Cool Tips

Another tip I nicked from Paul Gilbert is aimed at keeping your pedal controls from turning while transporting.
He uses o-rings of the appropriate size (bout an assortment at Harbor Freight) and puts them under the knobs. Keeps them from inadvertently turning, but still adjustable. I think I'm gonna do it.

The neck should be adjusted before assessing nut/saddle heights. If you're doing setup work that involves any "measure twice cut once" stuff (nut slots, acoustic saddles, etc.) and you aren't sure exactly where the neck needs to land, adjust it dead straight. This has the effect of cutting to the waste side of a line, since adding relief will add height to both the nut and saddle. This will save you from realizing after you get it lowered that you had too much bow and now everything is too low and stuff needs to be shimmed/filled.

If you have radius blocks, you can put an acoustic saddle in a little vice and run over the top to both get rid of string grooves and re-radius it appropriately. Lots and lots of guitars out there have a saddle with a dramatically different radius than the fingerboard.

Scuff marks in satin finish can sometimes be taken out with Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. It will retexture the finish if you aren't careful, though. If you want to flatten a gloss finish (like on a neck), Trizact will work much better than steel wool, and it will buff back out very easily if you want to go back to gloss.

This is a little obscure, but here goes. I have a 1966 Bandmaster head. Two of the control knobs couldn't be tightened because the internal threads for the setscrew had stripped. The plastic knobs have a short metal threaded insert.
I degreased the knob and setscrew with some lighter fluid. I then took some shoe polish and put a light coat on the tiny setscrew, wiping almost all of it off, leaving just a thin film. I then mixed up some JB Weld and applied it to the setscrew and internal knob threads. I installed the setscrew into the knob and left it overnight.
To my surprise, the next morning the setscrew operated fine, and could be tightened pretty tight.
You could also just buy a whole new set for cheap!

Thank you for the tip if ever needed!

I’ve used black RTV, as well.

Sometimes fret ends feel sharp or catch a high E string because there's a gap between the fret and the fingerboard. Reseating isn't always the answer - if the frets were dressed when it isn't seated all the way you can end up with low frets, or if the fingerboard edge is just rolled (most common reason), the fret isn't going to go down all the way, anyway. You can put in a bit of medium or gel superglue, accelerate it, and then level it back down when you file the fret ends to get it feeling smooth and keep strings from snagging in there.

I do this after a refret, too. My frets are seated all the way, but you can still feel a miniscule amount of gap just as two materials (wood/fret) transition, and this makes them feel a bit better. I usually can sand out any fingerboard roll, but this keeps me from having to sand too much to chase that or having to over bevel the frets. Realistically, probably only 10% of the guitars I refret actually need this, but I like doing it with all of them, anyway.

Cleaning off burrs/grooves from saddles fixes a lot of weird tone issues. Worth checking if you have a weird mystery buzz that you can't find.

I'm refinishing one of my Strats just because. After a tedious strip of paint and sanding I had a number of dings that still had paint in them.

Using a small jeweler's flat blade I placed the tip on my target then held my soldering pencil on the shaft of the screwdriver. Heat transferred and the heated up paint lifted right out.