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1982 Fender Reissue Strat - Brought in because there was a lot of crackle & static when the guitar was moved around. A look under the guard revealed the dreaded shielding tape.
Removing the shielding tape eliminated all of the snap, crackle & pop. This stuff does more harm than it does good. I do NOT reccomend shielding tape!
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1952 Oahu Tone Master Amp - A cool little vintage tube amp brought in for service. The amp was working but the pots were scratchy & there was a loud hum.
A look inside the chassis revealed a typical early '50s style handwired point-to-point circuit. It appeared to be completely original with no previous repairs. The source of the hum was a couple dried up electrolytic capacitors. Those were replaced with Sprague Atoms.
The pots and jacks were cleaned. Tube sockets were re-tensioned & treated. All of the tubes tested OK and were left in the amp.
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1956 Les Paul Junior - This one came in for a cleanup & setup after having spent many years in the case. The strings were nice 'n rusty and the frets were oxidized and covered in crud. A quick plug-in to an amp revealed a very weak output as well as crackly pots & an intermittent jack.
The original pots & jack were noisy, intermittent, & simply in need of some service. After a thorough cleaning there was still an extremely weak output from the guitar. Measuring the resistance of the pickup showed a normal reading of about 8.5k.
Inspection of the pickup revealed that one of the two bar magnets had been flipped around in the wrong direction and was in effect cancelling out the magnetic field, causing the pickup to have a very weak output despite the normal resistance reading. After correcting the orientation of the magnets the guitar came back alive with the sound that only a '50s Junior can deliver. When I explained this to the owner he recalled buying the guitar years ago for a really great deal, and putting it away because "It always sounded kind of weak". Apparently at some point many years ago someone disassembled the pickup and had re-assembled it incorrectly, and figuring that he'd ruined the pickup, sold the guitar off cheap !
