Neil Fein's Blog

I spent much of the weekend finishing up the 12-string acoustic guitar. Here's an inventory of everything I did. I've enclosed links for the places that were particularly helpful. I've patronized these places before and they're good businesses.

Replaced the open tuning machines with Grover minis. Since I had to enlarge the existing holes to do this, it involved using an electric drill which chipped the face of the headstock. I used a gel-like cyanoacrylate adhesive from Stewart-MacDonald to fill in the chips, then sanded it down. I then used a spray laquer to cover the headstock face, thanks to the folks at the Edison, NJ Woodworkers Warehouse for help with that.

Added new nut, saddle, and bridge pins. I decided on String Saver material from Graph Tech for that. While the black pridge pins were a little pricey, they're worth it for the cool, clean look the guitar now has. (It's all made of a black graphite-like material.) That was just a matter of sanding the bridge down to the correct dimensions. When I had sanded the bridge a hair too thin, two dots of superglue held it in place just fine.

Reinstalled the pickup and endpin jack. That's not new hardware, but it's worth mentioning. I've been using a Fishman Rare Earth model in this guitar for some years now. It installs in about ten minutes, most of which is spent trying to stuff my arm into the guitar far enough. Bsed on past experience, it sounds like a cross between electric and acoustic guitar when amplified.

Overall, I think the guitar isn't quite as tinny as it was before all of this. It's still settling down, and will likely be a few weeks doing that. I'll post a picture if I ever take one.