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Novella Guitars Melbourne
Presents Guitar Assembly and Set Up Course.
Experience the complete joy and satisfaction of learning to assemble and professionally set up to a world class standards
Tools and Equipment.
Specialized tools
Practical Construction
Bodywork includes gluing, sanding and body prep.
Neck work incl. setting, fretting and alignment
Hardware alignment
Electronic Development
Component knowledge
Wiring
Troubleshooting
Timber Staining
Material selection
Practical application
Creating a flawless surface
Two days of hands-on, intensive training - learning all the skills you need to achieve consistent, professional results on A NEW GUITAR.
Why this course
Some of today’s courses take months to get through and require a ton of machinery to prepare the timber and most of us don’t have the money or space for such expensive gear especially when it’s not used full time.
The guitar being assembled is not a Chinese kit. You’ll be using a body and neck made in Japan, Pickups by Seymour Duncan and hardware by Gotoh with strings by Daddario.
The fees include the cost of a completely new guitar. You walk out with a whole new instrument set up to your own personal specs.
We’re stocked with specialist tools as well as a large stock of woodworking tools and equipment. We also help you choose which tools you might want to buy for yourself and how to select and source materials and accessories.
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Guitar Set-Up - All Levels
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Introduction
You can cover acoustic or electric guitars in this short course. It's a great entry into repair and maintenance of your guitar.
Topics include:
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Diagnosing buzzes and checking loose braces
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Fret dressing for improved action
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Adjusting the nut and saddle
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Types of truss rod.
Assessment
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The tutor will give you feedback throughout your course.
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Entry Requirements
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There are no formal entry requirements. To guarantee a place, you should aim to book at least a month before the course starts.
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Materials Fees
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Included in the course fee.
We will be looking at a set-up you can do yourself to improve your instrument. Including truss rod adjustment, fret dressing and setting of the intonation.
✅This workshop will give you the insight on how guitars are made and why they require to be set up for each individual.
✅It will give you the confidence to carry out your own set-up so the guitar feels right for you. This could save you money as well.
✅We cover what tools are required and what size of strings are best for your guitar.
✅What the pick up heights should be and what the action is all about.
✅All the players who have been on this workshop have said that they were very impressed with the amount of information given and surprised that they could do so much themselves to change the feel and sound of their instrument.
✅At the end of the weekend a certificate will be presented to confirm that you have attended a course on guitar maintenance and setting up your instrument.
Full Course Details
Introduction
The Pro Guitar Setup course is designed for 3-5 people and the aim is to teach the art of setting up both electric and acoustic guitars with confidence. The course is both theory and practical. We discuss all the setup points and how to adjust the guitar to get the best setup out of it and use a Gibson Les Paul and a Stratocaster to demonstrate. Not only do we discuss and show you how to adjust the finer points but we also discuss and show how to maintain your instrument covering fretboard treatment and fret polishing.
Who is the course for?
The course is designed for all levels from the complete beginner looking to get the best setup out of their guitar to working tech’s who want to brush up or who are broadening their skills. We are confident that you will leave with the knowledge and awareness to setup your own guitars, as well as others, and having had the practical application of this new found knowledge, the confidence, which is often lacking with the majority of people to maintain their instruments.
What will you learn?
Theory
Neck Relief: What it is and how to adjust
Action: Heights, adjustments
Radius the Bridge Saddles
Floating Bridges: Balancing & Setting up
Intonation: How to get the intonation correct
Fretboard cleaning
Fret Polishing
Electrics: Maintaining the Pots and checking the electrics Schematics
Pickup Heights
Re-Stringing: Gauges & how to string correctly
Cleaning: Different finishes and how best to clean
Practical
We then move on to putting these points into action starting with;
How to assess the guitar with mind to all of the points, this is so key to gaining confidence and certainty, knowing the points to start with enables you to adjust safe in the knowledge that if you go too far with the neck relief you have a starting point and using certain increments you can be sure of how much adjustment you are making, it seems to be a common problem with people adjusting their own neck, not knowing a starting point and it is the very first thing that we check when setting up guitars..
The most important point is how much Relief is in the neck, this is measured using a Notched Straight edge for greater accuracy. We will also show you how to assess the neck relief by eye, this enables you to easily determine the relief in the neck without the use of any specific tools. Once the relief is measured we check the Action height at the 12th fret as well as at the 1st fret, this gives us a good picture of how the guitar is setup currently.
With the Pro Guitar Setup Points that we give you, we are then able to look at where the guitar needs some work and then put that into action. Getting the balance between the neck relief and action heights is key to a good setup, with the guitar adjusted to where we want it we then go onto the maintenance part of the setting up.
Personal attention
The course does have a set agenda but we often meander around topics and are happy to do so, most of us have had many different guitars and they nearly always have some curious tales and they are always good to discuss as they will bring up certain points about setup which will add to the discussion and possibly unraveling the complexity that is often misunderstood in getting your guitar setup right.