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cockroach wrote:Surely wrapping paper around the strings where they cross the nut must have deadened the sound and/or affected the tuning? OK, it may have stopped the strings rattling or whining if the nut slots were too big for the strings, but...???

Well, there were no guitar technicians back then, and Hank was only a 19 year old lad!

AND all the 'experts' who have had years of experience and limitless technology try to emulate the '19year old lad ' and fail!

cockroach wrote:Surely wrapping paper around the strings where they cross the nut must have deadened the sound and/or affected the tuning? OK, it may have stopped the strings rattling or whining if the nut slots were too big for the strings, but...???

I used to do exactly the same with my first Fender (a Jazzmaster, back around 1969). I had no idea that Hank had ever done the same thing, I hasten to add.

Back then, you just had to make the best of it. The idea of handing the guitar over to someone to fettle it - and being without it for a week - was anathema!

Well, there were no guitar technicians back then, and Hank was only a 19 year old lad!

Very few.

In 1960/1961, I would think that there were probably about three or four good guitar technicians in the entire UK, and all of them were in London (one of them being the late Emile Grimshaw, who fixed up a Vox Phantom XII for me in 1972).

JN

Dopey look in his eyes...
Anyone else got this guitar strap from around 1960 (what brand was it?)?

negninegaw wrote:Dopey look in his eyes...
Anyone else got this guitar strap from around 1960 (what brand was it?)?

It's not a long story, but it's a medium-length one. There is a view that Fender once supplied those beaded straps with their custom-order guitars (not for very long). The design is a Native American pattern which is catalogued and archived in the museums of some south-western States (New Mexico, Arizona).

There are (to my knowledge) two reproductions in existence in the UK (in woven silk rather than in a beaded construction). They were made to the order of New Mexico Shads fan Tony Chan. Colin Pryce-Jones of the Rapiers has one, and I have the other.

JN

Hence Apache...
Does Hank still have his?