Recent Work

On this recent work page you will find news items posts about custom guitar builds that are under way, and repair, modification or servicing work that I have undertaken recently. You can also stay in touch with what is happening at Flame Guitars by signing up to my quarterly Newsletter.

Acoustic guitar setup on a Martin guitar

This Martin guitar came into the workshop in need of a setup. This is a nicely made guitar and is sounds great, but the string height at the nut and saddle is unnecessarily high. This makes the guitar quite hard to play. Measured at the 12th fret the string height on the bass side was […]

Refretting a lacquered maple Stratocaster neck

This Stratocaster came into the workshop for a refret. Refretting a lacquered maple Stratocaster neck present a number of challenges for a luthier. These challenges are much less of an issue when refretting a guitar that has a rosewood or ebony fretboard. They are: How to extract the old frets without damaging the lacquered […]

Repairing a broken Epiphone guitar neck

Once-piece guitar necks, such as those used by Gibson and Epiphone are more susceptible to neck breaks. For the owner of the guitar this is understandably a very distressing occurrence. Usually they don’t snap off completely. But this Epiphone did. This neck can not simply be glued back together. Such an end-grain repair would not […]

Levelling & re-profiling worn frets on a PRS McCarty

This PRS came into the workshop with quite a lot of fret wear. In places the grooves in the frets, particularly under the G and B strings were quite deep. But would a full re-fret be needed or would it be sufficient to level, re-profile and dress the frets? Fortunately I was able to reassure […]