My friend got a First Act Stratocaster clone for free. For those who don’t know, First Act is a guitar brand that used to be sold at toy stores (like Toys ‘R Us) and such.

My friend said he wanted to fix it up and set it up in Nashville tuning which means the four low strings are tuned an octave high (and replaced with lighter gauge).

Plus he correctly thinks whipping out a First Act guitar that plays and sounds cool would be funny!

He asked if I could help and see what it needed. So this guitar shaped object was not in a playable condition.

• Missing tuning machine
• No strings
• Input jack loose
• Fret ends feel like a hacksaw
• Frets popping up off the fretboard
• Action was mile high

I checked all the electronics out and everything worked. The neck looks like some kind of maple with some kind of rosewood fretboard.

I started by working on the frets. Most of the we’re sticking up and needed to be fixed. If not this thing would never be right and wouldn’t be worth it.

I could get a 0.005″ feeler gauge under almost all the frets. I started by hammering them down with a mallet. This worked for most of them, but some would need to be glued. I ordered some supplies to glue them down.

Next I started to fix the fret ends. I used my files and rounded the ends over until they were nice and smooth.

I got the supplies I needed and went about gluing down the problem frets. I applied a TON of oil to the fretboard (it was super dry anyway) so the glue would clean up easier. Then a drop of glue on each side of the fret, then clamp it using a radius block. After about 5 minutes move to the next one. All in all, I glued about 10 frets.

After gluing, now it’s time to level out the high frets. I used a fret rocker to find the high frets and marked the high spots with a sharpie marker. Luckily only about 6 frets needed to be dressed.

Next I used my feet crowning file to knock off the high spots. For stubborn ones, I used a more aggressive triangle file.

Now the tops of the frets are flat and need to be made round again. I used my feet dressing file for this (the one that I round the ends with).

Now it’s time to clean and polish the frets. I use my micro mesh pads for this. The end result is a mirror finish!

Next job is to replace that shitty plastic input jack. 5 minutes and a soldering iron is all that takes.

Nex job was reassembly and strings. I don’t have Nashville strings so I just used a pack of 9s. After that a setup.

I adjusted the truss rod (it was too tight and back bowed the neck. The action was a MILE high (prolly to defeat the buzz from the back bowed neck). The intonation was way out.

The guitar plays pretty good now. The action and frets feel great. It sounds kinda cheap, but pretty good.

The nut slots are still high and we need some Nashville strings. My friend is coming over soon to help finish this beast.

We strung it up with Nashville tuning. Nashville style tuning has the 4 low strings tuned up an octave higher than normal. In order to do this we we used a set of strings for a 12 string electric guitar.

You start with using normal high E and B strings. Then you use the octave strings for the G, D, A, and E. It’s kinda funny because the G string was a smaller gauge (0.008) than the high E (0.010). The only wound string on the guitar is the low E.

Because it is a chepamundo guitar we had to file the nut slots a half t to get the first fret action right.

Other than having the cheap stock pickups, it sounds cool as hell! Here is a video of my friend playing it.

I have had my bass for a few years now. It is a Squier Classic Vibe 70’s Jazz Bass. For Christmas, my lovely children got me a new bridge a Hipshot Kickass bridge.

The build quality and chonkiness of this bridge are impressive. It is not a bent piece of sheet metal like the original bridge, it seems to be machined (or cast) out of a decent chunk of steel. I weighed both bridges on my kitchen scale. The OG bridge is 101 grams and the Kickass is 234 grams.

While I had the strings off, I decided to chase down a couple buzzy frets.

The high spots were minimal, so they cleaned up real quick with a file. Then I polished them up real nice and shiny.

The bridge was a bolt on replacement. The intonation was almost dead on right out of the box.

I ordered and received the steel saddles. They are suuuper easy to install; just loosen the set screw on the front of the saddle carrier with teh same hex key used to adjust saddle height and swap them out.

I like the sound of the bass with the steel saddles the best (it has a brighter sound). I especially like it better with the new strings. I recorded 4 demos of me playing some bass parts with the different configurations;

• OG bridge, old strings,
• new bridge with brass saddles and old strings
• new bridge with steel saddles and old strings
• new bridge with steel saddles and new strings

I played a snippet of a few things in each demo Sunshine of Your Love (pick & no-pick), Seven Nation Army (pick & no-pick), The Trooper (fingers cuz pick is blasphemy). The video below has the sound demos. If you watch the video on youtube you can use the chapters to skip around and compare one section to another.