Jonny Blackwood is the content developer and head honcho @BlackwoodGuitarworks. He's a professional guitarist and guitar tech/ luthier for over 25 years and teaches the fine-art of guitar maintenance & repair through group classes, online articles and his best-selling book titles.
If you missed it, you can read Part 1 here. Refinishing Once the neck has been sanded down with a 220-grit abrasive, it’s time for refinishing. But not before masking off the guitar including the fretboard, headstock and binding. I…
I’ve had this old Tacoma acoustic guitar around the shop for quite some time- it’s already had a headstock repair in the past, but it didn’t hold, unfortunately. You can see the hairline crack in the first few pictures. With…
I’ve been swamped getting this new website functional, and so this announcement is a tad late, albeit a big win for the Blackwood Guitarworks/ Learn-GuitarSetups brand. For all my fellow Canadians, I am happy to announce that Chapters/Indigo now carries…
Another beautiful old “Victoria Label” Larrivee OM10 model arrived in the shop. This one sustained some shipping damage, which fractured the neck. It also had a couple of other issues: a split top and a lifting bridge. That neck break…
So the guitar was playing just fine before winter, but when you picked it up recently to strum out some favourites, it goes buzz buzz buzz. The strings are frapping out all over the place. Nothing but buzz and sadness.…
I received an email the other day asking how to fill stripped pickguard screw holes: …”I have replaced the pickups and pickguard on my guitar so often that some of the pickguard screws won‘t stay in the holes. If I…
For every ten guitars I repair with broken headstocks, nine of them are Gibson Les Pauls. Besides being heavier than the average guitar, they also have a radical headstock angle, which is their weakest point… so, if you drop or…
Guitars are commonly manufactured in climate-controlled plants, usually somewhere at 47%-54% relative humidity. This is the environment it was made to be in and live out its life. If it’s changed, the guitar may not respond well! Winters can be…
These frets have big, deep divots from many hours of playing all over the neck. Fret wear like this can produce fret buzz as well as poor tone and intonation. Frets eventually wear out, and that’s when it’s time for…
A pretty common repair job is to replace a broken, worn, or improperly cut nut on a guitar and bass, although many people are under the false impression that it’s a simple replacement and will just easily “pop into place.”…
