A customer brought this guitar into the shop that he had found while working out in Texas (if memory serves me right). At some point in its lifetime, someone decided to swap out the stock licensed Floyd Rose hardware for Original Floyd Rose hardware. The problem with this was that the factory installed hardware used a different screw spacing for the locking nut and smaller sized bushings than the Original Floyd Rose. The original hardware was long gone, and the owner was fully committed to swapping out the hardware. We looked the guitar over and decided that a full setup would be the best course of action, while also removing some fret sprout, leveling and crowning the frets, and finishing with a good polishing. This course of action, along with all the improvements to the hardware would turn this beast into the best playing guitar possible.
I get a good measurement of the nut shelf width and call the good folks at Floyd Rose and order an R8 nut. The R3 is the correct width, but is too tall to give an acceptable height at the first fret. The R8 solves this by bringing the string slots lower to the fretboard.
Next, I carefully strap the guitar into my Erlewine neck jig and set about getting the truss rod adjusted in order to get the neck as flat as possible to begin a fret level.
Upon close inspection we see that while we have minor divot formation, the crowns of the frets have been removed evenly from the 1st through the 15th frets. My course of action will be to level all frets to the same height in relation to the fingerboard and give each a nice narrow crown.
Next, I move onto the business of rotating the guitar into playing position, and checking the neck for straightness with a notched straightedge. I adjust the truss rod until I get the straightest possible adjustment, zero out my dials to the back of the neck and flip the guitar back into working position. I adjust headstock and nut pressure to simulate the pull of the strings against the neck. I make careful adjustments until both gauges are back or within a thousandth or two of zero. In the case of this guitar, I'm able to get both at zero.
I begin the leveling process with a medium grit sandpaper taped to various length 12" radius blocks, and carefully and uniformly remove the wear from the tops of the frets, which I then check with a flat straight edge (for some reason I didn't take a picture of this step, my apologies). After this, I go back and look at the individual fret heights. You will notice that even though the tops are level, the heights are different from the 1st to 22nd fret with the frets being taller farther up the neck. This is the result of fall away that was planed into the fingerboard to prevent fret out in the higher positions of the fingerboard. I also sand a bit of fall away into the higher frets as well, measuring at about a .0025" reduction in height. I'm all about preserving as much fret as possible while removing all the wear from the fret and ensuring a good even surface to file the crown to.
The next step is crowning the frets. I apply tape to the fingerboard to protect it from my files and ensure that the filing only occurs on the frets themselves and not the Indian rosewood fingerboard. I file consistent crowns along every fret, checking my work under magnification. You may notice some rough spots in the crowns where the metal was removed from the shoulders of the frets. The next stage, polishing, works to remove those burrs and brings the frets to a mirror polish for effortless bends and smooth slides.
The next step, as mentioned above, is actually made up of about 17 steps, or courses, of sanding media to remove any and all scratches. As you can see above, the process gradually brings a high quality shine to the frets. This is key to any good fret job. This step, while boring and somewhat tedious, is my favorite of the entire process. When done, I remove the tape and admire the shine. This will not be the last of the polishing process, however, as the final polish uses felt wheels and jewelers rouge. But first I have to get the nut straightened out.
In order to get this guitar playing again, we have to get our nut mounted. The nut that was in place when the guitar was brought in measured 1/8" away from the end of the fingerboard, creating an unsightly gap and wrecking the scale length and intonation. This required plugging the holes from the factory mounted nut. I use bamboo dowels in these situations most of the time. It is very strong wood and is very climate tolerable. I measure the diameter of the hole with a pin gauge to establish the size I will need to turn the dowel down to. I chuck up the dowel in the drill press, and use sandpaper to remove the material. Once down to a size that allows a snug fit with an area to allow a glue bond, Tite Bond Quick and Thick is used to glue the plugs in, and I flush cut the ends and carefully level the tops with a chisel. Next, I move on to drilling the bushing holes to expand them from 8mm (which was the factory bushing size) up to 10mm, which is Floyd Rose Original spec. I do this on the drill press in the woodshop downstairs which is big enough to accommodate this set neck guitar. After drilling the holes to the correct size, I use the large drill press to push the bushings into the newly drilled stud holes, nice and tight.
Floating trem routs that allow the bridge to be pulled up and down are notorious for tuning and leveling issues. With that in mind, I suggested to the customer that we install a floating trem stop to establish a zero point, while still being able to pull up on the bar and raise the pitch and not have to worry about the trem not returning to that zero point. Unfortunately, the bridge pickup cavity and the spring cavity routs are less than 1/8" from each other, and the screws to secure stop to the spring cavity will not hold, not to mention the risk of screws hitting the bottom side of the bridge pickup. With that in mind, I fashion a block of maple to fit between the cavities and securely hold the stop in place. I chop my stock with a miter saw and bring it to final thickness on the bandsaw. Maple is top choice as this wood will hold up to the tension that the stop will be placed under. I paint the shim with the closest paint I can find to match the cavity (bare wood just doesn't cut it, even if you're not looking at it all the time). I mark out for where I will need to remove the paint, and set about with my trusty scraper, removing the finish to allow for a proper joint between wood surfaces. I then coat the surfaces with epoxy, set into place and clamp overnight. After curing, I touch up the surrounding surfaces with paint to protect the epoxy joint from moisture and humidity and to make for a nice looking job.
Now, with the nut installed and the bridge studs installed, we install strings. Immediately I see that the pickup is too tall. It can not be adjusted any lower without excess adjustment screw length protruding above the pickup ring. To make matters worse, the strings on the treble side are making contact with the pickup, making the guitar unplayable. This will have to be rectified in order to move forward with setting the guitar up.
In the above video you can both hear the bottom of the trem contacting wood when returned to zero position, and you can both see and hear the treble strings touching the pickup.
The reason for the 'knock' or 'bump' that is heard in the video above is the chunk of wood visible on the right hand picture above, and in the center of the photo on the left. If you look carefully, you can see that at some point, someone had attempted to remedy the situation with what looks like maybe a pocket knife or some other dull tool. They then used what appears to be a blue ink pen to cover up the work. The third picture shows what I knew would be the case with the pickup install initially. Bill Lawrence pickups are unusually taller than a standard pickup, and the insulation on the wire harness is exceptionally thicker than most other brands. This, coupled with the shallow rout of the bridge pickup cavity, is the reason this pickup is higher than acceptable. This can be corrected by routing the switch and neck pickup wires around the perimeter of the pickup, and enlarging the channel going from the bridge pickup route into the control cavity. I carefully make these channels to allow ample space for the wiring to clear the pickup and make its way into the cavity where the wiring will be properly terminated. In order to begin this work, I have to disconnect all the wiring from the control cavity, I begin by de-soldering the potentiometers, and because I don't like the placement of the bridge claw ground wire, I drill a small hole at the entrance to the bridge cavity and in the entrance from the neck pickup into the bridge pickup cavity. This allows the bridge ground wire to be moved out from under the Bill Lawrence pickup, where all the room is taken up by the pickup. Finally, after some time spent carefully removing the wood from both the trem and bridge pickup cavities, our pickup will fit, and the collar for the trem arm will clear its respective rout. The pickup and wiring are reinstalled with good solder joints and a neat wiring job. The wire from the Bill Lawrence pickup is too thick to run underneath the pickup without string contact, so the Bill Lawrence is flipped over to allow the wire to run directly into the control cavity channel. People, Dime didn't do this for any "tonal" improvements. Whomever installed his pickup did this because there was no room to install it any other way. Much like his hero, Eddie Van Halen, Dime liked to address questions about things with any range of questionable answers. Goosing the press, I'd call it. Pretty funny stuff if you ask me. Finishing up with the wiring, I go ahead and rewire the output jack with a better quality wire because I'm already in there with a soldering iron and good wire. I can guarantee my wiring but no one else's.
The above photos show the string retainer installed, the pickup height issue resolved and the Floyd Rose sitting at proper zero in relation to the guitar's top. I then move on to removing the light weight original fine tuners and installing the heavier solid unfinished brass tuners. These turn easier than the finished tuners, and give a little more range with the absence of the captive thread found on the original fine tuners.
With a lighter set of 10-52s on the guitar and tuned to concert pitch for a couple of weeks, I've seen no change in neck relief and no twists or turns, and I know that this guitar is now ready (after being unstrung for an extended time) for its owner's preferred gauge and tuning. I proceed to restring with a set of Curt Mangan 10-56 nickel wound strings and tune the guitar to D standard (D-G-C-F-A-D). I then stretch the strings repeatedly until they remain in tune after being stretched, and check the intonation. In this case the 4th string needed some length added to it's scale for proper intonation. From there I move over to my trusty shop amp and lay into my best versions of classic Pantera riffs to check over my work. This is the best part of the job, though it's always the shortest in relation to the other steps. This gives me a chance to play every note on the guitar, making sure that everything plays, sounds and works as it should (especially the Floyd Rose). After making my final determinations based on feel and fit, I move the guitar back to the bench to get my final measurements for both the customer's records and mine.
Using a variety of rulers and gauges I set about getting the measurements that will help both my customer and me understand what the starting point is for the new setup break in. I also double check my final pickup height measurements. I believe in feel, but it helps to measure what you're actually feeling. Quality workmanship starts with accurate measurement of the situation. Quality workmanship ends with accurate measurement of the end result. Every setup I perform gets these measurements on the customer's receipt, and I keep them on record here at the shop.
Lastly, I vacuum the case and place the customer's guitar into it after a final polish and wipe down. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed working on this cool guitar.
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