TOP TWEAKS
The experts offer up final pieces of advice on how to keep your instrument in its best condition and working order
EVH’S PICKUP TRICK
“In general, raising humbuckers higher will give you more output and high-end, while lowering them will clean your tone up and offer a smoother sound,” says Gibson’s Jim DeCola. “I designed Eddie Van Halen’s Wolfgang guitar a few years ago and his approach involves lowering the pickups to about inch from the strings, so they’re very low. While that does reduce the output from the pickups, your high-end is now attenuated at a greater rate than the low-end, and he likes that low-end to predominate: it has a chunkier kind of sound. And then he makes up for the loss of output with the gain of his amps and effects.”
GOING FOR GOLD-FOILS
Gold-foil pickups are coming back into fashion and it’s worth being aware that they can have slightly different setup needs than run-of-the-mill humbuckers or single coils. “Gold foils, Rickenbacker pickups and things like that,” says Matt Gleeson. “A lot of them use rubber magnets, which are very weak, so you can get them physically much closer to the string.
However, many of those gold foil-type pickups haven’t got any height adjustment. You can get humbucker mounts and things like that for them now, but if that isn’t an option it’s worth mucking about with padding them up [beneath] to see if you can find a way to raise them a little. You might have to think outside the box a little bit to get them to sound really good. They do sound great, though, when they’re working right.”
SADDLE UP
Over the years, Gibson guitars and other models with similar bridges have been fitted with saddles made of a variety of materials, each of which have their own qualities. Jim DeCola talks us through the different materials you can try out. “Over the years, we’ve used brass and nylon and then die-cast zinc, depending on the model and the era,” he says. “Some players do like that nylon sound because it’s got a softer attack and it’s easier on string breakage. I’ve also heard of a few artists who will mix and match, where they’ll have a nylon saddle for the E and B maybe and then the brass for the rest of the strings.
“Brass will offer more sustain than nylon but arguably has a smoother sound than zinc because brass is a softer metal. But you’re dealing in real subtleties there. Personally, I do like the brass saddles on ABR, but the Nashville-style tune-omatics have historically used the die-cast zinc for the entire assembly.”
TWO TELE TIPS
“One important thing with the Telecaster is to make sure the bridge plate is screwed down flat against the body,” says Matt Gleeson of Monty’s Guitars. “Quite often, especially if you’re swapping pickups in and out, it’s easy for the string ground – which is the wire that comes up from the body and goes underneath the bridge plate – to move around and then the bridge plate itself can lift up a little. And that gives you things like microphonics that nobody really wants. So that would be one thing to look out for.
“Another thing that’s really specific to Telecasters – especially for some late 90s/ early Noughties models – is there can be very little break angle from the nut to the tuning post on the G string, so it’s easy for the G to rattle in the nut because there’s no force pulling it down, especially if there are only a couple of turns around
the tuning post. On my Telecaster, I like to have six or seven winds on there [spooling downwards from top to bottom], which means you’ve got a much better break angle over the nut, so you don’t get that kind of weird singing, sitar-y noise you sometimes get.”
BACK IN THE SADDLE
“Because of the angle of the saddle, the high E string on a traditional Tele bridge sometimes wants to slide ‘downhill’ and contact the height-adjustment screw,” says Ron Thorn of Fender’s Custom Shop. “That’s unfortunate because, one, it’s moving the high E even closer to the edge of the fretboard; and two, it’s no longer breaking over the saddle but laterally contacting the thread of the setscrew – and I think that can really make things cruddy.
“On my personal Teles with traditional bridges I will put a string groove for the high E string – just a little notch on the back edge of the saddle, just to keep that in the right location. You may not want to do that to a vintage guitar, but if you have a modern guitar where you could easily replace the saddle, I would pass a nut-slot file through there just to keep the high E string in check.”
JOIN THE VICE SQUAD
“If you’ve got a well-equipped workshop, great,” offers our own Nev Marten, who has been an official repair tech for both Fender and Gibson. “But if not, it’s worth getting a small vice that can act like a third ‘hand’ when it comes to certain operations, such as tinning wire prior to soldering, which is fiddly and annoying without it. There are some great ‘hobby’ vices that cost under £20 and will clamp to a table without damaging it – you might want to add a piece of card for extra padding and protection, though.”
GET OUT OF A BIND
“Here’s one thing that does happen quite a lot with Les Pauls and 335s with binding,” says Matt Gleeson of Monty’s Guitars. “You know the bit where the fret stops and you’ve got a little ‘nubbin’ of plastic that rises up to meet it at the end? Well, the strings can get stuck in there. You have to be careful, but you can put a dot of Super Glue or nail varnish in [the gap between the end of the fret and the plastic], then let it dry and carefully sand it down. And that will seal that area, so you’re less likely for it to grip in there and cause embarrassments while you’re on stage.”