Jeff R

Check out Acoustic Vibes music in Phoenix (Tempe). https://acousticvibesmusic.com/

Simplified, I is water soluble (and the cheapest of the three formulas), II is considered water resistant, III is considered waterproof. Nitpicky as it relates to guitar repairs, sure ... until you have to clean up squeeze-out onto/into an old and/or checked finish (binding repairs and head breaks immediately come to mind); or redo a bond due to a re-break, an unforeseen misalignment (pieces drift, glide or slide during tape-up or clamp up, it happens to the best of us) ... or an aging joint's swell or "creep" over time due to environmental exposures, that may require a separate-and-start-over approach for best results. In all those cases, red label, wet or dried, can be compromised and/or cleaned up with hot water or steam and a toothbrush or a soft-metal-bristled brush, with little if any risk to the surrounding finish, binding, whatever. Green and blue label cleanups and removals are more delicate and intense, more time consuming, and includes a LOT MORE cuss words. I "can" drive a nail with a hammer, a rock or my forehead, but the consensus is the hammer is the best tool for the job. I can use any of the Titebonds to fix guitars, sure, but red is the consensus for guitar work. Just use red label, even if only as a favor to whoever may have to possibly revisit your fix years or decades from now.

Do not use Titebond II or III, or TB's horrid brown bottle "hide glue" incarnation, to work on guitars. Use original red label red cap Titebond I. Ask Google the question "which Titebond for luthiery?" and it will share more legit insight than I spout off the top of my very forgetful head.

Thanks for the shout-out, sorry I'm late to the thread, haven't been message boarding much lately. Carondelet's EVH- and Sunset Strip-inspired comp is "Secret Sauce." Its newest fan is Tracii Guns, he just started using it in his live go-to Friedman super strat. I wound him a double white to blend nicely into the diver graphic better. The amp you hear is one of the 50-watters Tracii builds himself (!), juiced just a touch with a Friedman IR-X box. Try not to get distracted by Olga. Tracii and I also Secret Sauce'd a battered project LP he recently picked up and nicknamed "Krusty." We also mounted a custom S pickup in the neck on a H-sized P-90 plate (!), rewired the toggle as a kill switch, and stripped the harness to a sole vol that push/pulls to switch pickups. And here's Krusty with Tracii's touring tech, Tom Weber. You may recognize Tom's name from his being EVH's guitar tech from 2007 until Ed's death. Tom loves Secret Sauce and he told me his former boss would have loved it too. And I wear that like a war veteran wears his medals!

muh-LAW-saw Trust me on this.

I bought a EVH Frankie Relic from a private Reverb seller on a Saturday in January. The buyer created a shipping ticket immediately (allegedly) and plugged in the tracking number immediately so his payment would clear. All cool, probably needed payment to cover out-of-pocket shipping, no problem, I get it. After two full business days with the shipper's website reporting they still hadn't received the package, I showed seller a screen save and asked when he planned to ship. He said the next day and I caught him in a fib about the tracking number in the process, but I again let it slide because some people simply can't communicate effectively. Third business day, however, no progress. And close of fourth business day, no progress, which violates Reverb's rules. I can't recall if I initially called the toll-free or inquired via e-mail or AI, but I contacted Reverb directly and provided them a gallery of screen saves of the transaction, saves of me and the seller's messages, saves of Reverb's applicable rules and how seller violated them. I demanded Reverb issue an immediate refund or I'd get my credit card company involved too. Reverb refunded my card entirely in less than 24 hours. The seller's site also disappeared immediately, I assume because they pulled it down. My two cents is be the squeaky wheel, hit every contact in the above list, and proactively provide what they need to make an immediate ruling in your favor when you get a human. You do all that, knowing that Reverb and eBay historically side with buyers over sellers in hazier disputes, you'll be made whole.

FMIC (Charvel) uses JBs in the bridge position of their production MIA and MIM Jakes. Jake, however, prefers a custom-wound 12-pole-screw humbucker, loosely based on the original Duncan Holdsworth models he used throughout his Ozzy and Badlands days 30+ years ago. It is a much different pickup from both the current JB or the current "Metal Fatigue" Holdsworth variant. The pickguard below ships to him next week. It has Jake's preferred bridge pickup plus some experimental "robintrowery" S-style pickups to see how he likes them compared to his longtime go-to Dimarzio SDS-1s. The new singles are A5 and overwound to keep up with the bridge pickup output-wise. Neck is around 9.5k, middle around 9.2k and RWRP. Bridge + middle auto-coil-splits the bridge H. The MV is a 500K to benefit the bridge H, but there are 470K resistors between the N and M pickups so they "see" a 250K pot.

Copy and paste from my SM feeds ... ------------------------------- Eleventh hour prep for Carondelet's presence at this coming weekend's annual Amigo Nashville guitar show, one of the biggest and best in America. Throwing together demo guitars today for some of our newest models plus a few prototypes. In the case of the latter, my favorite of the new demo axes ... a twisted tribute to both Jake's original "whitey" S style AND when it was a stock three-tone burst 1974 Fender Strat prior to being "Charvelized" in the early 1980s! The demo's bridge pickup is a "Holdsworth'ed" Carondelet Secret Sauce variant exactly like Jake currently uses in his main guitar. Even cooler, the overwound yet still "robintrowery" single coils are one-offs just for Jake that he'll receive after the show. Yep, the pickups destined for the man himself, Amigo Nashville patrons will get to test drive! Amigo Nashville starts at 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, March 21-22, at the AgExpo Center in Franklin, about 20 minutes south of Music City USA. Scroll the gallery to see the show flyer with all attendee details. Carondelet will have a double booth filled with our wares and many of our Nashville market artists. Come make noise with us!

Owned two Duotones, and I have a repair shop client whose two VXTs I've serviced for years. Both are great, neither are duds by any stretch. The biggest difference I've noted is because the Duotone has an actual wooden acoustic bridge plus sound holes in the spruce top, it sounds and feels more acoustic, warm and woody, both unplugged and amplified to my ears and ribcage. So if you want the more convincing "duo tone" guitar, for both stage AND studio applications, the Hamer is the better choice IMO.

Depends on the country and the nature of the goods. In December, I ordered $3500 in bulk bar magnets I use in some of my humbuckers from one of China's most popular foundries among US pickup makers. Due to country of origin and the nature of the items (keywords being "permanent magnets," "rare earth"), I owed 47.1 percent of the value in tariffs and import stuff. After FedEx jumped in with their extra fee for the clearance paperwork, I paid $1715 to clear customs. Chris, you need to ask seller to itemize that quote. Current baseline tariff from Japan is 15 percent and while I am not an expert, guitars don't appear to be subject to exception categories that would definitely inflate duties. Granted, duty is only one of a few applicable fees, but a line item assessment may reveal they are trying to eat you alive on not only shipping (typically $150-300 from Japan to USA) but item packing, packing materials, parcel handling. etc.

If you're bugged by the look of empty holes, source 5-40 fillister head screws made from a non-magnetic or very weak magnetic material. Aluminum, brass, titanium and marine Grade 316 stainless steel immediately come to mind.

Jake is doing great, recovered nicely from the shooting. He joked that it was the catalyst to him finally quitting cigarettes, between being bedridden in a smoke-free facility and "oh yeah, that hole in my lung" lol. He's still battling arthritis but a doctor he respects greatly is recommending a surgery on his right hand/arm that may give him some relief and increase range of motion where he needs it most. Despite the joint pain, however, he's still quite nimble on the fretboard. I got to listen to him revisit the intro lick to "Never" (last track of Ultimate Sin album, and one of my favorite Ozzy songs of all time) with "whitey" driving a cranked Friedman JEL head as I overhauled his Epiphone Joe Pass jazz box's guts. The JP is actually his daily go-to practice and writing tool, it hangs on a hook in his den, and it sounds incredible acoustically. But he said it has suffered since day one from anemic stock electronics. A set of our new Carondelet OTB Ultimates and a custom harness I fabbed with grade-A pots and caps and wire and stuff made a night and day difference. His words.

Change of plans, I can't make it to Florida this coming weekend, too much business busyness (we had a very productive NAMM) and even the Gulf Coast highways forecast is icy and bleak this coming weekend. We had to delay our return from California as lower Texas thawed out, and then race across Texas via I-10 in one day to beat the next ice forecast. Not fun. We also had a great artist relations stop in Las Vegas ... that's a Carondelet "Secret Sauce" variant in his main "whitey," recently installed by the Charvel custom shop.

Charlie Starr has a '60 Concert I got to spend some up-close time with at one of his soundchecks. It sounds like what I envision Heaven looks like.

Yes, it's entirely possible there's another "MJ" in the Duncan Custom Shop. Then again, here's a pickup repair I received last month, in which the sender told me the pickup originated from his inquiry to "the" MJ. As in a direct personal inquiry his longtime artist relationship allows. Those labels were both penned in 2024, within two months of each other. I'm no handwriting expert, but I don't think one is needed. I have no doubt your pickup or anything else from DCS, regardless of who or what is winding, is a nice pickup. The ingenuity of the Tanac is it can duplicate not only every hard data spec and data parameter via programming, it can learn and then mimic the human interaction ... including the inconsistency and imperfection components that makes hand-wound custom pickups what they are. That's exactly why SD and the prestigious folks I cited above use them and why I want one too!