After many years the springs in a Reverb tank can sag, particularly the long 14″ tanks. This sagging actually changes the tone of the tank making the reverb tone a little dark and muddy. The sagging also adds to the “sproingy” sound and the reverb effect loses some of its “lushness”. There is an easy fix for this. [...]

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This tip is about casters and tube amps. After playing for many hours a tube amp gets hot. Very hot. Even with a cooling fan there is a certain degree of heat buildup in the chassis and tubes. If your amp has casters, rolling a hot tube amp over a rough surface can weaken or damage [...]

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When you find yourself in a situation where your guitar rig is suddenly not working (this usually happens 5 minutes before the gig or session starts) there are a few guidelines to help quickly troubleshoot the problem. First thing is to stay calm. Getting anxious only makes things worse and makes it difficult to think. You have [...]

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 If you are an amp builder that gets a little frustrated when installing pilot lites in guitar amps then this tip is for you. I have heard of builders using all sorts or tools and methods for tightening up the nut on the vintage style pilots lites including a hammer and screw driver, pliers and [...]

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Here are some practical tips for storing your guitar for extended periods (over 6 months). First loosen the guitar strings by a half to a whole step. Never store your guitar without string tension! A guitar in storage for an extended period without string tension and a tightened truss rod can cause the neck to [...]

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An overlooked component that needs to be maintained in guitar amplifiers is the speaker. We often take them for granted. They are either installed by the manufacturer or by the guitarist retrofitting a specific model for his or her personal tone. Speakers fall into the “set ‘em and forget ‘em” mindset. However speakers can become loose [...]

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 If you are like me and play a Telecaster most of the time, you know that the original style volume and tone knobs do not have numbers on them. Un-numbered knobs on guitars like the Tele can be a little difficult to navigate at times. One tip is to install the knob with the set [...]

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If you have a guitar with stickers on it and want to remove them there is an easy way without harming the guitars finish to get the job done. The most effective way (and safest) for all finish types including nitrocellulose lacquer is to use Naptha. You can get Naptha in hardware stores or even [...]

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This tip comes from a unique feature on the new Joe Bonamassa Signature Les Paul guitar. It seems that Joe was experimenting with some of the components on one of his Les Paul’s and decided to try different saddles on the tune-o-matic bridge. After his experiments he settled on using three steel saddles for the low E, [...]

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 Here is a simple tip to help keep your guitar in tune, especially guitars with vibrato tailpieces. One of the most common places where tuning problems occur is at the nut. Strings can get “hung up” and not glide through their nut slots. Bending strings and use of a vibrato tailpiece can also cause them to go [...]

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