Guitar Fails

[ganzosrevenge]

Re: Guitar Fails

The first time I was reading the "My Les Paul" forum on "how to improve primary tone, I tried to put in 5 springs and screw the claw down a bit. Yup, the claw went further in... but i cracked the stock Fender American block in half. On the bright side, it inspired me to research blocks and I wound up with a WONDERFUL callaham block that really bumps up the mids and highs on my mahogany strat.

What I learned from that experience was that it's better to research higher quality - even if expensive - means of "undoing" the corners that Fender and other "big companies" cut in their manufacturing processes... and it led me to try and turn my strat into a sustain machine.

Other great fails: cable: one end in amp, other end loose... me holding guitar, unplugged end of guitar cable touches strings... ZAP! me: OW @!$%!. That was the last time I did that.

 

[Archer250]

Re: Guitar Fails

I plugged my guitar into the "out" jack of a distortion pedal, and the amp to the "in" jack", and wondered why it was not working

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Guitar Fails

You guys know that Gilmour's whale sounds in Echoes was a Vox wah plugged in backwards right? I knew that story before I got a wah, I may have plugged it in backwards first on purpose!

Speaking of pedals, I got two Bosses and the Wah very early in my "career". Got them all plugged in and jammed... Left it all plugged in. Needless to say that's when I learned that if a pedal is plugged in but off, it's still drawing juice.

On the rewiring front this is pretty good... I bought the Dec/96 Guitar Shop that detailed the wiring of Gilmour's Red Strat. My friend and I spent Christmas break rewiring his knockoff Strat exactly like the diagram. With the stock pickups and pots. Essentially three crappy Strat pickups and three volume controls all in a row. Haha On a positive note it kicked off my guitar modding career!

 

[aleclee]

Re: Guitar Fails

I "leveled" the frets on my first guitar with a hammer. It was nearly 35 years ago so I'm not sure why I opted for that instead of a file.

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: Guitar Fails

I was having real trouble getting the center lug of a CTS pot to solder. (I might have missed tinning it) So I kept redoing it. I didn't realize that all that solder was running down the lug and into the pot. When I finally got a nice silver solder bulb on the lug and was feeling the pride of victory, the pot wouldn't turn because it's insides were completely soldered solid.

Another time I was trying to force a foreign knurled plastic knob onto an American brass knurled post. I jammed it, I hit it, and then when the knob finally seated completely on the post, the whole thing popped out of the pot.

I wired up a Strat once, got it all back together, but the controls were behaving like I had three very subtle tone knobs and no volume control. (cool sound, but not what I needed.) I had forgot to run a ground wire from the back of the pots to the output jack.

I'm sure I'll think of more. That'll do for now.

 

[WhoFan]

Re: Guitar Fails

i took a guitar making course in the late 90's... i often used some of my cheaper axes in my collection to learn how to do mods and found out i should of never touched them...

a MIM Fender neck i tried to upgrade tuners on... instead of using a Peg Head Reamer tool to make the tuner holes larger i used a drill press... forgot the drill press belts were on a slow speed pully and i used an old dull bit... the neck was thrown across my basement...

while trying to learn how to add a floyd rose to a parts strat my template slipped.... nice route gone bad! i had that guitar working but ended up slamming it hard into the floor at a jam with fellow fans of The Who... the body split from the neck plate to the trem cavity... i plan to glue it and maybe fill in the floyd route and start over... it can be saved

 

[Swampy]

Re: Guitar Fails

Most of the time I plug straight into my amp no pedals but on occasion will connect my Wah when needed. So I set up my rig and start to check sound levels and tone and go to engage the Wah and I get no sound. So first thing I think is the battery is dead so I hook up the power adapter and I still get no sound. Took me about a good 5 minutes to realize I had the input/output cables in the wrong spots.

I've done this, but I got a sound.... it sounded like whale rape. It was quite different.

 

[VanDerchuck]

Re: Guitar Fails

Bumping this up because I enjoy the feeling of not being alone...

I once cut all the pickups out of my cousins guitar at the pick up. There's no excuse. He said I could do whatever I wanted to it. And I did...

The bad part is...






























...that's how I set my DIO shirt on fire.

 

[Frantic_Rock]

Re: Guitar Fails

Playing into an ungrounded 70s Roland Jazz amp over and over... And kept getting electrocuted over and over... The one time i got electrocuted on my lips from the mic finally made me stop...

 

[synzzzer]

Re: Guitar Fails

Playing failure.

My coffeehouse amp (small Rocktron) sits out by my bench in the workshop. My Dad does woodturning and slings dust everywhere including the pots of my amp. When I went to play my amp at the coffeehouse, there wasn't much sound coming out due to all the dust in the pots. So I turned it up. In the middle of playing, the amp decided to work despite the pots, and my volume shot up 5000% in the coffeehouse mid-song. My first instinct was to flip to the neck pickup, and turn down the volume. However, the neck pickup volume pot decided to crap out, and then no sound came out. It just messed up my song completely. I had to stop, reset everything, and then go on to the next song.

My greatest repair failure. I dropped my soddering iron, but due to my cat like instincts I caught it..... ON THE METAL SIDE!!!!! I burned the everloving crap out of my hand. If you heard a murderous scream sometime in 2006, and didn't know where it came from, it was me. (Yes, that really happened.)

 

[gottalovethe80s]

Re: Guitar Fails

Playing failure.

My coffeehouse amp (small Rocktron) sits out by my bench in the workshop. My Dad does woodturning and slings dust everywhere including the pots of my amp. When I went to play my amp at the coffeehouse, there wasn't much sound coming out due to all the dust in the pots. So I turned it up. In the middle of playing, the amp decided to work despite the pots, and my volume shot up 5000% in the coffeehouse mid-song. My first instinct was to flip to the neck pickup, and turn down the volume. However, the neck pickup volume pot decided to crap out, and then no sound came out. It just messed up my song completely. I had to stop, reset everything, and then go on to the next song.

My greatest repair failure. I dropped my soddering iron, but due to my cat like instincts I caught it..... ON THE METAL SIDE!!!!! I burned the everloving crap out of my hand. If you heard a murderous scream sometime in 2006, and didn't know where it came from, it was me. (Yes, that really happened.)

my cats just love chillin on the top of my practice amp and there have been many times when I plug the guitar in and strum a chord just to learn that the volume has been turned to 10... cats are evil...

also at my last practice, the bassist in our band has been using a rusty dunlop straplok, he didn't push it in all the way and bam, the thing came undone mid-song, resulting in his jazzbass crashing to the floor head-first. amazingly the neck didn't break but it did warp a hell lot, and I don't think it's gonna be the same after such impact. guess it's time for him to switch to using schallers like me

 

[Red_Label]

Re: Guitar Fails

I was using a chisel to remove some wood from the pickup cavity of a Godin electric that I owned. I needed to fit a GraphTech Ghost system in there. I hit the chisel too hard with the hammer and it knocked a huge chuck of wood out, all the way to the cutaway. I glued it back, but I didn't do a great job and it looks like hell to this day. My little guy (he's now 11) always wanted this guitar so I gave it to him a while back. He doesn't care about the big glue-filled crack. And I no longer care about the guitar. So all's well! :bigok:

I've done a LOT of bonehead things to my guitars over the past 30 years. From scalloping the fretboard too deep (so a few necks twisted on me), to making a mess of the electronics. I do well enough, but oft times I am the proverbial bull-in-a-china-shop. A good friend runs a local music store and has been trying to hire me to tech on the weekends. I won't do it because I don't want the pressure of having to make all of my work look professional.

 

[King Halt]

Re: Guitar Fails

Oh I got one and this has happened to me maybe two or three times. Most of the time I plug straight into my amp no pedals but on occasion will connect my Wah when needed. So I set up my rig and start to check sound levels and tone and go to engage the Wah and I get no sound. So first thing I think is the battery is dead so I hook up the power adapter and I still get no sound. Took me about a good 5 minutes to realize I had the input/output cables in the wrong spots.

I have done this and the Tone knob one far too many times than i care to admit:eek13:...lol

 

[Laughing Kookaburra]

Re: Guitar Fails

Some great stuff here, my favorite thread in a long while!

Early in my guitar playing days, I had a Strat that I wanted to drop a DMZ X2N into the bridge position. Didn't have money to spare to have a shop put it in, so I went ahead myself. I didn't have a proper routing bit, so I used a drill bit. Sloppy as heck, and I drilled through the body twice (came out in the trem cavity). I cut the bridge hole in the pickguard with a Buck knife. Very sloppy. No pickup ring to cover it either. Because there was no ring, I couldn't properly mount the pickup, so I somehow managed to wedge it in at the proper height using a couple of books of matches. I did manage to solder properly, and the pup worked well.

Several months later, when I had a bit of money to spare, I went to a shop to have it properly mounted, with a pickup ring and all. When I picked the guitar up, the tech said, "The job someone did with this guitar was something else...I mean, matchbooks holding up the pickup? Pretty cheesy".

I let him go on thinking that I had received the guitar in that condition.

 

[JOLLY]

Re: Guitar Fails

Here's a couple of pretty funny/idiotic stories.

http://www.guitarworld.com/eds-shed-some-crazy-stories-my-repair-shop-days

 

[synzzzer]

Re: Guitar Fails

I was using a chisel to remove some wood from the pickup cavity of a Godin electric that I owned. I needed to fit a GraphTech Ghost system in there. I hit the chisel too hard with the hammer and it knocked a huge chuck of wood out, all the way to the cutaway. I glued it back, but I didn't do a great job and it looks like hell to this day. My little guy (he's now 11) always wanted this guitar so I gave it to him a while back. He doesn't care about the big glue-filled crack. And I no longer care about the guitar. So all's well! :bigok:

I've done a LOT of bonehead things to my guitars over the past 30 years. From scalloping the fretboard too deep (so a few necks twisted on me), to making a mess of the electronics. I do well enough, but oft times I am the proverbial bull-in-a-china-shop. A good friend runs a local music store and has been trying to hire me to tech on the weekends. I won't do it because I don't want the pressure of having to make all of my work look professional.

I quit using chisels because I kept putting them through my fingers. (Unfortunate true story.) P.S. I only wish I could say I did it once.

 

[Archer250]

Re: Guitar Fails

I have a new fail: I picked too hard and the E string got stuck to the neck pickup. Even more humiliating, it got stuck right in the small space between the bobbin and the tape, effectively cutting the copper wire, killing one coil.

 

[LogicallyInsane]

Re: Guitar Fails

My newest guitar fail happened last night..
Bought new knobs for my sg.. used the tshirt technique to get the old ones off.. also added the little gibson pointer things just to add some spice.. got all the knobs on but the bridge volume one.. it didn't want to go on.. so I pushed extra hard... something popped, and now the volume doesn't work... guess that rewiring is gonna have to happen a little sooner than expected... lol

 

[ehdwuld]

Re: Guitar Fails

My newest guitar fail happened last night..
Bought new knobs for my sg.. used the tshirt technique to get the old ones off.. also added the little gibson pointer things just to add some spice.. got all the knobs on but the bridge volume one.. it didn't want to go on.. so I pushed extra hard... something popped, and now the volume doesn't work... guess that rewiring is gonna have to happen a little sooner than expected... lol

You probably just pushed the tabs off the pot . Remove the knob and the the nut . Let the pieces fall out to where you can reach them. Press the bottom back on and bend the four tabs back in place.

Sent from my SCH-S738C using Tapatalk

 

[80's_Metal]

Re: Guitar Fails

On my very first guitar, I bought strings that were way too thick. So I took a file to open the nut up a bit..... Ruined it.