Matt Bigland, the lead singer and guitarist of Dinosaur Pile-Up, visited the workshop with his trio of Gibson guitars and his pedalboard for me to give them all thorough servicing.

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Both the main Black Explorer and Brown Explorer both shared similar issues and received identical work. Extreme fret wear, sharp fret ends, a twist and kick in the neck, worn-out nut, and a bad setup were the main issues playability-wise.

So, to start off they each received a Fret Dress and Setup with Fret Polish. This removed the wear pits from the frets, leveled out the uneven frets, and straightened the twist and kick out of the neck by removing a small amount of extra fret height where the neck was showing issues. The sharp fret ends were filed flush to the fingerboard edge and rolled for optimal comfort. Then of course the mirror finish fret polish and fingerboard waxing to get it feeling like butter to play.

 

The Black Flying V was in slightly better shape as it hasn’t seen all too much stage use. So there wasn’t really any fret wear and the neck was surprisingly straight. It was however being held back by scratchy frets, sharp fret ends, and a nasty stock plastic nut.

So we decided to give it a Standard Setup with Fret Polish. This resolved the issues with the sharp fret ends which were filed flush to the edge of the fingerboard and rounded for optimal comfort. The frets were then polished to a mirror finish and the fingerboard was waxed so she plays like butter.

A new Handmade Bone Nut was made for all three guitars as they had either a stock plastic nut, nut slots that had worn too low, or poor fitment of the nuts. When removing the nut on the Black Explorer I also discovered a shim, which is never ideal. I removed this and re-cut the bottom of the nut slot for optimal contact between the strings, nut, and neck.

Me and Matt decided to simplify the electronics, after all, less is more! So we removed most of the controls from all of the guitars so all that is left is a master tone control and a new upgraded Pure Tone Jack.

 

As for the tiny pedalboard of doom, Matt had been experiencing some connection issues while on tour so I initially cleaned and tightened all of the connections and patch cables to ensure reliability. His old DIY board was looking a bit worse for wear, so we decided to make a brand new board and re-wired the whole rig for a much better-looking and more importantly, more reliable rig. 

The guitars and pedal board are now back to fighting form and ready for touring and recording!