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Here we are at the beginning of another brand new year!
So, instead of waiting until festival season is right upon
you, how's about taking time to take a look at your music
making making equipment. Even if you're not experiencing any
particularly troublesome symptoms of poor playability, it
couldn't hurt to check out the old axe to make sure it's ready
to go for the season. You might even consider taking your
instrument in to the shop for a simple restringing. Your friendly
local luthier will charge only a small fee for restringing
your guitar, and would be likely to diagnose and/or correct
small problems before they become significant. There's a lot
you can do for yourself, too, as you look over your instrument
before running off to festivals, workshops, etc.
Here, then, are a few areas to look at:
Change the strings. Really, most of us don't do that as often
as we might to get the best tonal performance. Now is a good
time to review your stringing technique so you don't end up
with a messy job like this one:
A big wad of wound string can make tuning imprecise and unstable.
You don't have to wait for the string to actually break
before changing them. Wound strings start to sound dead after
a while and many musicians do a monthly string change to keep
their instruments sounding their best. Eventually, the windings
break and the strings really go dead:
For a bit of specific instruction on restringing, take a
quick hike over to FRETS.COM
As you change strings, take a look at those old bridge pins.
The plastic ones are prone to deformation and can get chewed
up to the point that they're hard to extract, and they don't
hold the ball in place against the bridge plate. So if your
pins are starting to look like this one, well, you know what
to do - get some new pins - they're cheap enough:
Loose hardware can be particularly annoying, and can lead
to damage if unattended. Check out the tuners. Are tightly
mounted? If they mount with nuts from the front side, slip
a wrench on and give it a little pull to make sure the nut
isn't loose:
This is particularly important in the first year of a guitar's
life because the wood compresses a bit and the tuners can
loosen.Check the back of the peghead for signs of loose tuner
mounting screws:
If you have enclosed gears with replaceable buttons, make
sure that the button attachment screw is reasonably secure.
It doesn't need to be very tight, the screw serves to hold
the entire mechanism together, so be sure to notice if the
screw has backed out or if tuner is starting to come apart.
Schaller tuners and those with Phillips screws are less likely
to become loose, but watch out for those older Grover Rotomatic
tuners that have a slotted screw holding the button on:
If your tuners have open gearing, now might well be the time
for a small drop of oil on the moving parts. Most open gears
fail because of lack of lubrication, not from a lack of "quality."
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