Recent content by Fletcher Munson

Hmmm. Well, I shouldn't have said that Tru-Oil will ruin a rosewood neck. It would ruin it for me. Tru-Oil is a sealer (like linseed oil or tung oil) and will "finish" (seal and harden) the wood. This is not what I, personally, want for my rosewood fretboards, I like to use bore oil to...

Are you talking about periodic maintenance, or finishing a new neck? If you're looking for periodic maintenance on a rosewood (or other) neck, then Tru-oil is definitely the wrong product. It would pretty much ruin a rosewood or ebony fretboard. But if you're talking about finishing a a...

Several factors that I can think of: 1.) Raw materials. Even though you get 6 guitar strings and only 4 bass strings in a set, the bass strings are longer and much more massive. Hence, more material. A typical set of 6 guitar strings weighs 25 grams. A typical set of 4 bass strings weighs 95...

My SWAG on the startup noise would be that some component (could be a tube, a capacitor, a resistor, or something else) is beginning to fail. When the voltage first hits the circuit, that component makes noise. Then as it warms up, the component starts working normally and the noise goes away...

There’s more than one way to implement a standby switch. Depending on how your amp is wired, turning the amp off while the standby switch is in the “play” position may or may not allow the caps to drain. There’s a way you can test this, but the whole idea of draining the caps every time you...

A little more explanation in case you want to know what’s really going on in there: When an amp is powered up and in standby mode, electricity is flowing to the heater filaments only; the rest of the circuit is dark. This allows the tubes to come up to operating temperature before full...

I'm not a fan of invasive, irreversible mods. They aren't necessarily wrong, just potentially regrettable. A lot of guys did a lot of mods to old Fenders and Marshalls back in the 80's... things that probably seemed like a good idea at the time but now they just make you shake your head. Once...