Nephew 'steals' prized K Yairi guitar

READER'S LETTER

I HAD a "K Yairi" guitar for about 24 years and failed to learn how to play it. My nephew borrowed it about two years ago now, which I guess means he is now the owner. I think that transfer happened much more quickly in his mind, perhaps around the time he first laid his thieving mitts on it.
The modern teen does not recognise the rights or relevance of anyone over 40 unless their name is Jimmy Page. But I'll show him your blog and refer this website to him http://www.yairi.com/ so he can see "the dovetail slide show" and how "his" Yairi is put together.
Obviously I am enjoying a dayinthelifeofaguitar…..

Cheers,

David C

Wow, what a guitar

HERE it is at long last. The hybrid guitar that I created, or rather rebuilt, after buying the essential elements at garage sales for a total of just $10.

It wasn't easy. I'll get to the details of the task at a later date. Enough to say now. It works well.

The neck and all the electrical components came across to mate with the lonely body, keeping the standard strat-style 5-position switch, which I mounted in the sound hole to save rewiring.

AS far as wiring goes, all I had to do was extend the pick-up lead wires a few centimetres. I cut mounts for the pickups from the old scratchplate. It has been interesting to mount the strat's front and middle pickups close together in the front position. This appears to have given an unusual tonal variation when flicking through the pickup combinations.

A FEW slight adjustments are still needed to be made ... filing down the frets where the old neck suffered severe trauma, with the holes now plugged with dowel. I'll do this next time I have the strings off. And maybe give it a better finish as it has just a light protective coat because I didn't want to spend time 'finishing' it before I knew it would be worthwhile. It sure is!

NOW for some playing. See you later.

Hybrid guitar project takes shape

An amazing cross-species mating continues as a day in the life of a guitar records the foreplay between a strat-style neck and a semi-acoustic body.
The body came from a luthier’s garage sale about six or seven years ago; the neck from a cheap fender copy just a few days ago at another moving sale. Yes, it has taken this long for me to come across a suitable mate for the body.

A SIGN, “guitar repairs”, outside a house on busy Bradman Avenue, Maroochydore, Queensland, Australia, waved its message for years before I finally stopped the car to investigate.
This time the sign had a subtitle, “garage sale”.
My brakes went on, the following cars screeched with surprise and shock, and I got in there as quick as an Alvin Lee lick.
A lot of guitar parts were spread on trestle tables under the house. The vendor was preparing to move and liquidating a lot of odds and ends.
A semi-acoustic body with any fittings caught my eye. It had a black and orange sunburst finish, with a lot of scratches.

THE luthier told me the guitar had been US made but he could not remember the brand.
He had taken it to pieces because the wiring had broken down but he ended up using the neck, pick-ups and tremolo set-up in other repairs.
He had started work on the lonely body to get it ready for another neck, using hot glue to patch the tremolo hole with rough ply.
A sanding and spray painting then would have finished the bodywork, ready for attachment to other secondhand parts as they became available.
I asked show much. He said $5.

ALL the years since that Saturday morning near the Maroochy River, the body has been kicking around my garage and workshop. It is well made, with a block right through the top of the guitar to provide a solid foundation for the the neck.
The ply top is extra thick. A substantial block gives support under the bridge. The body is extra wide.
Such a flat-top semi-acoustic says “country and western”. Soon it will be back in action with the neck and pick-ups from the strat copy.
I hope for a 335-style sound. I’ll keep you posted.

Now, more dirty pictures …

GUITARISTS are advised: This is the place for sick guitar pictures. Today I can unveil the second most disgusting repair job I have seen.
The guitar cost $5 at a garage sale.
The vendor said he had planned to put a clock in it after he acquired it from the former owner who drilled 10mm holes through the fretboard and used coachbolts to hold the neck to the body.
The former user must also be scarred for life from punctures on his abdomen from the bolt-ends and nuts protruding from the guitar back.
The headstock still carries a brand, Status Silhouette. It must have been a pretty low-range strat copy. Google had one specific reference.
http://reviews.harmony-central.com/reviews/Guitar/product/Status/Silhouette+Series/10/1
The Status failed to impress that reviewer but someone has loved this guitar before a mysterious mental illness caused them to attack it with a drill.

THE frets show a fair bit of wear and the finish has worn off the neck back.
The guitar certainly has been played at lot by someone who used much of the fretboard, not just one or two positions, which seems most common in fret wear.
A transfer of a near-naked girl is another reflection of the player’s love for the guitar.
No reason for the unusual fixing method is apparent. If the four screws through the standard backplate simply loosened up and lost their grip on the timber, as sometimes happens, the only remedial action should have been to plug the old holes with splinters and glue, redrill holes of the correct size and replace the existing set-up.
Yet this master luthier from Bizarro has removed two frets, drilled huge holes through the fretboard, screwed the nuts on from the back, then replaced the frets in a bath of superglue, leaving four cavernous holes.

NOTHING is easy. When I tried to dismantle the neck to allow me to plug the holes with dowel, I found the superglue had set around the screwheads. So I chipped away at them with a high-speed handtool until they freed up.
The neck and maybe the pick-ups will go on a nice semi-acoustic body I picked up a few years ago from a luthier’s moving sale. I’ve been keeping one eye open for a cheap neck for years but making this match work will be difficult.
I’ll introduce the combo in a new post soon.

Light entertainment during intermission

UNTIL I get my act together to tell more of the great stories behind the guitar, check this link to visit a musical piece that featured several months ago in my editorial column, Classie Corner, which travels the highways and byways of the marvellous community of classfied advertising.
http://classiecorner.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_archive.html

(Classie Corner appears in The Redland Times, Cleveland, Redland Shire, Queensland, Australia.)

ANOTHER mop-up job: An earlier post touched on the sensitive subject of fretboard care.
About once a decade I clean my fretboards with a mix of 50% vinegar and 50% olive oil, shaken in the bottle until it emulsifies and goes milky, then applied with a cloth and thoroughly wiped off.
If the grime won't shift, I have used a little general purpose household cleaning spray and/or gently scraped off the grime with a razorblade in the direction of the grain.
I recently came across a raging debate on one of the guitar websites. It was heated, with the fretboard oilers head to head and toe to toe with the anti-oil lobby.
A lot of factors play a part in fretboard maintenence. Just punch "fretboard oils" into your search engine or start with http://www.muzique.com/schem/fret.htm to get a feel for the issues.