Hey! Here's something you may not know! Does your guitar go out of tune? Should you get better machine heads? Probably not!! Read on...... At least once a week, someone calls me up and says: " I need some new machine heads, what've you got?" "Well, I've got heaps! What's the problem" Inevitably, the problem is that the guitar won't hold tune. Of course, it's the machine heads fault right!? Well, maybe not, did you know that machines have a ratio of 14 to 1 or thereabouts?

Recently I was asked to write some music for a short film "Pablos Villa", a great short documentary about an old gent from a town that was lost beneath the waves...The brief was for a 'Ry Cooder' slide sound. I happily obliged, utilising an epic Dobro style resonator made here in Adelaide by the legendary Bryan DeGruchy. I was stoked with the sound, but thought maybe another flavour could work, so I played this piece on the DeGruchy guitar I bought for myself 3 years ago. If

Well, once upon time, the bigsby was the cutting edge of tremelo technology, yes, it's true. But over the years many more methods of loosening the strings for artistic purposes have come and gone, and come again... The venerable Grandaddy of them all is the Bigsby. It comes in many guises, and from at least 3 countries of manufacture, but the one I want to talk about, or at least show you, is this one here with the annoying pins for lacing the strings. I hate those pins. I ha

Hey! Have you had, or been told you need a refret lately? I have some news for you, and it's not that great, but I'm just gonna put it out there..OK? Here we go. Nearly everyday, I get a phone call where someone asks me how much a refret is. Business is good right? So we talk about the guitar and the frets, and I always ask, "are you sure it needs a refret?". Inevitably the answer is "yes" and often, " A friend/tech/internet/mum had a look at it and they reckon it needs a r

Vintage guitar repairs can be a lot of fun, and it's always rewarding to get a great result and hence, a happy customer. A friend of mine bought this 60's Levin acoustic in to the shop, because the action was crazy high. Well, as it turns out, the bridge was lifting right off the top, but worse, someone had had a go at fixing it previously, and it was split beyond repair. In the end, I decided to go with recycled Jarrah (from Western Australia), as it's super tough, looked r