Dan's Tips......Shameful !

[Spence]

Have a look at this guys :

http://www.stewmac.com/tradesecrets/...058&clk=193357


Personally I feel advice like this is disgraceful and not what people should be doing.

[corduroyew]

I'm ok with whoring out your name for money but trying to sell products by giving bad advise that can damage other people's property is just wrong. So much of what he does to sell stewmac products goes directly against things he teaches in in his books. 5 years ago I would have never guessed Dan would sell out like that.

[Electricdaveyboy]

Now I know why there are so many pickups with short wires on ebay.com.
Bought some PRS and Ants there for cheap money and some customers sending me paf style pickups for repairs.
Dan keeps his thing going and we make some extra money with repairs.....

[Dave Kerr]

What's his motivation for giving the bad advice - making a a couple bucks on each fret puller? Seems more a matter of ignorance or misguidance than avarice. You have to wonder why he's claiming doing it the right way is so time consuming, though - while it is a PITA to deal with pulling the switches and pots back from inside the body, it's nowhere near as big a deal as he lets on.

[salvarsan]

What's his motivation for giving the bad advice - making a a couple bucks on each fret puller?

Look at his photo.
He's only a few years from retiring.

The motivation is to pad his savings both directly and indirectly.

-drh

[Dave Kerr]

Seriously, though - even if you were so inclined to hack at the lead wire as he describes, wouldn't you just take the wire cutters you have on hand rather than buy his fret puller? I just don't see how this article would lead to more than a very small handful of sales.

[David King]

Hey, in Dan's defense, he specifically states that this is a quickest and dirtiest way to get this job done in a hurry for a total cheapskate customer.
He's working with the cheapest pickups imaginable. No one is going to read this and start working on a vintage guitar with the same procedure. I don't personally think a $200 guitars merits more than a few minutes of my time. Some one else can come along and put a new cable on that pickup when it suddenly becomes valuable...

That said I wouldn't do it that way.

[Stan H]

Lets not forget he's peddling StewMac pickups too.

[Spence]

Quote :

This pickup replacement had to be done fast to keep the cost low.
Time-saving means money-making, so here’s how I moved quicker by avoiding unnecessary steps...

Come on. If you told him you had a budget of $50 surely he'd tell you to try a less eminent repairer rather than think, 'Hum, I could do an article and follow-up DVD on this .....'

All guitars become vintage if they last long enough and Dan makes a big thing about taking great care of vintage instruments while repairing or setting them up. Shameful I say.

[corduroyew]

What's his motivation for giving the bad advice - making a a couple bucks on each fret puller?

Fret pullers
Felt pads
Heat-shrink tubing
Caliper
Mounting rings
Neodymium magnet
Screwdriver

Seems more a matter of ignorance or misguidance than avarice.

Have you read any of his books. The guy knows his stuff and all his books that I have read go into detail about ways to keep the guitar original or ways to make it play the way you want it to with the ability to restore it to original.

[jonson]

cheep

"both ways Spence" Cheep and nasty! Still you and I both know wiring like that did help towards the P.G. sound.
If I got a beef with SM it's prices, he is saying he is doing a job on the cheep and has a catalogue full of overpriced Shite. 40 tools all to do the same job and half of them would never come out of the drawer just bits of plastic crap. Irving Sloan Ibex plane $49 and every where else $35. that helps guys starting off to a good start I don't think. Sorry to say you guy's got it right it's only a money machine and a bit like a fishing tackle shop. Hundreds of pretty coloured floats and lures all there to catch fishermen and not fish.

[Spence]

From now on instead of putting the screws back in the pickup rings I'm gonna use nail gun. It saves time you know.
The DVD's out in the fall....

[cwmont]

Lets not forget he's peddling StewMac pickups too.

I'm not up to speed with the Golden Age pickups. Where are they made? Is it possible that he is replacing one Korean made pickup with another Korean made pickup?

I myself would not use this method unless absolutly necessary. Like maybe a pot nut was crossthreaded at one tme and I couldn't get it out, so I had no other choice.

Why do I have the feeling that somewhere someone will screw up a someday to be vintage 80's or early 90's guitar by doing this.

[mkat]

Have you read any of his books. The guy knows his stuff and all his books that I have read go into detail about ways to keep the guitar original or ways to make it play the way you want it to with the ability to restore it to original.

Yes, he know his stuff, but his stuff is skewed by promoting products (eg. ever see a pic of him wearing a set of magnifiers for a job that doesn't require them?). There are multiple advertisements for products on almost every page of the books I've read. In some cases, he also promotes methods and processes based directly on the products he promotes. You'd end up broke with substandard results on repair work if you follow some of that crap, lol.

[Dan Gilmore]

"both ways Spence" Cheep and nasty! Still you and I both know wiring like that did help towards the P.G. sound.
If I got a beef with SM it's prices, he is saying he is doing a job on the cheep and has a catalogue full of overpriced Shite. 40 tools all to do the same job and half of them would never come out of the drawer just bits of plastic crap. Irving Sloan Ibex plane $49 and every where else $35. that helps guys starting off to a good start I don't think. Sorry to say you guy's got it right it's only a money machine and a bit like a fishing tackle shop. Hundreds of pretty coloured floats and lures all there to catch fishermen and not fish.

You mean a 10 inch square of felt shouldn't cost over $4? I'm sure it's very nice felt.