Strange Guitarworks

Signal boost/gig alert! It's October, which means that Dark City Fest is rapidly approaching! This is the second annual Dark City Fest, which bring in the spookiest bands from around the world and elsewhere (including our own not particularly spooky Benjamin Strange, who will be appearing as a special guest with Mercury Bird).

Tickets for Dark City Fest are at least 98.9% cheaper than for Taylor Swift. Choose wisely.

Get your tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dark-city-fest-2024-tickets-938840927487?aff=erelexpmlt

Fire! Fire!

Not that we’re complaining about getting work, but… for such a revered guitar maker with a rich history, it would be nice if we didn’t have to fix the binding, like, all the time.

Here’s something you don’t see everyday: a vintage Shergold Masquerader. We’ve given it a fresh stainless steel refret, refinished the fretboard, and a complete setup, and it sounds great! You can hear this guitar live with Sub-Division, New Orleans’ premier (and perhaps only) Joy Division tribute band! Put on your blackest clothes and check them out at your favorite local goth bar.

Shields up!

Shielding around the electronics in your guitar can help mitigate hum and radio interference. We use a combination of conductive paint and tape to build a cage around your electronics, which intercepts noise and shunts it to ground. Sweet!

Ben and the art of PLEK machine maintenence.

We often say that you should never leave your guitar where you wouldn’t leave your kid. This Gibson was left in a hot car, and the glue under the bridge softened and the string tension pulled it forward by a couple of millimeters. This guitar got off easy, as resetting a bridge is a fairly simple fix, but we’ve seen far worse due to excessive heat. Be kind to your instruments, friends!

We see your Precision pickup, and raise you a Darkstar pickup. Take that, purists!

Routing, pickguard shaping, and wiring done up for our good buddy Rob, even though he brings beer that isn’t fit to drink.

YES, we’re open today! Neither of us have power on at home, but the shop is fully operational. We got bored sitting at home in the dark, and these guitars ain’t going to fix themselves, so we’re here taking care of business!

The Damp God™ has smiled upon us, and has opted to bless us with their gift of whirly wetness. To celebrate this wondrous occurrence, we have opted to go on holiday and reflect upon what we have done to deserve such an impressive display. As such, the shop will be closed tomorrow, and possibly Thursday as well, depending on the generosity of this most holy and mysterious of beings, and/or whether the pumps fail. What shall be damp shall never dry!

Benjamin took some shrapnel to the face by an exploding dremel bit! Remember kids, working on guitars can be dangerous business. Safety first!

Welp, we’re blind now. Time to find a new line of work.

Warmoth body, routed for a reverse P for that sweet Blink-182 thing.

More “guitar repair repair”! This ancient Gibson has had it’s neck joint completely destroyed, and somebody tried to glue it back together with epoxy, which obviously failed. We will be rebuilding the dovetail joint and body and getting this thing back to its former glory. Stay tuned!

Making friends and repairing broken headstocks. It’s what we do. Thanks, Craig!

We tend to show off a lot of our more complicated jobs, even though most of what we do day to day is small stuff, like making custom bone nuts. Benjamin has a few things to say about our process - check it out in our latest blog! https://www.strangeguitarworks.com/making-a-bone-nut-from-scratch/

Yet another episode in our ongoing series of “Guitar Repair Repair”! This Les Paul headstock had been broken, and someone had glued it up and did some rough sanding on it and called it a day. Of course, it didn’t hold, so we made it right: glued back in place, splines installed across the break, and topped off with an overlay and carved volute. We blended in a new coat of TV Yellow, and viola!

You don’t have to tie knots in your strings. The overlapping that happens in the knot can cause tuning instability, and makes them difficult to remove when you’re changing your strings. (You ARE changing your strings regularly, right?) We recommend a simpler approach: two to three winds around the post, the first wind on top of the tuner hole and the rest underneath. It’s super stable, looks pro, and is easy to remove. Try it! And if you’re having a tough time with it, we’ll show you how!

Fender got WEIRD in the 80s.

File under oddly satisfying.

We don’t charge rush fees (we find them unethical), but we will prioritize an emergency for your gig if we can. Zach Bryan’s favorite Gibson J-50 was completely falling apart, and we were asked to pull off a miracle in 24 hours for his show at the Superdome tonight. Securing both the top and back, reglueing EVERY brace, and fixing some nasty cracks in a single working day was a challenge, but we got it done. We’re nationwide, baby.

Somebody reset this Martin neck (poorly), and then used epoxy to glue it back together (boo!). Usually this is a major problem, but we've learned recently that pineapple juice can be used to help soften the epoxy, and we've been able to rescue some epoxied guitars that otherwise might have required more invasive surgery. Awesome! Now, the downside is that one must resist ingesting the tools...

Benjamin under the hood of a Fessenden pedal steel.

We love Parker guitars, and think that Ken Parker is a genius. However, working on these guitars ain’t no picnic. Even replacing an output jack is fraught with great peril. Don’t try this at home, kids.