Burlap and Blues, The Blues Blog

The first thing I did when I set up a guitar or change strings, is inspect it to see what kind of scrapes and dings my instrument has gotten since the last time I changed strings. If my guitar is picked up during a show, I know every scratch on every instrument. I know which ones I created and which ones I did not.

Follow up:

Upon inspection of the instrument there were two cosmetic flaws. The first is a little paint scrape on the headstock. Usually this can be taken care of with a little black fingernail polish.

Since I do not allow my girls to have black fingernail polish it may take a while before I find some. The next blemish it looks like the tone knob was taken off and pried off.

The last thing that was crazy is the way that the bridge was set up. The treble (or high) strings the bridge was almost flush with the body. These strings buzzed when played hard. The bass end (or low) strings were set almost ¾” higher. The bridge was at a whacky level. The bass strings were difficult to depress. The bass strings were hardly picked up by either pickup. It was obvious that the truss rod was not adjusted right with this set up. As I was going to get rid of the strings anyway and put a heaver gauge this was not going to be a problem.

I have to say, this is one of the most interesting guitar setups that I have seen right from the store. Siskel and Ebert would have given it two thumbs down. Maybe one reason this guitar was not selling is that it was practically unplayable.