Guitar Gear

A couple of weeks ago, I was re-stringing Pearl, my trusty Strat when I noticed that something was dreadfully wrong: My high E string was laying flat on the fretboard! I thought I had simply missed placing the string in the groove of the nut, but to my dismay, the nut had chipped at the groove! Who knows where the piece went! It actually didn’t matter whether I found the piece or not – having experienced this before with another guitar, there was no way I could simply super-glue the piece back on. I had to have a new nut fabricated. So I frantically looked for an authorized Fender repair shop near my home in Cupertino, CA, and I found Keith Holland Guitars in Los Gatos, CA. In addition to selling custom guitars and amps, this shop does guitar repairs through its Guitar Hospital (cool name).

I called the shop and spoke to a friendly guy named Jim, and explained what happened. He told me to bring Pearl into the shop, and it would take about a week until the guitar was ready; not that it would take them that long, but they were totally back-logged on repair work as their repair business has boomed – a great problem to have, I suppose. In any case, when I brought Pearl in, Jim did a quick inspection and suggested that I let him do a full setup on the guitar: smooth the frets, straighten the neck, clean out the pots, and adjust the action to what I wanted. I knew there was a slight bow in the neck, so I quickly agreed to the work. I wanted to go from 9’s to 10’s with my strings to get a better ring and sustain, so I knew I’d have to get the action adjusted anyway.

When I got Pearl back, I just couldn’t believe how much more playable she was! Jim lowered the action about a 64th of an inch, replaced the wood shim that I placed behind my tremolo bar and cranked down the bar, and now moving about the fretboard is just simply amazing. BTW, I’ve never been able to get the hang of using a tremolo bar, so I just removed it. Anyway, even with the heavier gauge strings, Pearl plays like silk now! She was great before, but now she’s otherworldly territory! Here are a couple of pics of Pearl:

I tell ya, I’m having a bit of a love affair with this guitar. I still play Rusty, my ES-335, but Pearl is definitely my go-to guitar right now. Amazingly enough, I’ve never been a Strat guy. I used to be into fat-toned dual humbucker guitars. But I think as a musician you gravitate towards the sound that meets your particular tonal tastes. As I do a lot of composition, Pearl provides the tone that’s in line with the style I’m writing right now.