These are a couple of the first guitar’s that I worked on after starting up my business. I was chatting to Frank while he was on tour and I remember asking him if he’d mind me working on a couple of his guitars to build my portfolio of work. He was stoked on getting them set up for his return from tour, so I went to his place to pick them up and got them home and straight on the bench.
The mustang is an old 70’s short scale (if I remember correctly) and the telecaster is a MIM 70’s Telecaster Custom. I remember the telecaster, he got it directly from Fender in 2009 during the US tour with AFI. We were on a break between the east and west coast leg of the tour and I was staying at his place in Brooklyn. We decided to go into the studio and work on the next step after Grey Britain (I found those tracks a few weeks ago, but thats another story). So I spoke to my Fender guy in the UK and he put us in touch with the Fender guy in the USA, we ordered a couple of guitars and I gave Frank a couple of lessons
Fast forward 10 years and this guitar is on my bench. I started with the telecaster, as I love tele’s and knew it would be easier than that bloody bass. This thing was pretty dirty and the action was really high and it had that rose sticker on it. I started working on it and thought, he’s not asked me to take off the sticker so I’ll leave it on. This was a pretty simple set up to be honest. Clean it up, polish the frets, new strings, slight action adjustment and then get that intonation locked in.
The bass… This is a nightmare, I’m not a fan of heel truss rod adjustments at the best of times! Especially on short scale basses. Anyway, clean it up, polish the frets, chuck on the strings, adjust the action, set the intonation and tweak away for a life time to get this thing to sit straight! BUT I got it there.
Take a couple of photos and send them to Frank. The reply… yeah, you can take that sticker off. So the tele goes back on the bench and it’s time to get that sticker off. For this, I used nail polish remover, a cotton bud and an old credit card. Just take it slow and work in little sections. After the stickers off, re-clean up and buff out the body and its done!
