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Innovative Flaxwood tone material & guitars

Setup, Care and Maintenance

The best everyday care and maintenance;

Wipe your body, neck and strings with a micro-fiber or lint free cloth, bits of old, clean t-shirts are great for this, after each use. Sweat and dirt left on the strings and other metal parts will eventually cause corrosion. Wipe off any excess blood, sweat or tears from the guitar immediately! Same goes for beer, martini, milkshakes and floats…

 If, for some strange and unavoidable reason, you are going to leave the guitar unplayed for any length of time, loosen the strings off before you put it down. Changes in temperature, especially cold, causes the strings to contract/expand, creating unnecessary tensions on the neck. You’ll be much happier when you get out and are reunited with it, that no harm has possibly come of it… to your guitar anyway. And as you stored it in its case, it will be as pristine as when you locked it up…

 Don’t waste your hard earned and grafted for cash on silly potions and “Guitar Cleaners”

If it’s that bad, use a damp cloth… It’s even been known to remove mashed potato and other unmentionable organic materials that have been hanging around for weeks. If it’s in need of a little deodorizing a few drops of vinegar on the damp cloth should do the trick.

Fretboards do not need “conditioning” The only conditioning we recommend is Air Conditioning!

Oh yeah, almost forgot, c’mon guys, change your strings occasionally… Believe me you’ll appreciate it.

When you change your strings, clean your fretboard. If you play enough there will be an eventual build up of gunk on the fretboard however well you take care of things. Borrow someone’s credit card and toothbrush and give those stubborn scabs a good scraping with the card and finish them off with a brisk brushing…. Remember to return the card and toothbrush to their rightful owner afterwards.

 ….and if you’ve been working on your wheels, wash your hands BEFORE you pick up the guitar… (I know, easy to forget…)

 And another thing! You do not need to lubricate your nut! No graphite, paste or snake oil need apply. This baby is self-lubricating!

Use a humidifier! What for? You don’t need one! …or not for your guitar at least. So, you can travel from Death Valley to the Bayou with a Flaxwood. No problemo!

Some words of advice for young people, and even not so young anymore… Consider getting strap locks. Tough though they are, Flaxwood’s (or any other guitar for that matter) don’t bounce. With strap locks you can pogo all night in complete security… Well, your guitar will be safe anyway…

 Don’t leave your guitar in your ride directly in the sun while you are off bouncing ‘round the Strip… Not only will it cook, but it’s likely to be stolen too… If you must leave it, put it in the trunk wrapped in last nights damp clothes to insulate it a bit. And when in Nome, do what the Nomeite’s do… Take it with you. Nothing thrives at -40 degrees F or C…

Adjusting the trussrod;

You’ve got a Flaxwood, you shouldn’t need to. It’s not like a conventional neck that can wave around like a straw every time we enter the monsoon season or the humidity hits 0% up there in the high desert… It leaves the shop in perfect condition and should stay that way!

But…

You might want to fine tweak that action a bit, so if you do adjust the t-rod, do it very carefully, moving a sixth, to a quarter max! of a turn at a time. Clockwise to pull the neck down, you can guess the rest…

…and that brings us nicely to Action; …and we all want some of that!

If it feels good, do it!

There is no perfect, one size fits all solution. Like many things in life, some like it hard some like it soft… There are many factors involved. String gauge is the first and most important one. Do you like to feel a bit of iron under your fingers, or do you like it soft and silky? (Either way, it will still give you blisters) I mean if your taste runs to skinny tops and heavy bottoms, you’ll have a different action to someone who likes super, slinky, ultralites…

So, once you’ve sussed what string flavor you like, the next place to look is the bridge. Now most bridges are a bit of a no brainer when it comes to height adjustment… there are screws on the saddles or there are screws on the posts. Screwing them one way or another will change the height of the string. One thing is a must, LOOSEN YOUR STRINGS before you try to adjust the height of the bridge…

If doing that still doesn’t float you action boat, take a look at the Nut up the other end of the fretboard. Now if this is an original from the works, it should be pretty well set up already, but if you feel there is always room for improvement… take it to a professional!

If they can’t sort it out, ask for your money back, and go and relax somewhere…

However, if you want to take it on, get yourself a set of decent rat tail files and go slowly!

File it down, string it up, try it out, and repeat. Every string…

Adjusting pickup height;

Yes, you can… But like everything, be gentle with the screws and don’t let the strings touch the pickups. Give it a whirl and a listen. Don’t like what you hear? Put it back where it was…

Play with your Pots now and again… Don’t neglect them like that! They’ll gather dust and crud and start cracking and popping and you know how that hurts!

 Intonation;

There are a thousand million explanations of intonation on the internet, better than anything I could write here, but I will say a couple of things. Adjusting your string height/action can/will affect your intonation. It will come from the works set up for the installed strings, but if you start messing with that set up, things will change… Different bridges have different solutions to change the vibrating lenght of the strings (intonation), also best looked up on the great super noodle in the sky…

….and finally…

If you would like some sensible and specific advice for any problem you have with our guitars, no matter how small, please contact us and we’ll do our utmost to sort you out.

Take it easy!

The Flaxwood Team.