Blog - Haze Guitars

Gibson's PCB-based control layouts get a lot of grief — some of it fair, most of it not. This week's post is a bit of a rant about tradition, tone snobbery, and why complaints about PCB use in modern Gibson guitars are often aimed at the wrong target. I sometimes feel sorry for Gibson. Granted, many times in the past—and now and then in the present—they have made what seem, to the layperson, poorly-considered decisions. However, that said, I do have a some sympathy for them.It’s because of the…

Neck resets can be tricky to explain in the abstract, but a travel guitar that came in for a setup this week provides a really clear illustration of what's actually happening — and why it needs to happen. Worth a look even if you've covered this ground before. I’m taking a little step into the past this week and discussing something we’ve talked about before. However, an instrument that I was asked to set up has provided me with a really nice illustration on the subject of neck resets and I…

Lining up a replacement neck sounds straightforward until a clamp gets in the way of your centre-line check. In this one, we'll walk through a simple trick that solves the problem neatly — useful whether you're fitting a bolt-on neck or even reattaching after a neck reset. From time to time, it’s necessary to install a new neck. Most often, this is for a bolt-on guitar and the neck’s being replaced for preference reasons (feel, look, etc.) or for repair reasons (broken, don’t want to refret,…

Here I'll cover a workshop project that got more attention than I expected — a custom-built articulated lighting rig I put together for the repair bench. If you've ever struggled to get decent light exactly where you need it, this might be worth a few hours of your time to build. Fair warning: it gets pretty nerdy. Intriguing title, eh? Of course, you may find the reality more nerdy than intriguing. Hi againSomething happened a while back that made me think there is a subset (probably a small…

This is the second part of repairing shrunken guitar body binding — specifically working around the front of the guitar and navigating the tricky area where the binding disappears under the neck heel. There's also a small but useful tip about tape that I somehow forgot to mention last week . Shrunken bindings often cause gaps at the internal curve of the guitar waist. Last week we looked at the annoying process of working shrunken binding free from a guitar body to provide a little extra slack…

Binding shrinkage is one of those repairs that looks simple until you're in the middle of it. Here I'll cover what actually works when guitar binding pulls away at the waist — why the heat-and-stretch approach might be a short-term fix, and why the more reliable method means releasing the binding all the way back to the nearest seam. It's more work, but it's the right kind of more work. Binding can shrink. Plastic and especially celluloid can actually get smaller as it ages. Sometimes this is a…

I don’t feel like I’m a thought-leader when it comes to capo placement but people keep asking me about it. Time to nail my colours to the mast.

Direct or body-mount humbuckers are more and more common. If you’re planning on upgrading and swapping them out, there are some considerations that you should be aware of, though. Check it out…

We humans are great (mostly). Our amazing minds let us do incredible things. And sometimes, they try to screw with us. When that overlaps with guitars, I find it massively interesting. Check out the story of The Mystery B-String Noise…

Some body mount pickups can be installed using foam underneath. This is not without its problems though so be aware of the following when you’re considering adding or replacing pickup foam…