Recent Work

  I’ve been thinking about redesigning my semi-hollowed bodied F3 model for a while. I wanted to build a guitar that has a wider and deeper body and reflects some of the styling I now use on my F1 model. With a body that is 350mm wide and 50mm deep, size wise, this guitar sit […]

In this video we look at five guitars that came into my workshop with a cracked neck or a snapped off headstock. And yes, one was not a Gibson! This is more of an overview rather than a detailed look at repair techniques. I do have other videos that show this. But a number of […]

I was asked to complete an overhaul and restoration of an early 70’s Gibson SG200. I had not seen one of these guitars before so I had to do some research into its history. From what I could find out Gibson only made a few thousand of these guitars between 1971 and 1972. The range […]

Here are some pictures and detail of a recently completed Flame F1. But firstly, thanks to David for commissioning this guitar. After playing his new guitar for a few days this is what he said about it; “I’ve been playing the amazing guitar for the last 90 minutes. I’m blown away by the tone, the […]

Over the years I have refretted hundreds of guitars. But I still find that refretting a maple fretboard is the most challenging fretwork to do. Why is that? In this post I thought I will explain some of the challenges associated with this type of work. This may help you if you are considering tackling […]

I was contacted by Peter about replacing the fretboard on his 35th Anniversary Stratocaster. Fender Custom Shop only made 500 of these Strats and each one is identified as 1 to 500. Unusually for a Strat, these models have an ebony fretboard and a birds-eye maple neck. First of all, why do this? Well, a […]

Here are some pictures and details of a recently completed Flame custom electric guitar. This Flame custom electric guitar was commissioned by Andrew, who lives in Sheffield. The full specification for this guitar took several months to finalise and we did this using Zoom calls and email. This guitar contains a lot of nice detailing […]

Here are pictures and details of a recently completed Flame F1 Quilted Maple Custom. This guitar was commissioned by a friend of mine, Paul. I got to know Paul when we both worked for the London Fire Brigade. We discovered that we had a joint love of guitars. It was a pleasure to make this […]

A friend of mine bought a Custom Shop Gibson Explorer. This guitar had a neck thickness of 23mm at the first fret and 26mm at the 12th fret. He found that this neck was just too thick for him. When I asked him why he bought this guitar, knowing that the neck was too thick […]

Over the years I have worked on many hundreds of Stratocasters. But I have never owned one. Back in 2017 I decided to put together my own Strat. I bought the body, the bridge, pickups and tuners, and then made my own neck. I sprayed the body but was not happy with how it turned […]