Oil rig Guitar setup

[kiwigeo]

After much resistance I relented yesterday and agreed to do a string change and action tune up on one of the roughnecks guitars out here on the rig Im working on.

The guitar is a crappy Chinese made Fender OM and the top looks and sounds like it's ply.

The old strings came off and first thing I did was clean all the roughneck gunk off the fretboard with some eucalyptus oil my office mate just happened to have on him. Next thing was to lower the action on the beast....was running at close to 4mm so with the heavy guage strings it was a bastard to play. The neck was fairly straight with a bit of relief where it should be but on treble side there was a visible pull up around the 2nd and 3rd frets. The straight edge was rocking with a high spot around the 13th fret right across the fretboard....the fret had string ruts in the top of it but it wasnt buzzing so I left it as is. Managed to get some fine emery paper from the mechanics workshop and taped it to my desk and got the plastic saddle trimmed down by a few mm. The saddle went back in and some medium guage strings went on and I tuned her up. The treble end of the instrument sounded ok but the bass strings sounded dead..saddle seating ok so I put it down to a combination of the new strings and what I would best describe as a complete anithesis to Ervin S's "Responsive Guitar". My office mate maintains the guitar sounds better across the tonal range but I reckon he's tone deaf...even though he runs a recording studio. Next time out Ill bring out a bone saddle blank and see if that helps get a bit more string energy through to the sound board. The current saddle has a pronounced forward lean and the lower bout has visible bellying when strings are brought up to tension. The short arms of the cross brace meet the lining halfway up the upper bout.....way too close to the neck end of the instrument IMO.

Oh yeah after stringing up my office mate decided he'd speed up bedding in of the strings by yanking them up forcebly with his burly hands....and he managed to break the E string at the machine head....looks like a burr on the hole in same. Gave the post a buff up with the emery and the new string is still in one piece.

A crap instrument but it was an hours welcome diversion from the job.

[Lillian]

Wait a minute. I thought you had just gotten home. Did I lose three weeks?


Nice job by the way.

[kiwigeo]

I went home for a week Lillian and then came back last tuesday for another week. Like most rigs we have bed space issues so my planned 3 week on 3 week off schedule is out the window.

Things also go complicated by my dumb arse offsider who decided to change his holiday plans and not tell his wife. She spat the dummy and phoned up and abused the client's Operations Geologist who then promptly phoned me up (answered my mobile during time off - dumb arse thing to do) and I ended up coming back early and covering for him.

[Lillian]

I'm sorry Martin. That sucks. No real down time.

[kiwigeo]

Ive got a full three weeks off from Tuesday and then after December I get a couple of months to get my marbles back.