16
That's fret wear. The strings have slowly eroded away some of the fret material, leaving those dents. Over a long enough time, they become deep enough to cause problems.
When the fret wear is bad enough, you can have your frets "leveled", which means sanding down the tops of the frets so that the dents are sanded out. Then the frets a re-crowned ...
12
Producing a sharp angle for the string over the fretwire makes for a clear, clean sound. So just behind the fretwire will be a good place. It also means not having to press down on the fingerboard so hard - keep the same pressure on and move a finger around on a fret - lower, wider frets will show better, and you'll find more pressure is needed for a clear ...
11
To make it safe against buzz, the string has to run across the zero fret with a bit of pressure. This makes the strings move across the fret with some stickiness so they follow the tuning machine more hesitatingly. In effect, you get some of the downsides from most tremolo bars with regard to tuning stability.
In addition, frets get indentations from ...
10
Check the neck for bowing, twisting, and any other defect. Also check the action on the neck. Check play every fret on each string and be sure that they all ring purely and that they don't squeak out. Check if the frets are worn down, which could cause squeaking. Check the intonation (play a harmonic on the 12th fret, then play the same string with the ...
9
There is no specific combination of wood types that make a guitar more or less appropriate for rock/metal music.
Essentially all combinations can and have been used to good effect by various artists in these genres.
Other features besides the type wood are likely to have a more significant effect on the the behaviour of the guitar; at most you could ...
9
The lines illustrate the bracing... Special made wooden braces glued on the top and bottom of the guitar, inside the body of the guitar.
Without bracing, the construction would not be strong enough for the tension of the strings and various forces/impacts from everyday useage.
The bracing has an effect on how the top and bottom of the guitar vibrate in ...
9
The majority of sound from an acoustic guitar is produced by the sound board (or 'top').
The soundhole allows the sound waves generated at the inside face of the soundboard to escape the body.
With all else being equal, a guitar with only a sound hole in the side will be quieter from the front but probably louder to the player.
Any difference in tone ...
8
As far as double basses are concerned, it's not uncommon to see a body with something like this:
Just a normal double bass body, with a left shoulder cutaway (if it is really called like that). They are used to help the player on the higher positions. One company (that comes to mind) that makes such basses is Framus :
I understand why you ask such a ...
8
Those fret indentations are wear caused by playing. No manufactures would put them in on purpose.
My first move would be to consider that the neck is actually too close to the bridge. Maybe it could be moved, making it longer, by a few millimetres. Measure the distance between nut and 12th fret. It should be, give or take a couple of mm, the same as 12th ...
8
When removing frets damage to the fretboard is always a consideration, some kind of chipping as the old frets come out is something to be anticipated, rather than disregarded. There are various ways to repair fretboard damage that happens in the process of a re-fret, and a good luthier will have plenty of tips and tricks to both minimise damage and repair ...
7
If we separate out the effects you could see,
The body/neck wood could absorb energy from the strings, causing the sound to decay faster (and with preference for certain frequencies)
The body/neck wood could then retransmit energy back into the strings, again possibly with preference for certain frequencies due to resonances in the wood
The body/neck could ...
7
An addendum to leftaroundabout's answer.
Never tighten the trussrod against the tension of the strings. Slacken them first.
Never use the truss rod to pull the neck. Pull the neck manually & use the truss rod to take up the slack.
Failing to follow these two simple rules can quite likely break the russ rod, or round off the nut, or in extreme cases ...
6
This answer is specifically about acoustic guitar sound board grading as as that's what your question refers to, there are other grading systems for other instrument building woods.
Different wood grades do not affect the tone.
Soundboards are graded on aesthetic properties: straightness of grain, grain spacing, angle of quartering, degree of figuring, ...
6
You seem to have done a little research on what the particular model Fender Guitar in question should sell for. And from your question, it appears that you have some concerns about why this one seems to have been on the market for some time.
While the other answers offer good general advice about assessing the condition of a particular guitar, my answer ...
6
Not only would your fretted notes play flat, but as you go further up the fretboard, the flatter your notes will get!
6
In Europe, stringed instruments (harps, guitars, violins) have used strings made from animal gut for millenia.
The lower strings of a guitar were sometimes made with gut wrapped around a silk core.
Here are the icky details.
6
Some pickups are designed like that, so it's almost certainly normal.
But if you hit it with the pick while playing, you should probably lower it a bit. Lower it equally on both sides with the two screws at both ends, a bit at a time, until you can play without hindrance.
The volume from that pickup will decrease, but only a bit, so it shouldn't be a problem....
6
It does tighten up if I turn it clockwise
The truss rod doesn't seem to be broken.
I don't see much of a change in the relief of the neck. It seems to be dead straight all the time.
Normally the neck should be a bit concave when the truss rod is completely loose. If not, the problem has nothing to do with the truss rud but with the neck itself. The truss ...
5
There are a few things you might not be able to check easily when you go to see it:
Whether the truss rod works. Even if the action and setup seem perfect, do you know that the neck's truss rod will respond properly when you change to heavier strings, or decide that you want to play with a higher or lower action?
Whether the guitar picks up electrical hum....
5
The optimal string height for a mountain dulcimer won't be radically different than for any other fretted instrument. It is at least partly a matter of personal preference. In general:
The string height will need to be high enough that you can play a note on any fret without buzz
If you tend to play hard, you will need to increase the string height. If you ...
5
It makes no difference to the sound or playability of an electric guitar whether you have rosewood or maple for the fingerboard.
Did you know that the human eye has a blind spot that your brain fills in for you? Your hearing can be influenced by a number of factors. People lose high frequencies as they age. Volume changes what we hear and fatigue can set ...
5
Schemtics are tricky, there's 3 things you can do:
This link contains many blue prints of a Gibson Les Paul. There are no measurements on each axis. However, on each PDF there is a scale. Use the scale as a reference point, print out the diagrams and use a ruler to get exact sizing. Easy!
This photo contains scaling for the cavity and POT's however the ...
5
The "electric family" of string instruments are often designed without any shoulders. The below photos come from Wikipedia's entries for electric cello and electric upright bass, and an internet search will show you lots of other designs -- much in the way that electric guitars can be shaped in myriad ways.
For acoustic instruments, one consequence ...
5
Aside from electric instruments like @Aaron mentioned, this is not unheard of but extremely rare. I have seen a few upright basses over the years in bass shops with a cutout in the upper bout like this or even more pronounced.
I even found a pic of a viola with a similar feature:
I have never seen this on an acoustic cello or violin but I would not be ...
5
My old student violin doesn't have the "bridge pad" for the E string and normally E strings come with a sliver of a tube which you can adjust to stop the E string cutting the bridge. On the one occasion when this was missing I used a small section of the tubing from an electrical plug.
In either case the advice to violinists is to adjust the tubing ...
5
I'm not a luthier, but my understanding is that the 12th-fret join is used to maximize volume and tone. The 14th-fret join is a compromise for playability, and is more acceptable on a steel-string instrument, where there is already plenty of force on the bridge to drive the soundboard, due to the higher tension strings.
With the geometry associated with a ...
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