As I continue to share my journey through the music and pro-audio industry—from Melbourne to London, back to Melbourne, and now on to Bristol—I’ve met many colleagues with great stories who provide excellent service.
When I needed the studio bass guitar serviced, I came across Eltham Jones while he was still based at Mickleburge in Stoke Croft. I was pleasantly surprised to receive such a warm welcome—both personally and in his genuine interest in my Fender Jazz Bass (in Fiesta red, I might add).
Eltham suggested a change the pickups and on a gut instinct followed his recommendation. The result was outstanding. Although now semi retired he is still very, passionate, knowledgeable and connected. Take a read through our quick-fire interview it’s a great read!
Hey Eltham thanks for joining in my quick-fire interviews series. Can you tell readers what first got you into working on guitars, and how did that turn into a full-time business?
I’d been studying Psychology at University when my parents marriage broke up. I couldn’t continue studying so I ended up in the library looking for alternative careers. On my way out there was a notice up looking for students for a full time course in Viol making at something called the “Musical Instrument Technology Centre” located about a mile from my house. I’d always been fascinated by early instruments since seeing a Lute maker interviewed on a Welsh TV programme, “Hamdden” (translation: hobbies or leisure activities) and I’d followed all of the late David Munrow’s programmes like “Ancestral Voices”. So it seemed like an opportunity to good to miss.
I was too late to enrol for the course, but I was offered a place on a government job creation scheme based at the school which solved my immediate financial problems and studied guitar making at evening course during the first year while working full time on all sorts of other instruments during the day. At the end of the first year I transferred to the full time course as a student. By this time the finances had stabilised and I was able to scratch a living by employing my skills as a commercial sculptor and pattern maker, which I continued to do after I’d left the college, which had now been rebranded “The Welsh School of Stringed Instrument Making and Repair”.
I continued as a sculptor/pattern maker for a couple of years until about 1982, when Hohner bought British Music Strings in Bedwas and I was inveigled by a friend into becoming their on-site guitar tech for about six years before getting into the retail side of things with Cranes Musical Instruments in Cardiff; so I kind of tripped and accidentally fell into the business. There was never anything like a plan…
Eltham, what’s something most guitar players don’t realise about keeping their instrument in good shape?
The importance of regular maintenance and attention to detail. I spend my life fixing connections that have broken because pots and sockets have been allowed to work loose and chew up wiring inside. Tuners that break because the threaded ferrules have been left loose. Guitars that don’t stay in tune because the player has wrapped a yard of string on the spindle so the first time you tug it the tuning just collapses. For pity’s sake, get a spanner and learn how to use it.
You’ve worked on a lot of different guitars over the years—do any memorable or unusual repairs stand out.
There are several. The first one that comes to mind was a bass guitar – I think it was a Warwick, or a Spector – and the neck had broken, but it wasn’t a regular crack; there was a vertical rift running through the headstock and about eighteen inches down the line of the neck, in addition to a complex hinge fracture. “I’ve taken it to three people and they’ve all said that it can’t be fixed, but they’ve all said to take it to you”. My first response was “I’m very flattered but what makes them think I have any magic in my fingers that they don’t have” but I never like to concede defeat and it was a slow period, so I agreed to take a look.
One of my favourite tools is the Spanish Windlass. It’s basically like a tourniquet; a loop of cord twisted with a rod, which allows you to apply vectored tensile force to a joint, and it’s the sort of thing that works where compressive clamps don’t. It’s main use is to keep a hinge fracture closed or open while glue is applied before applying compression clamps, but in this case I was able to contrive a network of these that applied torque and pressure to the complex fractal break that allowed the whole thing to come back together rather neatly. The oil finish of the bass helped, because high gloss finishes are much hard to repair then low gloss oil ones. I’ve got a photo somewhere of it on my bench, with all the clamps and cordage attached, looking like the rigging of Renaissance era galleon.
For someone bringing their guitar in for the first time, what can they expect from a proper setup or service?
I’ve had people come to me expecting – even wanting – a level of service that they don’t need; sometimes because they’ve misdiagnosed the problem, sometimes because they’ve been led to believe – often by online ‘experts’ who haven’t seen the guitar – that this is what they need.
I lost one customer who insisted that I should just do what the customer wants rather than
second-guess their requirements. I take the view that if what they want isn’t going to fix the problem, but something else would, then it’s my job to advise accordingly. In this case he wanted to spend over £200 on a refret he didn’t need, when the only problem was that his guitar hadn’t been properly set up. There are sound reasons for wanting a refret, but this wasn’t one of them and, if I’d been unethical, I could have just taken his money, delivered a refretted guitar, included the set up that is standard with all refrets anyway and sent him away happy but with a guitar that was substantially no different than if I’d just done the set up for a quarter of the price; but I would have felt like a fraud.
My motto is “Don’t tell me the solution; tell me the problem. The solution is my department”.
If you could give every guitarist one simple piece of advice to improve their instrument or sound, what would it be?
Forget about trying to be someone else. Buying those strings that Tommy Emmanuel uses won’t make you into Tommy Emmanuel. A friend wrote a song called “Sounds like me”. The lyrics listed all the gear and devices he’d bought over the years in an attempt to emulate his heroes but lamented that in the end he “just sounds like me”.
One single, simple piece of advice though? Pay attention to your strings. I don’t mean just the condition or the gauge. The string is the interface between you and the guitar. It takes what you do, and translates it into a form of energy that the guitar can use. This is a huge subject, so I’ll try to condense it as much as possible.
Most people are accustomed to the idea of the scale length and the tension of the string being related, but it’s so much more complex than that. If you have a guitar with a trapeze tailpiece, for example, like an Epiphone Casino, the same strings you put on a stop tailpiece 335 will feel softer on a Casino because the tailpiece “harp” will absorb some of the stretch when you press the string down and the string will also vibrate with a wider excursion arc because this increase in what we engineers call “compliance” allows the string to move further before the increase in tension hits that point of dynamic equilibrium that allows resonance to occur. This will affect things like how much arc relief you need in the fingerboard and how low you can get the action.
The same top E string on a Les Paul will require less bending than on a Strat because of two things: the position of the tuner is closer to the nut on a Les Paul and the LP has a stop tailpiece while the strat has a floating tremolo bridge as well.
Make sure tuners are tight and stable and that your string wrap is neat. If your string wrap is sloppy and untidy this will pull top end sustain from your string, making them sound wooly as well as lacking pitch stability. Tone is subjective, but an unruly string wrap will always make it worse.
