Guitar Setup, Maintenance, and Repair - 152 pages paperback

We know that guitar setup, and repairs and maintenance are all a part

of owning and playing a guitar. We accept that. The question is will you keep a hand in and do that work yourself or will you hire someone to do the work for you? For most of us, the answer probably is: "That depends on the job." We want to be able to do certain guitar maintenance like changing strings at least. And perhaps we're interested in learning to do a lot more. Like simple setup items, and keeping up with the normal wear and tear that's just a part of playing a guitar. Well this book is actually written for musicians and technicians. And it's written for all levels of expertise when it comes to being handy around working on a guitar. So you can start out as a beginner and get going doing maintenance and setups to your own guitars. This book is from Mel Bay. And it's written by an author with a lot of experience in guitar shops.

Here is a look at the content of the books and what specific repairs, and setup you'll be able to do after reading the book:

The book begins with a chapter that describes and explains all the tools and items you'll need to do the guitar work in the book. In addition to the text that names and talks about the tools, there are large photos to show you exactly what the tools look like.
The next chapter is about cleaning and maintaining your guitar. Here you get some tips on what to do to keep your guitar at its best. How to clean the guitar. How to scrub the fretboard. How to restring the guitar. Special consideration to keep in mind for when restringing a classical guitar. Also special tips for changing strings on an electric guitar, including how to change strings on a guitar with a locking tremolo system. They finish up the chapter telling you about how to move and store your guitar, and give some advice about humidity.
Making adjustments to the guitar neck is the subject of the next chapter. The neck is actually a rather complicated part of the guitar, and has a lot of components including: headstock, tuners, trussrod, fingerboard, frets, string trees on some guitars, etc. How to sight the neck, how to measure the amount of bow in a neck, how to do a truss rod adjustment on a guitar.
How to adjust the action of the guitar at the bridge. All the different kinds of guitar bridges are discussed, with large photos for explanation. Bass guitars are talked about too. Just find the type of guitar you want to adjust in the photos and see the explanation for instructions.
Action can also be adjusted from the nut of the guitar, and that's the topic of this chapter.
Next comes a chapter that teaches you how to adjust the electric guitar pickups.

How to set the intonation of each string on the guitar.

Fretwork is covered next. Leveling frets, dressing, recrowning, attaching and sealing loose frets, how to do a partial refret on a guitar.

Electric guitar wiring. Connecting pickups, volume and tone controls, pickup selector switches, and any other electric devices on the guitar. Humbucker and single coil pickups. In phase and out of phase. An extensive selection of Seymour Duncan wiring diagrams. Mono and stereo output jacks. 4 and 5 way pickup selector switches.

There's a chapter devoted to helping you when you go to buy a used guitar. It has a list of signs that the guitar is a troubled one. Find out what guitar symptoms to avoid when purchasing a used guitar. How to know if a used guitar has issues that can easily be fixed, or if the guitar should be avoided.

Miscellaneous upgrades and repairs.

Resources

There is also a guitar repair term glossary and index at the back of the book.