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Gypsy Guitar Setup Technician in East Bay (Oakland, CA)

Hello,

I just officially registered with the forum, though I have been reading the posts for a little while now.
I recently purchased a used Dupont Nomade, and it appears that it needs to be setup. Do you all keep a list of reputable gypsy guitar technicians in my area (Oakland, California, USA)?? I did a quick search but didn't find anything. Thanks.

Comments

  • anthon_74anthon_74 Marin county, CA✭✭✭✭ Alta Mira M 01
    Posts: 561
    Hey man,

    John Mello is in Kensington. He's a top notch acoustic guitar luthier and knows his stuff. He set up my guitar quite well. Look him up.

    Sorry I don't know his contact info.

    what does the guitar need done ?

    Cheers !
    Anthony
  • jdittmerjdittmer New
    Posts: 4
    Thanks Anthony. I'll look him up. That name sounds familiar...maybe from an acoustic guitar mag article a few years back.

    One issue I have is that the B string slides around on the bridge. I see multiple grooves on the bridge near the B string. When I alternate pick the string it moves around. I would also want to make sure that the action was correct. I have more experience playing acoustic flat top guitars, so I'm a bit out of my league here.

    Any idea what a basic setup cost would be from someone like John Mello?

    Thanks again,

    John
  • pickitjohnpickitjohn South Texas Corpus, San Antonio, AustinVirtuoso Patenotte 260
    Posts: 936
    Hey John,

    You may just need to take a small file and notch the bridge a little more.
    Here is a link to Josh's "Fitting your Bridge Post" very well explained and easy.

    viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1200

    "Bob Holo quick course on gypsy jazz guitar setup"




    Hope that helps

    pick on

    pickitjohn
  • pickitjohnpickitjohn South Texas Corpus, San Antonio, AustinVirtuoso Patenotte 260
    Posts: 936
    Sorry I didn't get the two links to be active.

    Sure seems to happen alot around here, not sure how to get it right.

    :?: ANY HELP :?:

    pick on pickitjohn
  • PassacagliaPassacaglia Madison, WI✭✭✭✭
    Posts: 1,471
    pickitjohn wrote:
    Hey John,

    You may just need to take a small file and notch the bridge a little more.
    Here is a link to Josh's "Fitting your Bridge Post" very well explained and easy.

    http://www.djangobooks.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1200

    "Bob Holo quick course on gypsy jazz guitar setup"




    Hope that helps

    pick on

    pickitjohn

    Pickit - you were just missing the first part of the forum link (you can see it above). On the youtube link, your closing bracket was missing it's left side. (you had /youtube], not .
    -Paul

    pas encore, j'erre toujours.
  • Il TrovatoreIl Trovatore San Jose, CANew
    Posts: 83
    Howdy,
    I live down in San Jose and I take my Gitane to the guys at Gryphon Strings in Palo Alto, they know their stuff.
  • Bob HoloBob Holo Moderator
    Posts: 1,252
    Some good names mentioned above. Also, Al Milburn is in Oakland... well, Berkeley... pretty close to you - a few miles. He's done some work for a few GJ artists in the area and I know they were happy because they called me and told me he was great. I spoke with him once on the phone and he was asking all the right questions - which made me feel comfortable because so many techs - even guys who have been doing guitar setup for years, will set GJ guitars up like flat-tops, so the neck will be about 8/1000" relief (should be more like 12/1000") and the action will be about 2.4mm / 1.6mm (should be more like 2.7mm / 2.25mm even for a low-ish action) and sometimes... god forbid... they notch the zero frets to lower the action at the headstock down to almost fingerstyle height, which... well... notching a zero fret is just odd... but with soft silver coated copper strings... the strings get damaged at the zero fret by the notch because note bending is so prevalent in this style and the strings are made of soft metals. So, you wind up with a sitar-tone that is almost impossible to locate because everything "looks" normal until you un-string the guitar and notice that a tiny portion of the backside of the string's wrap was severed at the notched zero fret... and even if that doesn't happen - given the small string gauge and overly flat neck, you will have open-position buzzing as well as odd and hard-to-identify sympathetic string buzzes between the fretting hand and the headstock, usually around the 2nd or 3rd fret and usually appearing when you pompe or comp chords up around the 7th or 8th fret. I tried to do a video with Patrus this year about some of these things. We'll see how it comes out. I didn't feel that sharp when I did the vid, but I think the points came across - and Patrus is a brilliant editor, so hopefully it will turn out good even if I wasn't particularly erudite or photogenic. It's the content that counts, I guess. ;-) And again - Patrus is a damned genius. I was so tired doing the vid last year that I kept having to stop and ask: "What was I just talking about?" and yet I have to say... he made me look good.

    Anyway, from what I've been told, Al apparently "gets it" when it comes to these guitars.

    http://www.yelp.com/biz/al-milburn-luthier-berkeley
    You get one chance to enjoy this day, but if you're doing it right, that's enough.
  • jdittmerjdittmer New
    Posts: 4
    Wow, thank you for all of the great information. I appreciate it.
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