JKennedyGuitars

10/01/2024

If you'd like to get a guitar in to see me, but don't want to get charged an appointment fee use this handy link. It'll get you a no-cost appointment as long as you schedule before the end of October. Just a little thank you to the people who follow me here on FB. 😀

Schedule your appointment online J. Kennedy Guitar Repair

09/27/2022

When you don't use FB that often you realize you may have forgotten to post the final part of a repair series. So only a year and half later, and more than 2 years after the job, here's the final steps in the Warwick restoration.

Our guy Tiernan got the inlays installed, the compound radius planed into the fretboard, and we refretted it with gold Warwick frets. When it was all done we gave it a good coat of Warwick's body wax and sent it out into the world, better than it was when it left the factory in the mid-80s.

05/04/2021

And we’re back! One of Warwick’s signatures is their blended fretboard that slopes into the body on their neck-through basses. It’s a subtle but important detail that needed to be matched with this new fretboard. So again we put our man on the job. He started by making sure the curve met the existing curve from the previous fretboard, then blended the slope in to match the original. Scroll through to see it go from files to sandpaper finishing up around 400 grit (more sanding still to come)

04/29/2021

We continue with our never ending Warwick... After we got the board on it was time to take that board from a fat slab of rosewood to a radiused, super smooth wood surface ready for a set of frets, and we needed to add some dots so you can tell where you’re playing. Our man has the least amount of wood dust in his lungs so we made him rough in a compound radius just like the original fretboard had. This thing went from 9.5” at the first fret up to 20” at the 26th fret. Tiernan used the 4” radius blocks to rough in the compound radius, then used their straight leveling beam to blend it all together. Before we put the board on we used the side dot jig from our friend up North of the boarder Mike Potvin . The Side dot jig make short order of aligning and drilling out the side dots. You should buy one before Mike raises his prices. Once the board was close to level we installed the front face and side dots then finished the fretboard leveling. Tomorrow we address the elephant at the end of the fretboard...

04/28/2021

Part 3 of our Adventures In Warwick-sitting: Clamps, Clamps, Clamps, and Clamps. Before we glued up our new fretboard from the fine folks we cut a notch into the end to allow for the new truss rod to properly sit in the truss rod slot. We did a few test clamps and added some alignment holes to the first and last frets to keep everything lined up when we put the glue on and clamped it up for real. We also drilled out holes for side dot markers prior to putting the board on (more pics of that tomorrow). The trick for this glue up was getting even pressure along the whole fretboard, which was no small feat on a curved body neck-through bass. To help us out in getting the last few inches of the fretboard glued down we used a cork-covered piece of plywood that we clamped at the bridge (we also used a cork covered piece to clamp over the top of the bridge). Now we sit and wait for glue to dry...

04/27/2021

Part 2: We shan’t be defeated. After removing the rest of the fretboard (in tiny bits and pieces) we dug further into this Vintage Warwick thumb 5. We continued to discover all kinds of issues. First, the reason for the silicon caulk was that the truss rod channel was cut too deep. Without the caulk to take up space around the rod it would have rattled like crazy and not really worked. Also we got to see up close how many of the fret slots were cut all the way through the board. It was nuts. Luckily before we started taking the fretboard off we took copious measurements of the fretboard to insure we’d have good dimensions to replace it if it didn’t come off how we’d hoped. The fine people at helped us manufacture a PERFECTLY fitting new fretboard. While we waited for the New board to arrive we prepped the mating surface, cleaned up/filled/and grain matched the side dot holes that were a bit all over the place, (we had decided that we’d move those fully to the new fretboard) and took out the neck pickup in preparation for some serious clamping and fretwork. We also added a maple shim to the truss rod channel to get the truss rod to sit correctly and killed the dead space the old caulk was filling up. After a few test clamps with a “practice” fretboard we were able to make sure the new truss rod would fit snugly in the neck AND be removable in case this ever happened again in the future. And credit where credit is due, our main man Tiernan took over the bulk of the job from this point out. Not only is he a beastly luthier, but our main man JK (aka the narrator) has spent enough of his life sanding; it’s time for the next generation to get some dust in their lungs.

04/25/2021

Welcome to our multipart post involving a series of cascading problems on an irreplaceable bass. We’ll start with the most insane pic for dramatic value, but it’s really at the end of this series of pics. Here’s the story: back near the start of the pandemic this 1987 Warwick Thumb bass, one of the VERY FIRST 5-string Thumb basses ever made, came in for a simple set up. But on the first turn of the truss rod it broke. We thought “No worries, has a replacement truss rod available and it’s removable.” That’s the case on most Warwicks, but not this one (we’ll get to why in a minute). The removable truss rod was anything but removable. We decided to remove the fretboard to replace the rod. If you do this job slowly and carefully it should be safe to take off the fretboard, replace the rod, then reattach the fretboard without much detriment to the instrument. We first pull the first and last frets, add a few marking pin holes for future re-alignment, then go to work taking off the fretboard. Everything was going well until we discovered that the fretboard had been sawed all the way through on several spots on the fretboard. Essentially the fretboard was perforated, and provided no real strength to the neck (which explained why the truss rod was working so hard that it broke). Before long the shop was filled with tiny bits of wenge as the fingerboard literally disintegrated as we removed it. We also found the cause of the non-removable truss rod: it had been locked into place using what we think was silicon caulk (the grey stuff along the truss rod in the pictures). Next post we’ll show more of what we had to do to get this thing healed up.

02/21/2021

It’s not every day one of your all time favorite bass players has a bass in for repair. I’ve worked on some cool stuff, but not much has made me as proud as when this thing came up on my bench. Never has playing “Flashlight” on a bass to test it out nearly made me p*e my pants with excitement. Truly honored and humbled that one of the guys on the Mt. Rushmore of bass trusted me with his instrument!

07/27/2020

With all the insanity in the world currently we’ve moved to appointment only for instrument drop off and pick up. Schedule your time to visit us at www.jkennedyguitars.com/appointments