In March, I saw a Squier Classic Vibe Starcaster (see photo) advertised locally very cheap. It was cosmetically perfect, 1 year old, although very badly set up. So I bought it for $200 (equivalent), which was a bit of a risk. It costs $500 new, here. I set it up and got it playing OK but I have never been able to get the action as low as I would like because of too much fret buzz.
I checked the frets because there’s significant fret buzz, knowing I would likely have to level the frets. Sure enough, lots of frets were too high and so I recently decided to take off the neck to do complete fret levelling, crowning and polishing. That’s when things started to look very worrying (see photo). It was exceptionally difficult to unscrew the neck. I thought I may break the screws or the whole guitar. What I found in the neck pocket was not pretty and I really don’t know what the former owner did. One side of the neck pocket has been scraped and the wood has been hacked a bit. Because of this, it’s not possible to sit the neck straight in the neck pocket. The pocket slopes slightly to one side.
Anyway, after that the guitar lay in our apartment in 2 pieces while I levelled the frets and my wife frequently referred to it as « The Patient ». I did the frets and then I could not put « The Patient » back together. I couldn’t get the neck aligned back in the neck pocket and when I finally did, I couldn’t screw it back together and I feared I would badly damage it as it was so hard to screw. I thought it might be the end of this guitar as it seems a major problem and one that I couldn’t fix.
So, I took it to a local guitar shop and they sent it to a luthier who I didn’t know but lives near me. I was expecting bad news as labour prices are really high here, so you wouldn’t have to do much work before the repair cost is more than the value of the guitar. Great news is that he called me yesterday to chat to me about the guitar and ask more questions. He had already inspected the guitar and sounded really knowledgable. He said that he considered it a fairly easy fix and said he can do the neck, get it aligned so it fits nicely and also repair a faulty pickup switch in a hour of work. He also wanted to know what strings and setup I wanted, which was nice. His prices are extremely reasonable, so I’m happy.
Just waiting now for « The Patient » to come back from the doctor.
It was nice to make contact with a local luthier and really nice that he called me to chat about the guitar.
So now I’m just waiting for it to come back from the guitar doctor!!
