This man definitely understands the anatomy of archtops like no other... well appreciated videos and posts...Thank You very much for keeping tradition and sharing... sincerely, JD
I think there was a scene in that little New Yorker documentary where Jimmy was building something for Jim Hall. For fret positioning he used a homemade Incra rule to drill two little marks on opposite sides of the center line as a visual guide for his backsaw...
Agreed, though the shot is so quick, it's hard to know exactly what he did. I'll have to go back & look, but the evidence I have shows only one dimple.
In "Making The New Yorker Part One"(around 12:29 mark) there is visible one mark in the midle of the fretboard. I remember you mentioned this video on your channel about year ago. I found it recently and watched it at least 10 times since ;)
@@podfuk I think it may be more around to 9:58 mark or so on that documentary. It's a bit grainy, but I think I see the marks for sure. Good eye Mr. Woodford!
14:57 Uses a tuning fork. Now THAT is Old School. And, I just gave up my flip-phone. Thank you Ken for making me feel young by using my Snark. Gosh I like this guy!
I wish I would’ve found these tutorials before my first leveling and dressing. I got it done but geeez. Could’ve been better,lol. You can actually see how much pressure he’s using and isn’t just rushing through things. The “marker technique” is fine but without experience, you go thru the mark really quickly and still have a long way to go. You realize it’s only good for very light touch ups. Leveling requires a lot more material to be taken off. It’s more evident in these videos. These are the best free tutorials I’ve found yet.
Thanks Ken I really appreciate you sharing your experience Even in this video there was a whole bunch of things I hadn't seen before and I've watched a hell of a lot of UA-cam videos
This video is criminally underviewed! At least for the moment a master wood worker, surrounded by tools, is not using a capo for measuring neck relief and instead resorts to some unorthodox techniques. Priceless...
how on earth does this channel have less than 7k subscribers?! Really looking forward to the leveling file video. I learn so much every time Mr. Parker talks about his tool making work.
Thanks. Fretting precision can be achieved in lots of ways. I've done so much of it that over the years, and I've tried a jillion methods. I've learned lots of things from other repair folks. As a repair person, it's really worth leaning in on efficiency/accuracy with everything you've got, as it's likely to take up most of your work hours, no matter how good you get at it! If you persist and can figure out how to achieve 100% fretwork that stays put, you can really stand tall, because the sad truth is that many who claim expertise fall short. Too bad PLEK machines aren't available for short $ at LOWE'S, but that would take all the fun out of achieving excellence!
Back in the 70s I bought a fret leveling system, from Thomas Ginex. It was an aluminum plate with to raised bumps. You jacked the strings up like you are doing with the Sharpie and worked under the strings at tension like this. You turned it over and the two bumps rounded over the frets! These days I do this using a cabinet card scraper.
David! Thank you for this. I, too bought this system in 1973ish? and forgot the "Thomas Ginex" name, but thanks to you I can give proper credit. The methods I show here are directly descended from his cool, inexpensive tool and the excellent instructions, even featuring photographs of the tool working on a big old D'Angelico just to show you who's boss!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 Hey Ken, that’s very cool! I see this product was reintroduced a few years back. Their website seems to be gone now. By the way, I met you at the A.S.I.A. Symposium in PA back in (I think) ‘95 when you gave the lecture on developing the Fly. Later we chatted outside for about 45 minutes. It was the highlight of the weekend. :)
Hip hip hooray some one else that uses the string on technique for final leveling I use diamond file plates attached to plastic backing substrate. Ken,there is a Japanese design that uses an aluminum T extrusion and the sand paper is adhered to top of the straight edge while the right angle center strip is slid between the stings allowing the string's to stay in tension while leveling.Have you seen that?
Nope, but a good idea. At your local hardware store you can get some light section angle aluminum that is very accurate, and performs just as well, or you could 2 side tape two of 'em back to back and make your own "T". I like the big plates I use, as the sandpaper wears out in 2 shakes, and enough already with the bitty little precious tools, we need to get this done and move on to something funner.
Its always fascinating to watch folks with decades of experience level frets with simple tools rather than yet another high-dollar specialty product from StewMac. While I love my StewMac leveling beams I think I get overly concerned with accuracy and using a tool that makes it less likely that I can sand a problem into the neck rather than fixing the issue that got the guitar on the bench on the first place. But when you've done the task 1000 times your technique is as good as any special tool could ever be for achieving the same result.
Hi Ken, thank you so much for the invaluable tips! Won't using a flat and wide block to aggressively sand radiused frets leave them lower in the middle as they relate to the fingerboard? Are you simply following the contour of the board by applying varied pressure throughout?
I guess I didn't explain this well enough. Although the block is flat, you guide it so as to create/follow the conical surface of the frets and fingerboard. Sadly, curved blocks are sold for this purpose, but they're wrongly applied here, because they generate a cylindrical surface, which is incorrect. It's a bit of a challenge to get this motion just right, just another one of those things that takes time to become second nature.
All of the archtoppery videos are really helpfull and motivating. I really want to improve my fretting/crowning techniques and really needed a video like this. Have a question, do you think that buying a planner's knife say 18'' it's a good substitute for a straight edge?? I'm from Chile and we don't have many options to buy these tools and the prices are really hi. Thanks for every thing
Good question, there is no substitute for a truly straight edge. Even at Parker Guitars, wherre we had a tooling budget, I'm such a cheapskate, we would buy a whole bunch of precision ground tool steel bars, (not precise enough, as supplied), clamp them in a stack, and work on them by various filing and sanding means to get them all straight. Two straight edges won't check one another, you must have at least three, if you get what I'm saying. Make your own tools, and you'll add muscle to your skillset while probably getting better tools than you can buy.
Another great video and insight to the mind of Jimmy D’Aquisto. That fret location discrepancy, is it because every single fretboard was measured and cut individually without use of any templates or jigs?
I wonder if you could comment on whether allowing the fretboard to float after the heel, like a violin fingerboard, is helpful to prevent movement of the neck from distorting the fret board. Ive often wondered why violin design incorporates that feature but you don’t see it as often on guitars.
Really good question. Although some guitars escape the neck/body distortion you mention, many are compromised or even disabled by the combined bending of the body and the common "kink" in the neck where the neck shape becomes the heel. These two predictable distortions often conspire to make a neck reset necessary. Sadly, in most Archtop designs the fingerboards are bonded to the top, usually with a neck extension spacer between them, and are Extremely Challenging to remove. The violin family employs a simple and serviceable neck joint that has proved itself over centuries. Here's my design solution to this important intersection... kenparkerarchtops.com/brownie-gallery
As you said it's easy to see where this bridge should go - but Jimmy put 2 scratch marks with an awl on the top of my guitar in front of the thumb wheels where the bridge is supposed to go incase you have to take it off- just line up the front of the bridge with the scratch marks-- does this guitar have them?
Seasoned eyes appreciate great lighting! Kinda neet that you “get” to work on your mentors build. Regular mill file with a custom grip? Is your lack of covering everything with tape the result of thousands of hours of repair resultant in muscle memory assuring it unnecessary? For your new builds, have you found fret wire that is reasonably consistent with tanged Fly material? Have read many comments about your work, and would like to pass along a brief observation, the camera operator should get an award for the skills of chasing you around the shop, keeping things in focus. Kudos Mr. ( or Ms.) camera person! Another fine example of a highly skilled craftsman at play.
Oh, and if you don't slip, you don't need tape, which is hardly a guarantee of Getting out of Jail Free anyway. Stiff cardboard works better when things are super tight and seem vulnerable.
Ken, I have a taper guage (INSIZE 4630-1E) that allows you to measure the relief under the straight edge. Do you have something similar? I don't like to rely totaly on visual at my age.
Been at it so long, I tuned into these little slices of light under the string many years ago. Taper gauges are great, but how many arms do you have? I got but two, and feel challenged all the time.
On Archtops, the neck is angled backwards. Is there a backward neck angle that would be just right to avoid "neck creep" or is it unavoidable? I don't know if bowed string instruments like the violin avoid neck creep or not with their neck angle. I find that the backward neck angle on Archtops actually makes them easier to play.
Angle is unrelated to creep in any important way. Creep is just the gradual lengthening of a material under a tensile load, and the only way to avoid it is either to use a material that doesn't creep significantly (carbon fiber and high strength epoxy will do just fine), or make a full time commitment to air guitar and forget about using strings.
I’ve never heard anyone talk about the crown of a fret being a factor in getting good intonation. So I’m just wondering if you do a fret level without re-crowning are you effectively changing location of the edge of the front and therefore changing the length of the string that is vibrating? I suppose… as everyone knows, guitars are always a little bit out of tune so the differences in microns may make no difference at all.
It's just enough to make some of us crazy, so yes, it does matter, and I remember the gobsmack the day I realized what was going on with this. Real answer is that having accepted that guitar intonation can never be perfect, let's not let another sneaky compounding error make it worse than it needs to be!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440, thank you for your response. I’ve been watching a lot of your videos lately, and just marveling at your approach to life and craft. I mean we all have the same 24 hours in the day. But it seems like you’ve made very wise decisions from a very young age about learning how to interact deeply and directly with the material world. First principles thinking. Have you ever checked out any of those crazy fretboards are compensated for intonation? So he’s a mind blowing idea. Maybe not in that mind blowing. I think was Irving Berlin who basically can only play in the key of C. So here at transposing piano. I know sometimes guitar players will set their tuning in such a way as to work with in a given key. Can you imagine a guitar with a magically moving fretboard that would move the freight wire back-and-forth to Internet properly for a given key. It would be like having one of those Gibson guitars with the Robo-tuners. Except the fine tuning will be done on the fretboard by moving frets. Of course will be easier to imagine just having different guitar set up and just changing them. I think that’s what they used to do in Sonic Youth. I have a bunch of guitars tune to different wacky tunings and then just change guitars.
That copper strip would serve as an electrical "bond" between the 6 strings, so no one string has a different potential than any other... Not sure what benefit there would be to ground them since they don't have any direct contact with the pickup...
Correct, and I agree there's no grounding benefit. It seems that Jimmy was trying out some new things while wiring this guitar. One might guess that maybe he changed his mind mid-project and decided that a string ground wasn't needed? In the immortal words of Fats Waller, "One never knows, do One?"
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 There are a lot of different techniques for leveling frets. The newer technique uses the long 16" sanding beams but I bet the way they used to do it 50 years ago with a regular 8" file was probably better! I've done both and didn't do any better with the long sanding beam. Pleking is the wave of the future and there are going to be less and less manual leveling in the coming years. Thanks for the reply, it's an honor!
By the way, the addition to your dial indicator is almost exactly identical to the drum gadget “DrumDial.” You might have already seen it. It’s just a dial indicator with an aluminum base instead, and has a clip to offset a distance from the tension rods on a drum head to give a ballpark check for tension around the perimeter. Your mod is better (and probably didn’t cost $100 for just an additional a piece of round stock) because the protrusion of the tip is shorter and more suited for this application.
You speak of common repair needs in an uncommonly nuanced manner. I see very bad fretwork all the time. As you’ve shown, it is only the last part of a job involving, at least for solid bodied guitars, the entire instrument. The set of the neck, the string gauge, rod tension, and to a very high degree of accuracy the SHAPE of the action, which involves many measurements across and up and down the neck, and is anything but flat - these things make a guitar ready for fretwork. Many of these are ignored and as a result, a guitar is rendered all but unplayable, a real shame. Armed with these brilliant videos of yours, Ken, we at least stand a chance of weeding out the dabblers and incompetents from this high-skill work.
Wow, great! It's true that the condition of the neck and fret tops is critical, and nearly always misunderstood, it seems. We can get along with "good enough" in lots of areas, but precision fretwork isn't one of them. As a repairman for many years, I heard plenty of heartbreaking stories from customers who permanently injured themselves in the pursuit of excellence. It's one of the primary reasons that I wanted to take the chance to create a guitar company twas to have a shot at routinely fulfilling the promise of a playable guitar. It doesn't seem too much to ask, but the neck is a real challenge, one that I'm exploring on the channel right now. I hope to be able to move the needle in the right direction. Thanks for your support!
In the previous video, I checked the frets heights with a shop-made dial guage tool, and found that the frets near the end of the fingerboard that were "in the way" happened to be .004 - .005" (.1mm) too tall. What happened was that when this offending material was filed away, every fret ended up being .030" +,- .002", which is quite some testimony to Jimmy's excellent work, and the stability of this guitar! It's important to remember that removing 4 or .005" from a group of frets in the second octave really is a lot of material removal, just because the frets are so close together, right? Metal cuts slowly by hand, even with a sharp file, and I get that it looks like a lot is being removed, but that's why it's so handy to have a quick, accurate way to measure the fret heights. One more wrinkle, the frets in the second octave get used in a very different way than the frets closer to the nut. These upper notes are unlikely to be bent very often, and for most players, are occasionally used, so that even if these upper frets were a bit on the low side, even .020" (.5mm) high, they would probably work just fine for most of us.
This man definitely understands the anatomy of archtops like no other... well appreciated videos and posts...Thank You very much for keeping tradition and sharing... sincerely, JD
Thanks, JD, color me obsessed.
I think there was a scene in that little New Yorker documentary where Jimmy was building something for Jim Hall. For fret positioning he used a homemade Incra rule to drill two little marks on opposite sides of the center line as a visual guide for his backsaw...
Agreed, though the shot is so quick, it's hard to know exactly what he did. I'll have to go back & look, but the evidence I have shows only one dimple.
In "Making The New Yorker Part One"(around 12:29 mark) there is visible one mark in the midle of the fretboard. I remember you mentioned this video on your channel about year ago. I found it recently and watched it at least 10 times since ;)
@@podfuk I haven't watched it in several years. It would be interesting to know if the misplacement is common or a one-off accident.
@@podfuk I think it may be more around to 9:58 mark or so on that documentary. It's a bit grainy, but I think I see the marks for sure. Good eye Mr. Woodford!
Ted! It doesn't surprise me that you'd be hanging around in such lascivious neighborhoods 😊
WOW, just full of great tips. Looking forward to part two and the crowning!
Coming soon!
Thank you for this video. I love seeing your insight on setups. Making it is one thing, but making it playable is another skill set. Thanks again Ken.
Glad it was helpful!
That was wonderful, Mr. Parker! Thanks for sharing your wisdom - looking forward to the next step! 👍
Glad you enjoyed it!
thanks again for sharing your process on this, and that fret file seems like a simple must have.
I'll get to this important tool in a Riff, and show y'all how to put one together sometime soon.
Loving these closeups of a guitar maker I'll probably never get to play and the expertise you are working on it with. Thanks for inviting us along.
Welcome!
Superb presentation on the Arch top guitar really enjoyed it.
Thanks! What fun.
14:57 Uses a tuning fork. Now THAT is Old School. And, I just gave up my flip-phone. Thank you Ken for making me feel young by using my Snark. Gosh I like this guy!
Tuning fork I bought in Manny's in 1974. A 440 Has aged well.
Great video as usual Ken. Now I'm looking forward to see how you recrown the frets ! Have a beaufiful day
Coming soon!
I wish I would’ve found these tutorials before my first leveling and dressing. I got it done but geeez. Could’ve been better,lol. You can actually see how much pressure he’s using and isn’t just rushing through things. The “marker technique” is fine but without experience, you go thru the mark really quickly and still have a long way to go. You realize it’s only good for very light touch ups. Leveling requires a lot more material to be taken off. It’s more evident in these videos. These are the best free tutorials I’ve found yet.
The secret to this is just many repetitions, like most things! No rushing is a good start!
Thanks Ken I really appreciate you sharing your experience Even in this video there was a whole bunch of things I hadn't seen before and I've watched a hell of a lot of UA-cam videos
Glad it's working for ya!
What a beautiful guitar!
It really is!
This video is criminally underviewed! At least for the moment a master wood worker, surrounded by tools, is not using a capo for measuring neck relief and instead resorts to some unorthodox techniques. Priceless...
Orthodoxy is overrated.
It's only like two or three days old.......🤔
Inspiring; thank you Ken.
My pleasure!
how on earth does this channel have less than 7k subscribers?! Really looking forward to the leveling file video. I learn so much every time Mr. Parker talks about his tool making work.
Thanks! Tell your friends!
Clever technic's really cool man!
Thanks. Fretting precision can be achieved in lots of ways. I've done so much of it that over the years, and I've tried a jillion methods. I've learned lots of things from other repair folks. As a repair person, it's really worth leaning in on efficiency/accuracy with everything you've got, as it's likely to take up most of your work hours, no matter how good you get at it! If you persist and can figure out how to achieve 100% fretwork that stays put, you can really stand tall, because the sad truth is that many who claim expertise fall short.
Too bad PLEK machines aren't available for short $ at LOWE'S, but that would take all the fun out of achieving excellence!
Love that goose-neck lamp!!
5 colors, 5 intensities, I wish it were a bit brighter, but for now, they're all over the shop. Amazon, natch.
Back in the 70s I bought a fret leveling system, from Thomas Ginex. It was an aluminum plate with to raised bumps. You jacked the strings up like you are doing with the Sharpie and worked under the strings at tension like this. You turned it over and the two bumps rounded over the frets!
These days I do this using a cabinet card scraper.
David! Thank you for this. I, too bought this system in 1973ish? and forgot the "Thomas Ginex" name, but thanks to you I can give proper credit.
The methods I show here are directly descended from his cool, inexpensive tool and the excellent instructions, even featuring photographs of the tool working on a big old D'Angelico just to show you who's boss!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 Hey Ken, that’s very cool! I see this product was reintroduced a few years back. Their website seems to be gone now.
By the way, I met you at the A.S.I.A. Symposium in PA back in (I think) ‘95 when you gave the lecture on developing the Fly. Later we chatted outside for about 45 minutes. It was the highlight of the weekend. :)
Great setup class!!! Thanks!
You're so welcome!
Thank you Ken, great!!
My pleasure!
Hip hip hooray some one else that uses the string on technique for final leveling I use diamond file plates attached to plastic backing substrate.
Ken,there is a Japanese design that uses an aluminum T extrusion and the sand paper is adhered to top of the straight edge while the
right angle center strip is slid between the stings allowing the string's to stay in tension while leveling.Have you seen that?
Nope, but a good idea. At your local hardware store you can get some light section angle aluminum that is very accurate, and performs just as well, or you could 2 side tape two of 'em back to back and make your own "T".
I like the big plates I use, as the sandpaper wears out in 2 shakes, and enough already with the bitty little precious tools, we need to get this done and move on to something funner.
Its always fascinating to watch folks with decades of experience level frets with simple tools rather than yet another high-dollar specialty product from StewMac. While I love my StewMac leveling beams I think I get overly concerned with accuracy and using a tool that makes it less likely that I can sand a problem into the neck rather than fixing the issue that got the guitar on the bench on the first place. But when you've done the task 1000 times your technique is as good as any special tool could ever be for achieving the same result.
After you've tried everything, it usually seems that the simple way proves best.
Hi Ken, thank you so much for the invaluable tips! Won't using a flat and wide block to aggressively sand radiused frets leave them lower in the middle as they relate to the fingerboard? Are you simply following the contour of the board by applying varied pressure throughout?
I guess I didn't explain this well enough. Although the block is flat, you guide it so as to create/follow the conical surface of the frets and fingerboard. Sadly, curved blocks are sold for this purpose, but they're wrongly applied here, because they generate a cylindrical surface, which is incorrect.
It's a bit of a challenge to get this motion just right, just another one of those things that takes time to become second nature.
Good tip with you cross filing technique
Double Diagonal Rules! All sorts of surfaces can be massaged like this, and you can see your accuracy by the evenness of the cross pattern.
All of the archtoppery videos are really helpfull and motivating. I really want to improve my fretting/crowning techniques and really needed a video like this. Have a question, do you think that buying a planner's knife say 18'' it's a good substitute for a straight edge?? I'm from Chile and we don't have many options to buy these tools and the prices are really hi. Thanks for every thing
Good question, there is no substitute for a truly straight edge. Even at Parker Guitars, wherre we had a tooling budget, I'm such a cheapskate, we would buy a whole bunch of precision ground tool steel bars, (not precise enough, as supplied), clamp them in a stack, and work on them by various filing and sanding means to get them all straight. Two straight edges won't check one another, you must have at least three, if you get what I'm saying. Make your own tools, and you'll add muscle to your skillset while probably getting better tools than you can buy.
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 Will try to make some new tools thanks for the advice
Another great video and insight to the mind of Jimmy D’Aquisto. That fret location discrepancy, is it because every single fretboard was measured and cut individually without use of any templates or jigs?
More to come
I wonder if you could comment on whether allowing the fretboard to float after the heel, like a violin fingerboard, is helpful to prevent movement of the neck from distorting the fret board. Ive often wondered why violin design incorporates that feature but you don’t see it as often on guitars.
Really good question.
Although some guitars escape the neck/body distortion you mention, many are compromised or even disabled by the combined bending of the body and the common "kink" in the neck where the neck shape becomes the heel. These two predictable distortions often conspire to make a neck reset necessary. Sadly, in most Archtop designs the fingerboards are bonded to the top, usually with a neck extension spacer between them, and are Extremely Challenging to remove.
The violin family employs a simple and serviceable neck joint that has proved itself over centuries.
Here's my design solution to this important intersection...
kenparkerarchtops.com/brownie-gallery
Excellent :) That’s weird that the frets are that off, even if he made his fretboards without a fret template.
I'll dig in on how & why, it's a worthwhile story, and food for thought.
Hadn't noticed the Elephant until you pointed it out!? Perhaps it was just for playing campfire chords
This will be explored, so stay tuned.
As you said it's easy to see where this bridge should go - but Jimmy put 2 scratch marks with an awl on the top of my guitar in front of the thumb wheels where the bridge is supposed to go incase you have to take it off- just line up the front of the bridge with the scratch marks-- does this guitar have them?
Hey Frank, I've seen these marks on some other of Jimmy's guitars, but they got left off of this masterpiece.
Seasoned eyes appreciate great lighting! Kinda neet that you “get” to work on your mentors build. Regular mill file with a custom grip? Is your lack of covering everything with tape the result of thousands of hours of repair resultant in muscle memory assuring it unnecessary? For your new builds, have you found fret wire that is reasonably consistent with tanged Fly material? Have read many comments about your work, and would like to pass along a brief observation, the camera operator should get an award for the skills of chasing you around the shop, keeping things in focus. Kudos Mr. ( or Ms.) camera person! Another fine example of a highly skilled craftsman at play.
Thanks so much for your kind words. I LOVE the EVO wire you can buy from Jescar. Since 2005 I've used .090" X .055". Accept no substitutes.
Oh, and if you don't slip, you don't need tape, which is hardly a guarantee of Getting out of Jail Free anyway. Stiff cardboard works better when things are super tight and seem vulnerable.
Ken, I have a taper guage (INSIZE 4630-1E) that allows you to measure the relief under the straight edge. Do you have something similar? I don't like to rely totaly on visual at my age.
Been at it so long, I tuned into these little slices of light under the string many years ago. Taper gauges are great, but how many arms do you have? I got but two, and feel challenged all the time.
Have you seen the Jimmy D'AQuisto short documentary ?
Only a bazillion times. Love it. Hope someday someone comes up with a better copy. Of course the station's is long gone.
On Archtops, the neck is angled backwards. Is there a backward neck angle that would be just right to avoid "neck creep" or is it unavoidable? I don't know if bowed string instruments like the violin avoid neck creep or not with their neck angle. I find that the backward neck angle on Archtops actually makes them easier to play.
Angle is unrelated to creep in any important way. Creep is just the gradual lengthening of a material under a tensile load, and the only way to avoid it is either to use a material that doesn't creep significantly (carbon fiber and high strength epoxy will do just fine), or make a full time commitment to air guitar and forget about using strings.
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 Thanks for clarifying that.
I’ve never heard anyone talk about the crown of a fret being a factor in getting good intonation. So I’m just wondering if you do a fret level without re-crowning are you effectively changing location of the edge of the front and therefore changing the length of the string that is vibrating? I suppose… as everyone knows, guitars are always a little bit out of tune so the differences in microns may make no difference at all.
It's just enough to make some of us crazy, so yes, it does matter, and I remember the gobsmack the day I realized what was going on with this. Real answer is that having accepted that guitar intonation can never be perfect, let's not let another sneaky compounding error make it worse than it needs to be!
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440, thank you for your response. I’ve been watching a lot of your videos lately, and just marveling at your approach to life and craft. I mean we all have the same 24 hours in the day. But it seems like you’ve made very wise decisions from a very young age about learning how to interact deeply and directly with the material world. First principles thinking.
Have you ever checked out any of those crazy fretboards are compensated for intonation?
So he’s a mind blowing idea. Maybe not in that mind blowing. I think was Irving Berlin who basically can only play in the key of C. So here at transposing piano. I know sometimes guitar players will set their tuning in such a way as to work with in a given key. Can you imagine a guitar with a magically moving fretboard that would move the freight wire back-and-forth to Internet properly for a given key. It would be like having one of those Gibson guitars with the Robo-tuners. Except the fine tuning will be done on the fretboard by moving frets. Of course will be easier to imagine just having different guitar set up and just changing them. I think that’s what they used to do in Sonic Youth. I have a bunch of guitars tune to different wacky tunings and then just change guitars.
That copper strip would serve as an electrical "bond" between the 6 strings, so no one string has a different potential than any other... Not sure what benefit there would be to ground them since they don't have any direct contact with the pickup...
Correct, and I agree there's no grounding benefit. It seems that Jimmy was trying out some new things while wiring this guitar. One might guess that maybe he changed his mind mid-project and decided that a string ground wasn't needed? In the immortal words of Fats Waller, "One never knows, do One?"
Hello Ken. I am an experienced luthier looking for work. Are you hiring by any chance?
Please email me your work experience.
What is the approximate value of that instrument?
It's not for sale, but maybe $60 - 75K ish?
I'll be happy to carve a great guitar for you if you can't find one you like.
Ken, we had a quick chat about the muppet show at the Montreal guitar show. You're a gentleman, and a master Luthier.
Gotta love those Muppets, kinda like happy Yodas. Cheers!
You don't believe in the long 16" sanding beams?
Pretty bad idea in my opinion, but to be fair, I guess I'll need to expand on these techniques in a film.
@@kenparkerarchtoppery9440 There are a lot of different techniques for leveling frets. The newer technique uses the long 16" sanding beams but I bet the way they used to do it 50 years ago with a regular 8" file was probably better! I've done both and didn't do any better with the long sanding beam. Pleking is the wave of the future and there are going to be less and less manual leveling in the coming years. Thanks for the reply, it's an honor!
By the way, the addition to your dial indicator is almost exactly identical to the drum gadget “DrumDial.” You might have already seen it.
It’s just a dial indicator with an aluminum base instead, and has a clip to offset a distance from the tension rods on a drum head to give a ballpark check for tension around the perimeter.
Your mod is better (and probably didn’t cost $100 for just an additional a piece of round stock) because the protrusion of the tip is shorter and more suited for this application.
News to me, but indicating is universal, so no surprise. All you need is a close fitting hole in a piece of something, and you're in.
You speak of common repair needs in an uncommonly nuanced manner. I see very bad fretwork all the time. As you’ve shown, it is only the last part of a job involving, at least for solid bodied guitars, the entire instrument.
The set of the neck, the string gauge, rod tension, and to a very high degree of accuracy the SHAPE of the action, which involves many measurements across and up and down the neck, and is anything but flat - these things make a guitar ready for fretwork.
Many of these are ignored and as a result, a guitar is rendered all but unplayable, a real shame. Armed with these brilliant videos of yours, Ken, we at least stand a chance of weeding out the dabblers and incompetents from this high-skill work.
Wow, great! It's true that the condition of the neck and fret tops is critical, and nearly always misunderstood, it seems. We can get along with "good enough" in lots of areas, but precision fretwork isn't one of them. As a repairman for many years, I heard plenty of heartbreaking stories from customers who permanently injured themselves in the pursuit of excellence. It's one of the primary reasons that I wanted to take the chance to create a guitar company twas to have a shot at routinely fulfilling the promise of a playable guitar. It doesn't seem too much to ask, but the neck is a real challenge, one that I'm exploring on the channel right now. I hope to be able to move the needle in the right direction.
Thanks for your support!
you seam to be taking a lot off the frets
In the previous video, I checked the frets heights with a shop-made dial guage tool, and found that the frets near the end of the fingerboard that were "in the way" happened to be .004 - .005" (.1mm) too tall. What happened was that when this offending material was filed away, every fret ended up being .030" +,- .002", which is quite some testimony to Jimmy's excellent work, and the stability of this guitar!
It's important to remember that removing 4 or .005" from a group of frets in the second octave really is a lot of material removal, just because the frets are so close together, right? Metal cuts slowly by hand, even with a sharp file, and I get that it looks like a lot is being removed, but that's why it's so handy to have a quick, accurate way to measure the fret heights.
One more wrinkle, the frets in the second octave get used in a very different way than the frets closer to the nut. These upper notes are unlikely to be bent very often, and for most players, are occasionally used, so that even if these upper frets were a bit on the low side, even .020" (.5mm) high, they would probably work just fine for most of us.
weight: /wāt/
height: /hīt/
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