Hi Everyone,
trusting that you're all well and dealing with this strange new world in the best way that you can.
This month sees me start my 16th year with my shop in Lismore, and my 40th year as a professional guitar-repairer. 40 years! People have received less for murder!
But it has been good. Almost every day for 40 years I have made someone's guitar play better. And usually several people's. Often several people's...
When I left school I had no idea what I wanted to do, apart from becoming a rock-star (of course). My first job was as an accounts clerk at a Building Society in Sydney. My parents, and the management of the Building-Society, all wanted me to become an accountant. Given my subsequent hopeless understanding of money that would surely have been a positive move, but then my future guitar clients wouldn't have benefited from my modest pricing!
OK. The technical bit.
In the last two or three months I have seen four or five American Fender Stratocasters with their truss-rod nuts wrecked. I have seen this many times over the years, but four in a month is too many.
Here is the reason: many USA truss-rod nuts (including the late-'60s bullet version, and the post '85 new Fender Company version) all use a 1/8" allen key. 1/8" is approximately 3.2mm.
A 3mm allen key is more common than a 1/8", and is used on guitars fitted with a Floyd Rose-type system, including the millions of Asian-made versions. More of these guitars have been made than American Fenders, and the common 3mm key ALMOST fits the USA 1/8" nut.
HERE IS THE THING: a 3mm allen key will ALMOST fit a 1/8" nut. But not quite. If you try to use a 3m key in a 1/8" nut you will WRECK THE NUT!
Given the recent spate, I'm hoping that there isn't someone locally who has taken it upon themselves to "fix" some local Fenders without knowing which key to use.
The metric system was invented about 100 years ago by the French, in an attempt to simplify measurements, but all it actually did was reduce the accuracy of small measurements!
The engineering world still uses imperial measurements for larger numbers, and decimal imperial (ie: based on one-thousands of an inch) for small measurements. The French system's seemingly "tiny" millimetre is actually 0.040" (forty thousandths of an inch). That means that there are forty accurate imperial measurements within the range of the giant metric millimetre!
When working with guitars, which are devices that have to be set to very fine tolerances, millimetres are simply way too big !
Andrew
