Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

[Rich_S]

So I got a new guitar yesterday - nothing special, just an '05 MIM Tele, the basis for a new project. The guy who sold it to me (from another, un-named forum) said he never "bonded" with it. I don't know this guy, but he's about my age and owns more than just this guitar, so I assume he's at least some what experienced.

"Never bonded with it..." No wonder! It's set up like a piece of crap! Do grown men in their 50s just play a crappy guitar for five years, and then sell it, without ever wondering what's wrong?

To wit:

1. Strings - this guy has about six turns around the tuning posts, and not laid flat. The wraps all crossed over each other in a big tangle. It must have taken weeks for them to pull down tight so the thing would hold tuning.
   
2. Bridge - I noticed almost immediately that the three high strings were buzzing above the 12th fret. One look at the bridge tells me why. It's a modern 6-saddle. The saddles for the E, A, & D strings form a nice rising curve, which I will assume for the moment is about 9.5" radius. The others? Big step down from the D saddle to the G saddle, and the G, B, and E are all basically flat. You don't need a fancy Stewmac radius guage to see the saddle heights are fundamentally screwed up.
   
3. Neck - I played one of my standard "let's try this baby out" solos, and missed a big jump down to the E-string up around the 12th fret. Dang, blew it... try again. Missed the same jump. Hold guitar at arm's length, look at it face-on... Yup, the neck's crooked, and the 6th string is nearly falling off the side of the fret board.
   
4. Output Jack/Finish - He said it had a few dings; what he SHOULD have said was, "I dropped it once and knocked two big chips out of the poly, on the back edge behind the jack. It also ruined the original jack plate so I replaced it with an Electrosocket." OK, fine. Almost every MIM in the world has a chip out of the poly behind the jack (including the one I just sold). And I was going to put an Electrosocket in this guitar anyway - they're the bomb. But as long as this guy was putting it in there, don't you think he'd bother to put it in with the screws straight? Pick one: put them in up-and-down or put them in straight across, but don't just slap it in there at some random angle. Sure, it's only cosmetic and no one sees it anyway, but would it hurt to give it a little twist and a quick eye-ball before you drill the holes?
   
5. Again, the finish - He said it had a few dings; what he SHOULD have said was, "Did I say I dropped it once? Oh, I meant TWICE, and the other time the back of the neck hit the (insert name of solid obstruction here) and left a ding in the back of the neck." This ding has it all - a long squiggly s-curve kind of indentation that's not through the poly, and banged up dent that didn't penetrate the finish, and a small chip that's through to the wood. Did I mention it's right around the 5th fret, right where my thumb goes? Of all the problems, this one ticks me off. Sure, no one will see it, but I feel it all the time, so I'm going to have to learn the drop-fill technique and fix it.

I just don't get why someone old enough to know better would spend years suffering with and ultimately selling a guitar just for some minor setup issues that would take any competent tech a half-hour to fix? Did he never LOOK at the guitar? Never read a book or a website on how to properly string a guitar? Did he just not give a ****, and expect it to be perfect all on its own?

It's no real skin off my nose - I was going to do all sorts of mods to it anyway, but sheesh! Some people...

I'd like to have $20 back for that neck ding though... that thing sucks.

 

[Bludave]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

Rich.... Some "older" guys have never really mastered getting the guitar setup right. I can't tell you how many times I have heard that "my guitar won't stay in tune" line only to find that whoever is changing the strings doesn't have a clue of what they are doing! A properly strung guitar makes a world of difference. He may not be much of a player so that could also have a lot to do with it!

BTW good luck with the "New" project!

 

[blueman335]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

A few of my favorites:

- A guy, professional-looking, maybe 50ish, shows up to a blues jam with a very nice Gibson 335. The PU's were about an inch below the strings. He complained about it sounding 'weak.' Had no idea what to do about it.

- Strings wound in random directions on tuner posts, so that when you turn one way, it could tighten, or loosen the string, depending on what tuner you happen to turn. Sort of like Russian Roulette. Never know what you're going to get. Obviously the guy never played on stage, where this stupidity wouldn't be tolerated by the band or the crowd.

- I've seen this a few times. Guys that cut out all the wiring on a guitar, and then aren't entirely sure where to connect the new wires. They apparently were in a big hurry initially when they were cutting, then got bogged down for days (or weeks) when it came time to hook it up again. He must have been feeling pretty confident up front, and had no need for a diagram. That however changed once reality set in. Their final solution is: 1) learn to live with it shorting out and/or making noise from not being grounded right, or 2) sell it.

 

[Rich_S]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

I did that last one once... on a 4-pickup Teisco in about 1974 when I was 15 years old.

My new Tele is blue. The first two responders to my post are both blue. Coincidence? I think not. (Cue spooky music.)

 

[H8Red442]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

The two guitars I bought recently, Bich Supreme and a Jackson KE2, came to me horribly set up and one filthy as a pig. The Bich wouldn't even intonate!

I'm no pro but I've been messing with guitar setups for as long as I can remember and got pretty good with it so I managed to fix em up but I wonder too sometimes how these people can hold this thing in their hands and say it's in good, proper working order enough to sell.

 

[ricc]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

i often feel that way about guitars in stores, whether they be mom and pop shops or GC. They have Les Pauls and Strats and whatever selling for $1000+ or $2000+ that play like dogs, need a string change and need a setup. Same with used gear - and they wonder why stuff sits on the shelf. I took a couple of guitars back to GC yesterday after trying them out and told the guys there that they played a heck of a lot better now than when i took em......

 

[brunogio]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

I notice that Fender guitar manuals come with instructions on how to set up the guitar. It should be something that's connected the guitar case like the instructions on a kids car seats.

But even after tinkering for years, I recently picked up a guitar reference book for about $5 that has details on setting up and doing simple guitar maintenance. Very hand indeed.

 

[Benjy_26]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

I see used guitars like that as an opportunity. "You want $400 for this? It won't intonate and the action sucks. How's $250 sound?" :naughty:

 

[blueman335]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

They have Les Pauls and Strats and whatever selling for $1000+ or $2000+ that play like dogs, need a string change and need a setup.

Ah yes. Some of the strings I've seen on 'new' guitars at music stores...they had so much dirt, sweat, and crud on them, they'd qualify as a biohazard. You'd need to wear gloves when you play them, just to keep from catching something. And how good can they sound and intonate?

 

[J Moose]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

First off congrats on the new ride!

There's a lotta people out there who are really just clueless and or blissfully ignorant. Maybe they prefer looking at the shiny stringy things rather then learning how to play, and properly maintain them. I dunno, but its not the first time I've seen stuff like that too.

The ibanez talman that came in a week or so ago probably isn't quite as bad as your tele but about 20 minutes after I had the guitar unboxed & tuned, it was quite apparent that while it was seemingly never 'abused' its been really neglected over its life.

There's the odd dings & rashes... sure... (not to mention three small, very odd holes drilled in the body) but the stings are wound in a similar fashion. Tuning pegs are loose. Both knobs are falling off the shafts and all the electronics probably need to be replaced. Pots & switch are scratchy as hell... pretty unusable actually.

Probably my favorite bit which was undisclosed in the description & glared in the photos are the pickups. This thing has three lipsticks, like Dan-O guitars and the chrome covers are HAMMERED. There are scratches & literally dents from the strings digging into them for years. The neck pickup was so high it was actually touching the strings when I took it out of the box!!!

Another interesting thing is a piece of an old string jammed into the bridge... like one broke, the ball didn't come out, and he just put a new one in there without taking the old one out.

At some point when I find the time to clear off my bench I've gotta strip the whole thing down, clean it, and rebuild it. Poor guitar. At least it came to a great home.

Years & years ago I had a friend who would buy a new guitar every six months or so. Never quite figured out why... if he was a horse trader or if he decided to off 'em when the neck shifted with the seasons. But I did end up getting a few nice guitars from him...

Frankly I think a lot of it boils down to blissful ignorance and lack of education.

A few years ago I was working with a band in the studio... a signed band... and the one guitarists lester was way outta tune and he said it was always out of tune. Turns out the intonation was outta whack... he looked at me funny, "intonation?"

I'm like, yeah... you know how the bridge goes up and down... well, these parts here... they go back & forth.

All of a sudden I'm a hero because I was able to "fix" his guitar that was never in tune!

 

[marvar]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

This kind of thing is common- sad, but true- the guy should have been more up front, but, maybe he was just mislead, or misguided, disillusioned, whatever-
I played with a guy that couldn't change his own strings, then complain about the way the store did it and charged him for it- thing is, he was a great player, but, would only play strats thru a Crate SS, it's like he had no concept of tone. He played all the right notes, just sounded bad.
Other people I've seen have no idea how to tune a guitar w/o a tuner.
Still others are afraid to even install a strap button.
Some people just think that's the way a guitar is supposed to be. don't know it can be adjusted, and that strings don't last forever.

 

[John_L]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

I know Mark Knopler never changes his own strings, although I assume he can do it.
I apparently do it too well so I get asked by lazy sods who don't want to learn how to do it properly. (90% of guitars don't restring properly)

 

[Funkfingers]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

As some of you may know, I own an Ibanez RG321MHBK on which I have upgraded the pickups and electronics.

The guy from whom I bought this Ibanez regularly pesters me to sell it back to him. To stop him doing that, I have sourced another (unmodified) example of the same guitar from a UK music store via eBay.

The dealer claimed that he would restring and set up the Ibanez prior to despatch. It arrived with between three and six turns of string per machinehead post. The saddles were all tilted to one side at an angle of at least fifteen degrees. There were rather more dings and buckle rash than you might have expected based on the listing description. (Nothing that I cannot fix but, still...)

If this is that guitar dealer's idea of how an electric guitar should set up, what was it like BEFORE he supposedly worked on it?

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

I've noticed that many of these technically incompetent people grew up with either no father around, or an equally incompetent father. I know it's a generalization, but men who can't fix basic things around the house, change their oil, tune up a bike, paint, work on their hobbies etc, are usually guys who had no direction or guidance as a kid.

 

[John_L]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

One thing on non locking tuners the more (neat) turns the better. I have a Godin LG and if you look at a Godin you'll notice that the fourth tuner is a heck of a long way from where the string comes through the body. To cut cost most string makers don't make strings very long so you can't get more than one turn at best on that fourth string. What happens is the fourth string sounds a dead as a door nail. With the longer strings I use now it sound great. But when i first got the guitar I was constantly messing with it to try and get that string to sound.
On my slot head tele tuners I don't cut the too two strings. The whole string goes on the guitar.

 

[Rich_S]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

I disagree. I think 2-3 turns on a non-locking tuner is plenty, with a nice sharp right-angle bend where it goes through the hole. Anything more is just extra slack that has to be stretched out, and increases the time it takes to stabilize.

And those turns need to be neat, and right beside one another. Any criss-cross stuff, and it's a tuning nightmare.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

I disagree. I think 2-3 turns on a non-locking tuner is plenty, with a nice sharp right-angle bend where it goes through the hole. Anything more is just extra slack that has to be stretched out, and increases the time it takes to stabilize.

And those turns need to be neat, and right beside one another. Any criss-cross stuff, and it's a tuning nightmare.

+1. Exactly what I do too.

 

[John_L]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

Urm you need to tie the strings on properly then you get stable tuning quickly, and for heavens sake don't stretch the strings!
If you tie the strings properly then you need more turns. On a slot head more turns mean more stability.
This is how you put strings on http://fretnotguitarrepair.com/lockingstrings.htm

 

[Koreth]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

Urm you need to tie the strings on properly then you get stable tuning quickly, and for heavens sake don't stretch the strings!
If you tie the strings properly then you need more turns. On a slot head more turns mean more stability.
This is how you put strings on http://fretnotguitarrepair.com/lockingstrings.htm

I agree with the locking part, but absolutely not with the don't stretch the strings part. When those strings are first put under tension, they are going to stretch some amount before they settle and don't stretch anymore. Leaving the strings alone and letting them do this over the life of the strings is gonna make fore unstable tuning over the life of the strings. If you stretch the strings during installation until they don't go out of tuning when stretching, you're going to have much better tuning stability.

 

[marvar]

Re: Rant: How can he not notice this stuff?!?

I agree with the locking part, but absolutely not with the don't stretch the strings part. When those strings are first put under tension, they are going to stretch some amount before they settle and don't stretch anymore. Leaving the strings alone and letting them do this over the life of the strings is gonna make fore unstable tuning over the life of the strings. If you stretch the strings during installation until they don't go out of tuning when stretching, you're going to have much better tuning stability.

If I didn't strech my strings the guitar would never play in tune- esp the whammy equipped ones. I could never lock the Floyd down!
IN my 40+ years playing, it's never made a difference on how many turns there are on the post.
I've strung my guitars the same way all these years, I can't recall a tuning problem, ever, unless there was something wrong with the string, which has happend a few times. And I might have broken 4 stings in the last 10 years.