Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 2) - removing the frets and stripping (scraping) the lacquer from the guitar neck

The neck on this vintage Hofner Colorama II is going to get tackled before we deal with the guitar's other issues. The neck is in quite a state, with at least the following problems:

1. The frets need replacing (total refret).
2. The fingerboard is very uneven and needs re-radiusing (sanding down to the correct curvature again).
3. There is a long crack/gap running along the fingerboard that will need to be filled in (luckily this is not a structural problem).
4. The nut needs to be removed and replaced.
5. The old lacquer needs to be removed and the neck needs to be re-lacquered.
6. A new waterslide-decal logo needs to be made and applied.
7. The relief on the neck needs to be dealt with (it is back-bowed, even when the truss rod is completely loosened).

Today we will just deal with the stripping down stage.

First thing to do is remove the neck from the guitar as follows:

The machine heads (tuners) and string retainer are also removed, leaving us with this:

Before we can do any more work, the neck needs to be supported or clamped down in some way, so a quick neck rig is made from a piece of wood and a screw is passed from the back of that into one of the holes at the heel of the neck. A second screw passes through one of the machine head holes to hold the neck firmly (this can be removed, or moved to another hole, when doing any delicate work in that area).

STOP! Before continuing today’s post, if you ever decide to tackle a project like this, I cannot stress this enough…. WEAR SAFETY GLASSES. And for the sanding part and lacquer removal part, WEAR A MASK. You don’t want to be breathing that stuff into your lungs. You have been warned.

The nut is tapped out from the side using a hammer and some sort of straight punch. This one appears to have had a shim below it. With the shim removed it is clear that the nut slot will need to be cleaned out and leveled a little bit before a new one is installed.

Nut slot in need of work:

Filing out the nut slot:

A small pair of end cutting pliers are used to SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY remove the frets. Patience is a virtue at this stage. Any rushed movement will surely pull up a chunk of fretboard material by accident.

Once all of the frets have been removed, the fretboard looks something like this:

A radiused sanding block with 400 grade sandpaper is now used to sand the fretboard down. Some of the cowboy-chord finger positions are really worn down, but we will try to get the fretboard as good as possible without having to lower the entire surface by too much. Also, in an attempt to minimise the effect of the back bow, the fretboard is sanded more heavily towards the middle of the neck.

Neck relief (back bow):

Since a lot of lovely rosewood dust is getting spread all over the fretboard, and since, coincidentally, we need to fill in a big long crack, this is a perfect (and very convenient) time to drip superglue along the crack, sealing that dust into the gap. Once the superglue has dried, it is actually easier to remove any excess with a fine file, rather than clogging up the sandpaper. A bit more sanding with the radiused sanding block and we should be done with the fretboard.


The crack before we started sanding:

After a bit of sanding, you can see the crack getting filled with rosewood dust:

Superglue is applied along the length of the crack:

A similar technique was later used on the deepest gouge in the cowboy chord positions of the fretboard.


Now onto the lacquer removal. Since the lacquer is literally flaking off this neck, there is no doubt what the best method is to strip this – with a paint scraper. Here’s a picture of the peghead with the lacquer partially removed. It is very easy to see what has been removed and what hasn’t.

Here’s another picture of part of the back of the neck, also with some lacquer removed. Some areas were easier than others to remove lacquer from, but the outer edge of the peghead was by far the most difficult, especially around the lower edge.

And now here's the face of the peghead after scraping:

The tuners on this guitar have been replaced at least once, and a couple of the tuners have been replaced several times, leaving it with a LOT of holes where there shouldn’t be any. Luckily, most of these will actually be covered by the new tuners, but we would like to fill in these holes anyway, especially since some of them lie very close to where new holes will be and we don’t want any screws to be wandering into the wrong hole.


Screw holes:

Check with new tuners to see what will still be visible:

The quickest and easiest way to do this is by superglueing cocktail sticks into the holes as shown here:

The cocktail sticks are now snipped and filed/sanded down to the same level as the peghead. As mentioned, these will be mostly hidden from view, so no need to worry too much about how well they match the peghead wood.

With the fretboad re-radiused, the lacquer removed and the holes filled, the whole neck is given an all-over sanding. Unfortunately the original logo decal has left a type of sunblock tan line on the peghead, so short of making the new logo an exact fit, this may need to be sanded further. That said, a quick test with a black and white printout of the decal we have made up shows that it is a very close match already.

Old logo "tan line":

Black and white test printout of our new logo:

Similarly, the serial number needs attention. Here is how it looked before the lacquer was scraped off:

And here it is after. It's still there, but hard to see:

Stay tuned for the next post where we will be re-fretting the neck.

The vintage Hofner Colorama II restoration project (part 1)

Some of you may remember me mentioning the 1963 Hofner Colorama II (also known as the Hofner 164) that I bought a while back on ebay. What do you mean you don’t remember? I posted about it right here: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2008/11/my-first-ever-electric-guitar.html

Oh wow, was that really three years ago? Who knew?

Anyway, as is always the danger when you buy something without seeing it in person first, especially a 50-year-old guitar, you never really know what sort of shape it’s going to be in. The photos showed a guitar that appeared to be in fairly average shape for its age and most of the original parts seemed to be there, but upon closer inspection it appeared that this particular guitar needed a lot more work than originally anticipated. In fact, I don’t think there’s a single part of this guitar that doesn’t need work in some way or another.

In that previous post, I mentioned that I completely messed with my original Hofner Colorama II almost 25 years ago, and so I feel like this is a chance to redeem myself. Kinda like adopting a puppy after inadvertently running over another one, or something like that.

Here’s a list of the main problems:

1. Neck – The neck is back bowed and the fretboard is both badly gouged in the cowboy chord positions and has a crack running the length of several frets. The frets themselves are badly worn in places too, so a total refret will be required. The neck needs to be completely re-lacquered, the tuners need replacing with something a bit closer to original (and the extra screw holes from the replacement tuners will need to be filled in too). The logo will need replacing due to having to re-lacquer the neck.

2. Body – The paint needs to be stripped and the body refinished. The paint is literally flaking off, and there are some cracks where the pieces of wood are joined.

3. Pickguard and back vibrato cover – Both plastic covers are warped and are now somewhat convex in shape. The screws have obviously been lost/replaced over time and are a bit of a (bad) mix now, so will need replacing.

4. Vibrato/tremolo – The thumbscrew that holds the vibrato arm on is missing and the arm is held on only because the threaded stud had been hammered down like a rivet, destroying it in the process. Also, the chrome vibrato cover has completely split where the screw at the front end goes in.

5. Bridge – The bridge has been replaced with one that has the wrong spacing, radius, and won’t intonate correctly, due to being straight across, so will need to be replaced (at least the top part).

6. Volume/tone knobs – Oh boy, would you look at the state of those? They're in dreadful condition and will all need to be replaced. The knob markers/pointers are also really, really rusty and will need a thorough cleaning.

7. Electronics – The pots are not behaving well at all (cutting out, very scratchy, etc.) and will need to be cleaned out. Additionally, one of the pickups does not appear to be behaving well, although that might (hopefully) be fixed after giving the pots some attention. The output jack could probably do with some attention too.

Wow, what a lot of work for just one guitar, but, hey, think how much FUN it’s going to be! Amirite? Plus, you know, this will totally sort me out with the Hofner karma police.

So stay tuned as all of these jobs get tackled over the next few posts.

Adjusting the neck pickup height on a Fender Telecaster style guitar

The neck pickup on this Telecaster needs to be raised. However, as is the case on most Telecaster-style guitars, there are no height adjustment screws in sight. There is a way to adjust this, but it’s not entirely obvious. Although the following steps might seem like a lot of work, you can easily do this in 20 or 30 minutes.

Before starting, you should really ask yourself why you want to adjust the pickup height. A common mistake is to think that if you move the pickup as close as possible to the strings, you can get a more powerful and better sound. However, as you move the pickup closer to the strings, the pickup magnets can start to influence the strings themselves, even dampening them and affecting the sound in a bad way. For this reason you need to be careful not to raise them by too much.

The pickup on THIS guitar is noticeably low and the output is much quieter than the bridge pickup. I could lower the bridge pickup instead, but I already like how it sounds and don’t want to mess with it, so I’m going to raise the neck pickup.

Before continuing, let’s take some measurements. Press down on the last fret of whatever string you want to measure and then use a ruler to deduce the distance between the pickup and that string. Do this for both of the E strings and also measure one of the middle strings. The reason you need to measure one of the middle strings is that, since this particular pickup is curved on top, it could be closer to the strings in the middle than at the edges. What you don’t want to do is adjust it nicely at the edges only to find that it ends up far too close in the middle.

After measuring this pickup we find that we have a good 4 mm at each E string and just under 4 mm in the middle, so the plan is to raise it up by 2 mm at both ends.

First thing we should do is slacken the strings. You might be able to get away without doing this, but it certainly makes things easier.

Now remove all of the screws holding the scratch plate (pickguard) in place.

Lift up and remove the scratch plate. The pickup will stay attached to the guitar, so make sure you take this into account as you lift out the scratch plate.

You will now see that the pickup is screwed into the body of the guitar with two screws.

Before making any adjustments, it’s time to measure the pickup height again. That way, after we make any adjustments, we can measure how much the pickup has moved (since we’ve slackened off the strings, we can’t compare to our previous measurements now). This pickup is measuring approximately 4 mm above the guitar body at both ends. Remember that the plan is to raise this one by 2mm at each end, so we will raise it to 6 mm above the guitar body.

Although not necessary here, I have unscrewed the pickup completely just to show you what we’re dealing with. As you can see, there are two springs on the pickup screws. This allows you to adjust the height by simply turning the screws. Some Telecasters do not have these springs, however, and if that is the case for you, I recommend adding some now. Otherwise you will only be able to raise the height by propping something under the pickup, such as washers or coins. A cheap and simple method is to steal the spring out of a cheap ballpoint pen, cut it in half, and slide one half over each of the screws, although if you prefer you can get proper pickup springs or tubing from any number of sources.

Rotate the screw at each end to adjust the height (anti-clockwise [counterclockwise] to raise the pickup and clockwise to lower it – note that this is the opposite to most pickups). Keep measuring the height after each adjustment until the pickup is where you want it. Remember that in THIS case the plan was to raise it by 2mm, so we want it to sit 6mm above the guitar body. Your guitar will most likely be different.

If you want to experiment a bit, you could tighten your strings again and play a while to try out the new pickup height. Once you’re happy, you can replace the scratch plate. In this case, we already have the pickup height we want, so I’m going to go ahead and replace the scratch plate now.

If you haven’t already done so, tighten up the strings and enjoy your guitar's new sound!

Stringing (or re-stringing) a guitar

There are many ways to string a guitar. After twenty-five years of replacing strings on all manner of steel-string guitars, this is the method that I’ve settled on. There are, of course, other methods, and you are more than welcome to try them out. For this blog post, I will be stringing a Fender Stratocaster, but this method works for pretty much all steel-string guitars, both electric and acoustic. That said, there are some locking tuners or split shaft tuners that should be strung in a different way. For that reason, I should state that the following instructions are intended for standard tuners. Remember that if you have a 3-a-side headstock (there are three tuners on each side instead of six on one side), you will have to string the G, B and high (thin) E strings in the opposite direction to what is shown in this post.

Firstly, connect the ball end of the string to (or through) the bridge of the guitar (I usually start with the low (thick) E-string. Obviously this step varies enormously, depending on the type of guitar you are stringing up, but it’s usually pretty simple. I plan to put a post up soon specifically talking about acoustic guitars and their fiddly bridge pins, but in the meantime I will have to assume you can handle this part.

Rotate the tuner to a position where the hole that the string passes through is perpendicular to the neck. Then feed the string through the hole in the tuner, from the center of the headstock to outside of the headstock, as shown here:

Continue to pull the string through the tuner, as described above, but leave enough slack that you can raise the string off the fretboard by about 3 or 4 inches (75 – 100 mm). As a general rule, the thicker strings don’t require quite as much height here, so let’s go for 3 inches for the thick E-string, gradually moving to 4 inches for the thin E-string.

Pull the string back on itself, as shown here:

Feed the string under itself like this:

Now pull the string back in the other direction over the top of itself, being careful to keep tension on the fretboard end of the string using your other (probably right) hand. This tension is important for two reasons. Firstly, it will keep the ball end of the string tight against the bridge so you don't get any surprises once you start tuning up. Secondly, it will give you a nice tight "knot" where the string tightens over on itself at the tuning peg. If this is slack in any way, you may end up with some string slippage when you are not expecting it. There's a real trick to keeping tension at both ends of the string here (unless you have three hands), but I find that pressing down with my (right) thumb on the string just above the nut, while pulling UP on the string with the rest of my (right) fingers will get the job done.

While still maintaining tension with your right hand, rotate the tuner in an anticlockwise (counter clockwise) direction to start tightening up the string. Before you tighten the string to pitch, make sure it goes under any string retainers, etc. In some exceptional cases, you may actually have to feed the strings through the string retainers before they get to the tuners (you may be able to get around this by loosening the retainer a bit then tightening it back down once the string is under it).

Once the string is tuned to pitch, grab it and pull it up a bit to stretch it. You can do this a few times, but be careful not to over-do it, risking string breakage (especially for the thinner strings).

Cut the string ends to leave about half an inch (12-13 mm) sticking out. Alternatively, you can just cut them as close to the tuners as you can (a lot of pros do this), in which case you can skip the next step. I prefer the method I use because I have a couple of small children and prefer not to have any sharp ends, even if they are mostly recessed (the strings, not the kids).

Now, using some pliers, fold the end of the string in half so that you do not have any sharp ends.

And that’s you done. You should find that this method will prevent string slippage and help to keep your guitar as in tune as possible.

As usual, feel free to ask any questions or leave any comments below.

Setting up or adjusting a Fender Stratocaster tremolo

Today's blog post deals with setting up a Stratocaster tremolo unit only. Everything else related to setting up the saddles, etc., can be found in the "How to set up an electric guitar" post here: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-set-up-electric-guitar.html. If you’re going to adjust both the tremolo and the saddles, then do the tremolo setup (this post) first.


Let’s have a look at the Fender Stratocaster tremolo (also known as the whammy bar or the vibrato, and often misspelled as "tremelo"), as originally patented by Leo himself (as with all images, click on the picture for a bigger version):

It’s really quite a simple mechanism, engineering-wise. Looking at it from the side (FIG.2) we can see that it pivots on the screws that hold it to the top of the guitar body (the screws are marked "16" in the patent drawings). The tension from the guitar strings pulls the unit forward, but this tension is counter-balanced by the springs hidden below the unit (found under the cover at the back of the guitar), hence “floating” the tremolo unit. This is where you, the player, come in. To lower the pitch of the note(s) being played, push the tremolo arm towards the guitar body, thus adding to the string tension. Alternatively, pull the tremolo arm away from the guitar body to add to the spring tension and increase the pitch.

For such a simple mechanism, it really shouldn’t be difficult to set up. Unfortunately, there are many reasons why these are famous last words. One of the problems is that not everyone uses a tremolo in the same way. Some people like to both decrease AND increase the pitch, whereas others prefer to just lower it. Some want the tremolo to move really easily, while others prefer it to be quite stiff, so that it doesn’t move unintentionally (either from leaning on it accidentally, or even from the increased string tension caused by bending strings).

Another problem is that not everyone uses the same string gauge, so a tremolo unit that might be perfectly set up for light-gauge strings will probably not be set up well for medium or heavy gauge strings. Lastly, the starting position of the tremolo unit is a bit of a personal choice. Some people (usually the ones that only want to lower the pitch, or even not use the tremolo at all) prefer to have the tremolo unit sitting flush against the body of the guitar, while others prefer a gap, leaving enough room to pull pack on the tremolo arm, increasing the pitch of the note(s) being played.

Taking all of the above into account, this post will take you through a typical setup for an average player who likes to both raise and lower the pitch and uses fairly standard strings. You can, of course, feel free to adjust this setup to your liking.

One thing to mention here is that there are two common Strat tremolo types. One uses six small screws to attach the tremolo to the top of the guitar body, while the other style uses two bigger screws.

Vintage-style, or "synchronized" tremolo (six pivot screws):

American Series, or two-pivot bridge (two pivot screws):

The setup for both of these styles is almost the same, with the exception of step 5 (below), which will be clearly defined when the time comes. Here are the steps we will go through to set up the tremolo:

1. Remove tremolo arm
2. Remove back cover
3. Remove strings
4. Remove springs
5. Adjust pivot screws
6. Re-attach springs
7. Restring guitar
8. Screw in the tremolo arm
9. Adjust claw
10. Replace back cover.


Remove tremolo arm

Simply unscrew the arm in an anti-clockwise (counter clockwise) direction until it comes out. Be careful not to let it fall onto the surface of your guitar and scratch it.

Remove the back cover

Place your guitar face down on a nice soft surface, unscrew the screws holding the back cover on, and remove the cover.

Remove strings

Remove all six strings. You should now be looking at something like this:

Remove springs

Note: If you have a two-screw tremolo, once you remove the springs from the back of the guitar, there is NOTHING holding your tremolo unit in place. Be careful not to let it fall out or otherwise damage either the tremolo unit or the guitar.

Place your guitar face down and carefully remove the springs. You may have anywhere from two to five springs in there, depending on how it was previously set up. There are various different methods for removing these, but with the strings removed from the front of the guitar, you will probably be able to remove the springs by hand. Just grab them near the claw end, push the spring towards the claw, and lift out. If you’re finding this a bit hard, feel free to loosen the screws holding the claw in place a little. That should give you enough slack to get them off, and will make them easier to get back on later. Alternative methods involve screwdrivers, pliers or special hooks. If you decide to use any of these tools instead of your hand, do be careful not to slip and scratch your guitar.

Adjust pivot screws (two screw model)

Note: If you like (I recommend this), you can take this opportunity to remove both pivot screws and add a little Vaseline to the threads before reinstalling them. Add a little Vaseline to the points where the tremolo unit pivots on these screws too while you have this opportunity. The Vaseline adds a little bit of lubrication, helping things to move more smoothly, and also helps to minimise strange pinging noises when you move the tremolo.

Have a look from the side of your guitar to see how the tremolo unit is sitting against your guitar top. It will hopefully be sitting flush, but if not, adjust each of the pivot screws until it does. Remember that there is currently nothing holding your tremolo in place at this point, so you may have to push it forward with your hand. Alternatively, leave ONE SPRING in the centre position to hold the tremolo unit in place. Unlike the six screw tremolo, the two-screw model is pretty much idiot proof and you can often just screw both pivot screws all the way in without raising the tremolo unit off the surface of the guitar.

Adjust pivot screws (six screw model)

Have a look from the side of your guitar to see how the tremolo unit is sitting against your guitar top. It will hopefully be sitting flush, but if not, slacken each of the pivot screws until it does. Now slacken all the screws one turn more. Finally, tighten down the outer two screws only until they are just touching the top of the tremolo unit. The unit will now balance on these two screws, while the other four will be used solely to keep the unit in place.


Attach springs

Time to re-attach the springs at the back of the guitar. Use the same method as when you removed them, but add a little bit of Vaseline to the two ends of each spring first to lubricate the contact points just a bit. In general, three springs located in the centre and the two outer locations is the most common configuration for standard string gauges.

Just a few notes about springs (since I have your attention), as follows:

1. Not all springs are the same, so if you find that you only have two springs and want to increase to three by just buying a single new one, you could end up with mismatched ones. Better to buy three new ones.

2. If you are using three springs and are tempted to place the outer two springs at an angle so that they are not parallel to the centre spring, but rather taper towards it or away from it, this will end up giving you unevenly-matched springs, as the centre one will be shorter than the other two. Generally, I would say not to do this, but plenty of people are happy with this configuration and don't seem to have any problems. You're certainly not going to break your guitar by trying it, so feel free to give it a go.

3. More springs will give you a stiffer feel. If that’s what you want, then by all means feel free to try it out. Similarly, fewer springs will give you a bouncier feel.

4. Heavy strings might require more springs and lighter strings might only need two.


Restring the guitar

Restring your guitar in the normal way. I’ll be putting a blog post up about that in a few days if you’re unsure of the best way to do that. EDIT: Here it is - http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2011/08/stringing-guitar.html


Screw in the tremolo arm
We’re going to need the tremolo arm for the next step, so it’s a good idea to screw it back in now.


Adjust the claw until the tremolo unit is at the correct distance from the guitar body

This is quite possibly the most important step of the whole tremolo setup. The claw is the fine tuner that will leave your tremolo unit sitting in just the right place for optimal balance. Before adjusting it, make sure you tune your guitar to pitch. Use the tremolo a bit while you’re at it to make sure everything is loosened up, and keep doing this until the guitar stays in tune even after tremolo use. Now look at the side of the tremolo unit and measure how far off the surface of the guitar it is sitting at. Fender recommends that it sits at about 3.2 mm (1/8").

If it is sitting too high, then tighten the two screws holding the claw in place. Alternatively, if it is sitting too low, then loosen the screws a little. Each time you adjust the screws, you will need to re-check the guitar tuning and use the tremolo a bit, then re-measure the height. Once it consistently sits at 3.2 mm and the guitar is in tune, you’re done. Be prepared to take some time doing (and repeating) this step.

Replace back cover

Like it says, put the back cover back on and replace the screws.

Well that’s the tremolo unit set up and balanced nicely. For other setup tips, feel free to go to the setup post mentioned at the beginning of this one. Otherwise, feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.