Karnac Sounds

Rhodes 88 Suitcase Electric Piano

Musicman Stingray 4-String Bass. This guitar dates back to 2009 and only had light use since new. Much of its life was spent under the bed in its case, but had also been on a music stand on show for long periods of time to entice the owner to pick it up. Years of accumulated dust was found in all the nooks and crannies such as the bridge saddles, machine heads and around and under the k***s. It had never really needed new strings until now. The new owner wanted the bass to be thoroughly cleaned, polished and set up with new strings for playing and recording. As legend has it, there is a perception that a Musicman is the only bass you will ever need, since they play great and have active circuitry providing tonal qualities which make live or studio work easy to get great results. Karnac Sounds removed the metalwork and polished every part to bring out the sheen of the chrome with Brasso. With the strings off it was now clear that the frets were far from the mirror finish which can be achieved with fine grade wire wool, so the fretboard was masked off leaving only the steel frets visible. A thorough polishing of the frets made them super-shiny and smooth, ready for action. While many Stingrays have just one humbucking pickup in the bridge position, this model also has one in the neck position, and the new owner wanted it set up with the neck pickup flat to the scratchplate to provide space under the strings here for plucking, while playing slap. The bass allowed this adjustment. Rotosound Swing Bass 45 – 105 strings were used and the saddles were set up for intonation. The strings were slightly lighter than the previous set and the truss-rod was tweaked to set the action. The new owner still wanted medium strings in spite of the slap bass technique, as lighter funk strings lose a lot of bass which no amount of circuitry can replace. The mediums should provide an adequate amount of bass for the fabled Musicman active circuitry to make the most of, without too much engineering required in the studio to patch in additional bass tones via synths or other means. For all the photos taken during this repair, please visit this link:

Farfisa VIP 600 Combo Organ - repair. This organ had part of its case missing underneath and when I went to pick it up, from the back of a filthy cupboard in a Brighton rehearsal studio, a number of circuit boards fell out onto the concrete. These organs were top of the Farfisa range in the early 1970s and though entirely “organ” in terms of wiring and key switching, there is definitely a sense that organ could cross into the world of synth. With sounds reminiscent of Dr. Who and Logan's Run, yet retaining the polyphony and live playability of tradition and 60's combo organs, it is obvious why these were popular. They would have sat somewhere between a monosynth, with it's obvious polyphony limitations, and a “standard” organ, whose tonal limitations were now expanding during this innovative period. Also carrying electric piano sounds, at the time a VIP 600 would have covered many bases, however, the more “out there” sounds would have seemed dated relatively quickly as the 1970's progressed. To use one now is still very exciting, as the effects of syntheslalom, repeats, wha-wha and other features such as unusual drawbar wavelength give this keyboard a sound like no other. It is a shame that no-one has yet sampled or replicated a VIP 600 to provide it's sounds to the world. The first thing I needed to do was clean it, which involved removing as much of it as I felt comfortable with. I cleaned all the contacts to the lower keyboard, but unfortunately the upper manual was not providing access to that area. I removed all the lower manual's circuit boards, many of which had fallen out before, and numbered them. In doing so I noticed many of them were identical. Their contacts were covered in unwanted black material and this needed to be abraded off back to shiny metal if contact were to be made. I tried dissolving it off with white spirit, this didn't work. Many had broken contact springs which I soldered back on. There had been a large impact to the underneath of the keyboard and the electrical rails had popped out of their plastic mountings, with the mount caps lost. I made some new plastic shapes to hold the rails in position and drilled new holes for new retaining screws – these can be seen in the photos. These could not self tap so I used Araldite in the holes and glued the screws in. The existing plastic was extremely brittle. The repair worked well for the bottom manual. I was missing a circuit board from the middle of the lower manual, but as I knew they were all the same in that area, I shuffled them down so only the top note had no circuit board. At least this would make all the notes in the middle of the keyboard useable, and a note at the top is rarely used. I learned this trick when repairing Rhodes pianos – a dead pickup at the top is much better than in the middle. I gave all the faders, k***s and sliders a dose of De-oxit and brought all those amazing effects back into full use. I made a new plywood base plate / cover for the underside, which had been missing, from 12mm plywood. I routed the edges so it would be less damaging to the knees, and varnished the new cover. I cleaned and sprayed black the inside of the top cover, which previously looked like it had been stored in dirty water and subsequently infested with spiders. It now looked like new. The organ was working great until I came back to it a couple of years later to find a number of capacitors had drifted out, leaving the organ terribly out of tune. Ownership has been transferred to a professional, who has experience in replacing the capacitors and other parts. He is in the process of getting the VIP 600 in tune again, as well as reducing hum and fixing the pedals. For the full set of my repair photos, please follow this link: https://imgbox.com/g/7Nt0LMEVAi

Starmaker Stratocaster - strip & rebuild. This 1970's / 1980's electric guitar was nearing the end of it's life and needed some TLC. It did have some good points though, such as unworn frets, great action, a tremendously bright red paint job and an honest and powerful single coil tone. The tuners were holding the guitar back and when these were removed it became obvious that there had been on-going drilling, for new tuners over the guitar's lifespan. In fact the large number of DIY holes vying for the ideal position most tuners need made it difficult to imagine how a clean sweep could be achieved. Other problems were found at the other end of the guitar, where more holes were languishing beneath the jack output plate. All the metalwork was removed and the guitar was thoroughly cleaned. Cosmetically from the front, the guitar was not too bad, but to the rear were 2 large indentations. I decided that overall the body was fine and it just needed a good polish. The back of the neck was also fine without any nicks, so there was no need to sand the varnish off and re-wax. The fretboard was masked off and polished with fine grade wire wool, before the fretboard was oiled with Dunlop lemon oil, brining out the beautiful natural tones of the wood. The nut was cleaned with fine stiff brushes and all the metalwork was taken apart and polished, such as the bridge and saddles. The new locking tuners had to be rotated by a couple of millimetres in order to find wood which had not been previously drilled out. The fact that the tuners are not parallel to the edge is not noticeable to the user tuning the guitar and the new, uniform tight holes have made the tuners much more secure. Two new rolling string trees were added to this guitar's headstock to replace the old standard ones made from folded metalwork. The work done to the headstock of this guitar has improved the guitar a great deal. The output jack plate required new holes and this caused deliberation to get the position perfect. The scratchplate, strap pins and bridge were all reassembled and the guitar was restrung with medium Ernie Ball strings. If I had continued work on this guitar I would have replaced the slightly yellowing scratchplate, pickup guards and k***s. However, with a sq**rt of De-oxit to resolve a faint crackle in the volume pot, this guitar was handed over to a teenage girl whose smile immediately archived the memory of the DIY holes until just now. The Starmaker lives on to make more stars. See the full selection of repair photos here: https://imgbox.com/g/OcZsuR84v5

Through Neck Electric Guitar - strip & rebuild. This unusual through neck electric guitar with inlaid fretboard was already in nice condition but I felt it would benefit from a strip-down as it was dusty and dirty. It also had a logo on the headstock which did not seem to do justice to the rest of the guitar. One of the tuning pegs was not working properly so it really needed a new set. Karnac Sounds removed all the metalwork and gave the guitar a thorough clean. The fretboard came up great and the oil really brought out the rick tones of the wood, which contrasted nicely with the inlaid mother of pearl. The frets had not seen much use so they just needed a thorough polish with fine wire wool. The headstock logo was applied directly to the untreated wood, below the laquered finish, so the laquer was sanded off by hand down to the wood and the logo was removed during this process. The edges were lightly rounded off and the top was waxed with clear Briwax. This has left the headstock a lighter colour to the rest of the guitar, but not so anyone will really notice. To remove the laquer from the whole guitar would have taken a very long time and did not seem necessary, as it was in good condition and was protecting the guitar. New locking tuners were added to this guitar, and the rest of the metalwork was thoroughly cleaned and reinstated. The guitar was restrung with Ernie Ball mediums and the intonation was set up properly at the bridge. This guitar already had great action and is very strong due to its laminated through-neck construction. If I had continued with this guitar I may have taken off all the laquer and waxed the whole thing to give it a really light tone throughout. I also considered replacing the pickups for chrome, to match the rest of the metalwork. However, the Wilkinson humbuckers already fitted were sounding great, so I stuck with them. The main improvements were the locking tuners, the removed logo and froma playing perspective the cleaned and polished frets, making note bending super-smooth. This was a really nice guitar to work on and I am looking out for more like this, with through necks and inlaid fretboards. The full selection of photos can be found here: https://imgbox.com/g/394LyaAtCx

Warwick Rockbass 4-String - strip & rebuild. A previous owner had attempted to strip the blue paint off this bass, but had not managed to remove it all, and in doing so had taken chunks out of the body with an electric sander. Karnac Sounds stripped the bass and took the neck off before continuing with the removal of the blue paint and evening out the undulations caused by the electric sander. The back of the neck also had a few nicks so these were sanded out. The frets were polished to a high sheen without needing to be levelled as they were still in good shape. The fretboard was cleaned and oiled and came up great. The back of the neck and the body were waxed with generous helpings of clear Briwax. The metalwork was disassembled, cleaned and polished and refitted. The electrics were reinstated and everything was put back together and retrung with setup for intonation and low action using Ernie Ball funk strings. View the full selection of photos here: https://imgbox.com/g/PdUoQNO4Ln

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