 2017

hi Herr Durr & all other guitarists here you might find these vids interesting or entertaining :

check the channel for more.

 

Treating your fretboard with lemon oil? Just found out apparently Martin does not recommend it.
https://www.martinguitar.com/about/faq/care-parts/

 

Nice DIY on scalloping here. This guy does 14th fret on. I myself prefer 12th fret on. I didn't go as deep as this guy did, and it works great!
I knew Malmsteen did this as that's where I got the idea from. Didn't realize Blackmore did it too.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Scallop-Your-Guitar-Standard-Scallop-Frets-14-21/

 

The Blackmore scallop was the whole fretboard but it was tapered: less on the low E side and deeper on the high E. He said it was easier to play chords this way.

I can't imagine the adjustment playing chords on a fully scalloped fretboard.

 

Linseed oil is what I use, and on all of my acoustics I also oil the bridges. It goes without saying that one should do a thorough cleaning, getting rid of the grime first. And being smart for the long run while loving and respecting your instruments, make sure that they are humidified, leaving them in the case when not playing them. They will surely love you back.

 

@superliquidsunshine The treatment is apparently purely cosmetic with little to no benefit at all, since fretboard woods are chose because of density and natural oils.
The argument is if conditioning wood is so important why not oil the inside of acoustic guitars where the wood is bare?

 

You generally do not need to oil the inside woods of a guitar because most of the time they are not oily woods. Unless you have ebony / rosewood or other oil woods on the sides and they are unfinished and un-sealed which is possible.

At the Martin factory isn't too far from where I am, on a visit I saw one of the luthier's using gold ole' 3-1 penetrating oil on a finger board after cleaning it with naphtha. Which is what i use as well since that's what I was using on violins and mandolins before (without the naphtha though as it attacks the shellac finish on those instruments.)

If you wash your hands before playing and use a decent microfiber cloth to keep things clean afterwards it goes a long way. The natural oils in wood do evaporate but at a much slower speed than people realize. You should only need to oil 2-4 times a year depending on how warm / dry / playing time. Eventually though you will need a re-fret (unless you have SS or EVO gold frets) and a fret-board polish if you really care and the instrument is worth the expense.

 

Mozee answered that question pretty well. I began oiling the fretboards and bridges of my instruments after my guitar tech insisted that I do so to my '92 Roy Noble dreadnought or he would break my legs and take it off me if I didn't treat it like the fine instrument that it is. Humidifying follows suite to keep the body woods from drying out and cracking over time. I have an old Hanika classical that had cracked from this as well as an old parlor size Framus. I beed be extra careful with my Martin D-15M as it has nearly no finish and the entire body is more susseptible to drying. Electric guitars are less fragile to enviornment, but the fretboards still get the oil treatment. Maple fretboards shouldn't be oiled. Some necks need to be oiled if that is how they were originally finished. I have an old first year run ESP Tele made this way.

 

This is interesting:

Always thought the string angle from the nut made absolutely no sense.

I might try pop rivets or screws and the ball end of old strings instead of $50, since I don't care about resale value. The black D'addario ends will work nicely.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 3, 2017

@dragonhill

It works if You have tuning problems because the strings "grip" on the nut, but there are simpler ways to achieve the same.

- lubricating and properly filing the grooves on the nut is a conventional way to solve the problem.

 

@Rhodes Having the strings travel thru the slots sans lateral movement should help even after lubricating.
By 'properly filing the grooves' do you mean compensate for the string angle? Unfortunately not all of us own proper files for nut slots.

 

I assume that buying a set of files for the job would cost less than buying that thing shown in the video.
...besides, with the files, you can fix a lot of guitars, and with that "gadget" You can fix only one guitar ?!? (call it a fix ??? hmmm... I would never mount something like that on my guitars)

Many times, on cheaper guitars, the problem is just the nut material... so replacing the nut is sometimes enough; but hey, every guitar is different, so generalizing on that matter ain't a good idea.

Anyway, I suppose that a lot of folks will find that thing cool, so, why not... from my perspective, it should work... it is just that I don`t like mounting "things" on my axes

 

Last edited: Dec 3, 2017

indeed this seems to be the recommended way to deal with tuning issues related to the nut, especially the G string...
I have a Chinese Ibanez Art with what appears to be a plastic nut.. I suppose the files would work just as well on that material ?

I hope so.. because that G string is a real pain..and I have to adjust my strum and fretting to keep it sounding anywhere near the frequency it should ring at, a little too much attack.. and thwaangggugly, or maybe I should just ditch it for a better instrument

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 3, 2017

@Herr Durr

the cheapest way to fix it is to take the D string and use it as a file on the G slot; but it would be better to buy a proper nut and take a guitar to a luthier if You don`t have the appropriate tools...

Of course, if You have the possibility, a better instrument would make Your life happier, but it all comes down to what you really need...
Do You need a Prestige, a Les Paul, a Strat, or the Art would be fine without the tuning issues ?...

If You think that the Art is fine, than take it to a luthier, spend 50-100 $ and carry on ...a good luthier can make it play like a dream

 

Yes @Herr Durr .. toss the cheap plastic nut a replace it with another harder material like bone, Tusq or even brass. Your guitar will play differently and sound to its potential with better sustain. It doesn't cost too much but the end result is noticable in a good way.

 

+1 on replacing it with a Tusq nut. The black Tusq has a lubricant agent ( I think it's teflon) embedded in the material itself, and works wonders to solve tunning issues (if they're caused but nut problems, obviously).

All my electrics and acoustics are equipped with Tusq. It's the first thing I do when I buy a new guitar. Awesome material.

I love locking tuners as well. Badly installed strings are one of the most common cause of tunning issues. Locking tuners eliminate this variable instantly and, as a plus, it makes changing strings a zillion times faster. I totally recommend them, but don't buy those cheap no-brand ones. Go with Sperzels, Gotoh, Schecter, Grover, etc...

Just these two things (changing the nut and tuners) can massively improve a cheap guitar's playability, assuming that it doesn't have any serious building issue.

The next step is to make a decent shielding, change potentiometers and probably add a "treble bleed" and mess with the tone capacitor values.

Proper shielding can greatly reduce a guitar's noise. It's so easy to do and really works like magic. I have a great shielding paint recipe, which I use all the time: Black water based opaque paint + powdered graphite. It is this simple. Just mix the stuff until you have a consistent goo and paint your guitar's electronics and pickup cavities with it.

Potentiometers also make a huge difference, mostly regarding their taper. If you don't like messing around with volume and tone knobs, that's because you haven't tweaked your pots (and the rest of the circuit). Good pots enable you to take advantage of their whole trajectory, finding different and useful tones all around them. Bad pots and a badly tuned circuit give you just three options: Decent, crap and mud.

A "treble bleed" acts like a compensating equalizer. When you turn down the volume knob, it cleans up real nice without losing brightness. Without a treble bleed, the more you decrease the volume, the more mud you'll get. This is probably the most complicated part, because a treble bleed is nothing but a resistor and a capacitor in series or parallel. There are zillions of potential combinations that you can try before finding one that suits your taste. The good news is that capacitors and resistors are super cheap and if you get one of these alligator clips you can try as many combinations as you want super easily.

The tone capacitor is another really useful tweak. Most of the times, we don't even use the tone knob turned all the way down, right? It's pure mud. Changing the tone capacitor's value will allow you the spread more useful tones all around...Changing the tone capacitor's value is like limiting the range of a a Low Pass filter, so it doesn't go down too low.

A lot of people believe in the myth that the tone capacitor's material make a difference to the tone. There are incredibly expensive NOS capacitors out there for this reason. This is nothing but a myth. The only things that affects the tone in a capacitor is its value and tolerance. Period. The guitar world is filled with this voodoo snake oil stuff. Don't buy into it.

The final step into transforming a cheap guitar into a very decent instrument is to change the pickups, but it should be the last thing you do, because often it isn't even necessary if you have performed these previous tweaks.

 

Last edited: Dec 3, 2017

Tusq is way cool! Bone, fossilized bone or walrus tusk won't work for vegans though. You can also put a little graphite on the nut as well as the bridge to keep everything moving and not snagging. And yes, I have locking Sperzel tuners on my Blade and I believe it makes a world of difference. It is also faster for me during string changes. The Gotoh on my Noble and whatever open backed tuners are on my D-15M work well enough and good.

 

@RMorgan wow.. what you just wrote is something I was hoping to find somewhere in my net searches.. but you put it all together
in one shiny package..and all 21 days before Santa is due... very nice Sir... I can see some light now at the end of this
tuning and tone tunnel... here's to you

Yes it's a cheap guitar.. but I felt it had some potential or I wouldn't have taken it out of the store at all.. let's see
if that process can get me to a regularly useable axe

will check out the Tusq and locking tuner options... the instrument is worth a few extra bucks to see if I can make it shine a bit..