Antech Custom Pedals

Oh Snap! (Broken Guitar Neck Repairs)

I receive a lot of guitars with broken necks and sad owners...but not for long! I generally get them up and running without a hitch. Very few ever come back again broken, in fact, none that I can think of. There's always hope! Here's a few recent jobs...


Gibson SG's are about 75% of these jobs (Les Pauls too). They often walk in, in two pieces.
Vintage SG '69/'70:

A Neck Tenon Break, came around pretty well

Another SG, this one was real nice otherwise.

Clean break, clean fix.

Danelectro really snapped up/fingerboard et all. A rare lefty! Now a player...

Ovation blues, this was a real bad break, I was a little concerned (it was fixed 25 yrs prior).

So far holding up well.

Don't fall for the fakes...(Pre CBS Fender Pickup details)

A while back I set out to retool a vintage Strat with original pickups. Browsing EBAY is one way to find those rare parts, and though pricey, the availability seems to be there. Just keep in mind there are a lot of jokers out there, claiming this and that, and often not even knowing the originality of the item. Your best bet is to stick to reputable vintage parts dealers, like Tradeitinmusic or thepartsdrawer.

I paid big bucks for this pickup, purported 1962 Fender. It came "packed" in a baggie, rolling around in a box for miles and miles. packing peanuts? bubble pack? foam? no, this was "cushioned" with a wad of paper!

of course, the pickup arrived all jacked up, wires broken, indented, etc.

and to top it off, it was a fake/look how clean it is!!! it's the wrong color wire, the lead wires are new. the black bobbin looks straight outta the factory. and the pole pieces were relic'd and blackened via sharpie!

this is the true color of vintage Fender formvar wire, a rich gold. natural wear.

in comparison, 6 other pre-63 pickups. you be the judge. Of course, I had to file with Paypal blah blah. To add insult, the seller accused me of willfully breaking the pickup so I could send it back for a refund, and to this day won't admit it's a fake. Buyer Beware!

Some Quick Repair Pics...

Sometimes I'll take a minute during or after a repair to document what comes through the shop, click on pics to further investigate:

Recital Week at D-Rocks

Just finished our first night of recitals, and oh they went very well! We're now in our third year of doing them, doing guitar, bass, drums and piano. The D-Rocks "Band" performed tonight as well, doing some really classic songs! The schedule is:

Recitals at D-Rocks Dec. 17-19/Recitals at The Rocks Dec. 22-23.
Come out if you can!








see all the pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com/davidjhynek

update: the recitals at The Rock were simply fab!

attendance was full capacity (at least the seating), the vibe was great! as a player, my rig sounded fantastic in that room and I truely felt inspired...

Early 1963 Fender Bassman

Bassman

This is a blonde tolex 50 watter, white knobs brown face et all. But it wasn't all so elegant from the beginning. This is a strange story.

My drummer works house to house local service job. One day he called me explaining how he'd met a gentleman with an amp for sale. It was an old "Fender Bassman" I was told, so I acted immediately.

When I arrived I negotiated what I thought was a fair price for such and took the amp home on the spot. The next day I had it at the shop and a customer and friend Bill came in and saw it. When he said that was "his old amp" I thought he meant he owned one back in the day. But after reiterating intimate details of the inner and outer changes I realized that was "HIS AMP"! It was something that was sort of "lost" over the years, not exactly stolen but maybe sold without permission after an extended period. Having lost my '59 Strat to theft the year prior I did not hesitate to return him his amp for what I had paid. Seemed fair enough & good karma.

Bill had informed me that in his yearly quest to regain his amp he had taken watch on a few others, and had a lead on a '63 black tolex. I was moderately interested, as I was much more enamoured by the blonde/brown version, but the price was right so I acted accordingly.

When I got the thing I realized it was actually a brownface unprofessionally recovered in black tolex, with a weird potatoe-sack grille cloth. What the hell, I need a project "of my own" once in a while (like a hole in my head lol). Alas, it was on. Let's get into the electronics.

Year: 1963 RA 0763 FEB14
Model: 6G6-A
Power Transformer-125P5B 006215
Output Transformer-125A5A 606-146
Choke-125C1A 606113
Serial Number BP01677

Tubes: 6L6 duet, 50 watts at 4 ohms. 2x12 speaker cabinet with Jensen speakers. Solid State rectifier.

The original circuitry gets extremely swampy and compressed on the bass channel. Almost effect like at levels above 4. I've read it's been labeled a "flaw", clearly "corrected" with the blackface circuit. I changed a few key components to adjust this accordingly and to maximize the extra tube stage within the bass channel.

I wanted to keep the circuit and appearance as stock Fendery as possible. Since the rectifier tube-socket-hole is prepunched and covered it only makes sense to add the tube. As some occasions desire a solid state punch I put both rectifiers on a dpdt switch (replacing the polarity switch, replaced by a three prong polarized AC cable), best of both worlds. Dual bias trimpots are crucial as well.

Filter Caps are always leaky, dried and oozing on these old amps, gotta replace them for full B+ potential/minimum 60 cycle hummmm. It's a pain but sometimes I'll carefully pull the paper covers off of the original filters and restuff them with brand new Spragues. It's a super nice vintage touch, looks the look and sounds like new. Btw, I didn't invent this idea, but I certainly can execute to perfection.

restuffed Looks stock to me! Electronics sounding great.

On to the outer aesthetic. Should look like my other brown amp:

pull the chassis

From 1962 Bassman

pulled the black tolex and tan grill, voila, some original covering remained, preserved 46 years.

pile 'o black tolex and original parts.

I was peeling and peeling and couldn't believe my eyes more original cloth (oxblood) 1961 I did have to retolex say 35% of the amp, turned out great. and to top it off 1960's Jensen Speakers, sound fab and can handle what 'cha throw at them.

The end product just like it's supposed to be.. From 1962 Bassman

.