It was a pleasure to meet such a keen, talented and adorable young guitarist! Benny, aged 11, is pictured here with his Mum collecting his competition prize – a Marshall MG50CFX combo amplifier. I am seriously impressed with his guitar skills. He plays as often as he can, and he has a natural ability with the instrument. He tried out a few of my guitars in the workshop, and could even handle a 7 string! Continue reading Young guitarist competition winner

An old mate asked me to service and mod some of his collection. This is about half of it I think and it’s epic. Especially the Epiphone Brent Hinds V – they’re amazing, if you can get your hands on one. The Epiphone V was set up in D standard with 12-60 big boy strings. This amazing LP Standard needed a fret levelling and was setup with 10-52 in E standard. I also removed the chrome pickup covers and cleaned up the wax to reveal black bobbins. Fender P-bass had a Hipshot BT2 installed for that quick drop tune. Also … Continue reading A killer collection

A visit from Ste Hoggart is always great craic, but when he’s armed with a list of printed instructions I start to get anxious. A 3 way guitar pickup transplant, 5 way switching on a single humbucker, adding more switches to a tele and performing (as Ste called it) “a tit carve”. Two humbuckers now have a switch each, for series/parallel/coil split. Series is normal humbucker wiring, giving the full sound. Parallel is like having swtich positions 2 or 4 on a strat, two single coils joined to one output. It’s beefier than a single coil but without the humbucking … Continue reading The Hogman’s tele

A famous guitar landed in the workshop recently and I got very excited as this guy plays for one of my favourite bands. And no, he didn’t visit the workshop, a lucky customer won this guitar in an auction. Can you name the guitarist and the band(s) he plays with? Continue reading A famous guitar

This is deifnitely the most exotic instrument I have worked on. The owner had been promised the sitar by an older gentleman who wanted to pass it on to someone with an interest. Unfortunately the sitar was dropped before the new owner received it, so he brought it to me in a bit of a sorry state. The gourd was cracked, two large splits and was ready to fall apart. The setup was certainly in need of work! The gourd was re-joined and painted. A setup with 18 strings can take a while! Sitar strings come as reels, so the … Continue reading Sitar repair