Ted pays his respects to we Brits by pronouncing "de-solder".....lovely ! What astounds me is that he opines that he's not the best of luthiers.....how humble is this bloke ?
"Sodder...or soulder..." is something of a meme on this channel. I wouldn't be surprised if some viewers have incorporated it into their drinking games.
There are a lot of good luthiers out there. Some are not so good, but the good ones are out there. You don't need to ship your axe to Canada to get this quality of work done. Ted's awesome, but he's not alone. The others just don't make videos like this. I think Ted's gift is being an awesome luthier while also being very good at sharing how this kind of work is done. And he makes everyone who watches his videos feel good!😊
My father-in-law was a WWII vet and guitarist with a big band that played swing and jazz mostly from the '30s & '40s. He had an L-5 that was gorgeous. He played with that band until he was well into his 80s before he finally couldn't schlep the thing plus an amp around anymore and retired. IIRC I think he told me his was a '68. My wife seems to remember it being a '68 as well.
I find myself watching many of your repair videos over again. This is one of them. Such stellar work, such patience,such knowledge, such wonderful delivery of the experience. I’ve heard you say that you’re not found of praise. But you Sir are awesome…!!!
Watched you enough to say, "If I were and an Angel with a harp to repair... you'd be my guy!" Don't get a big head... you're cool. and I'm 70." But seriously Ted, amazing work and empathic decisions for the care of the L5. Dude!!! I actually pray for you. Consider that brother! Your are the right stuff to preserve he quality of Communion. That's a true believers post.
I have an L-5CES ('68, as I recall) that's cosmetically worn out. I paid like $400 for it in the early 80s and it was 'the guitar immediately available' for a lot of years. It has a bunch of wear. I do not plan on having it repaired. It plays fine. It's just worn and flakey. I no longer play it often. It is more a testament to time.
The part you refer to is named the string spoiler, made by Vibramate. Just to clarify. Vibramate manufactures a range of Bigsby adapters allowing no drill installations.
Ted, I can't thank you enough for these videos. I do a bit of my own guitar repair, and for friends, but I'm no luthier. Somehow, and I don't really know why, I find your videos incredibly relaxing. Your work is inspiring, your history informing and entertaining, and you voice soothing. I really look forward to and enjoy your videos. They are a positive contribution to my life. Thank you, really, thank you.
Don’t apologize for your playing, I love what you do to expose us to the sound. And truth be told wish I could play like you. I watch every video and love every minute of dialog and find myself nodding in agreement. Many thanks for sharing your time, knowledge, and work with us.
I would suggest soliciting repairs on a Dimebag Darrell Explorer that you can blast through a Marshall stack at the construction crews next door, but they love that sort of thing and would be asking you to play it during their lunch breaks 💀
Thank You Ted! I had the same lacquer problem on a 1972 L-5 S! Cherry Sunburst, solid flamed Maple, and gold plated Low Impedance Pickups. I'm a Doyle Low impedance luthier (huge smile). With mostly LUCK I was able to match the cherry Red Sunburst over a cigarette burn in the upper bout, but the Lacquer was just weird, and wouldn't cure. 6 months later it was hard enough to polish, and looks great..from a galloping Horse. After the color tinting into a french Laquer Stew Mac Lacquer clear gloss and made the mistake of Not testing it on scrap first. I think that Gibson used a different formulation in their finishes. For me it was a very expensive mistake for not TESTING the Lacquer on scrap before spraying a rare $7K L-5 S with gold plated LP Low Impedance Pickups.
Hey hey ... I am no luthier but like to keep my guitars played and loved. Really like your tubes Ted.. I am a UK stressed complex needs teacher and one of your you tubes and a cup of good English tea before I set off to work really works!
I appreciate that you even put a video out with all of that going on - we do appreciate it with a watch and thumbs up. The guitar does look pretty sexy and sounds pretty good too. Great work Ted!
They don't make em like you anymore Ted ! I wish we had just 1 Luthier like you anywhere near me .Happy thanks giving to you and your family and thanks for showing us what and how you do what you do
Nice to see you putting it straight from the butcher that abused it before. I'm currently working on a Hondo L5 Fatboy which I know isn't a mark on a Gibson but I must say for a guitar that's nearly 40 years old it's pretty solid & well crafted. Great work Ted ❤
Ah, the things guitar owners get up to! Humbuckers without polepiece screws. Mmm, okay. 😸 I do hope the owner is happy. Fantastic work, as always. Thanks!
Such a beautiful guitar Ted. Well done on another guitar rescue. I don’t understand how people can ruin something that valuable and butcher it with non original parts, especially the original tailpiece
What a beautiful guitar and excellent repair work as always. I used your dental floss method to fish the pots, switch,and output jack in my 2 latest builds of the Gibson Birdland guitars. Needless to say it worked very nice, it was much easier than I thought it would be. I love these old Gibson Archtops, They are a lot of fun to play, and the tones are just fantastic.Thank you for sharing your talent and skills. Please keep them coming, I can hardly wait for the newest post every week, your channel is my favorite out of all of youtube land. Peace to you and all the viewers out there.
I love that guitar, but those black knobs are offensive. [ WTF?! ] OK...a bit of comments click baiting. Personally, I think that a set of gold top hat knobs with the silver inserts would look very classy, indeed. Those black ones are so...proletariat. The gold ones would better suit the upper class royalty of the guitar. Well, I'm being a bit facetious here, but that is one gorgeous instrument. The gold plating was sanded off because - drunkenness? Insanity? Ignorance? Possession of an evil paranormal entity? It kind of boggles the mind, doesn't it? I actually winced when I saw that scoured tailpiece. Horrors! Great video, as usual. I am now going back in time to see any of Ted's videos that I might have missed.
I can't begin to tell you Ted how much I've learned from you over the years. I appreciate your insight and knowledge as well as your technical sharing.
Excellent video Mr. Woodford! Much thanks for many pieces of your work. The main being the cutting of the pickguard. For I am putting together a StewMac mini-T kit and putting a blue mother of toilet material and mulling over the best way to cut it to shape, all that for a grandniece, with the guitar itself in pink. A beautiful job on the L5! Thanks so much!
*MAJOR* sympathy on the destruction noise next door... I had to move 5 years ago, and from the day I moved into the place I moved into, there has been condestruction all around me. even the lock down didn't bring peace, because deconstruction was considered essential...
oh man... them staple p90's though, I do wonder if they will be on the Reverb? The L5's are skookum fo sho, not really my playing style but a very special guitar, If you get the chance Johan Segeborn pushes one through a full marshal stack... epic to say the least.
"with the simple acceptance of some contusions..." Everybody is always praising Ted's brilliant work, and justly so, but the bone-dry humor is what keeps me coming back!
Nice guitar and repair. I'd suggest Flat Wound Strings for that real Jazz tone. I use D'Addario Chromes ECG25 (12-52) on my old ES-175, and they sound quite good. I tried Wound strings on it, and all the Jazzy tone went away, negating much of the reason for having a Jazz Archtop.
I grew up in the jewelry trades (my grandfather was a horologist and owned a small jewelry shop on Jeweler’s Row in Philadelphia). It can be replated by any jewelry finisher. I’d expect $100-150 USD
I know they likely picked those Duncans for their sound, but if they'd just got the 'ear-less' versions they could have 'notched out' the corners of the 'bucker openings to fit them. Sure, you'd need to glue a couple of blocks to the back for the P-90s' mounting screws, but that's easy enough and then you don't even need spacers! 😁 You'd also want to hide the 'buckers' mounting holes to make it look nice, but a little doweling and some touch up lacquer would hide those pretty well, being so close to the pickups and also black. If they'd done that, swapping back to the PAFs would have been a simple 1 hour job (ten minutes of which would be waiting for the soldering iron to heat up, lol)!
On one hand, I do appreciate someone who throws "collector's value" to the wind and purely uses an instrument as a musical tool. On the other, did the owner have to pick an L5 to be their modding platform?
Exquisite guitar, exquisite craftsmanship (of course...) but (not questioning the owner's choice) all in all I liked the P90's better....and black is my fave finish too. Thanks Ted!
This is one guitar, that I liked how it looked like before. Ill bet those Seymour Duncan custom shop pickups were EXPENSIVE. But as always, it sounded awesome at the end.
Crazy guitar, I HAVE seen a Super 400 that had staples in both positions. That particular instrument sounded great but perhaps an anomaly. I have several in the shop. We put one in the bridge position on a Les Paul Deluxe that we switched to P90's and it just sounded strident. We put a regular P90 with the staple in the neck position where it generally belongs. I love your content by the way!
If guitars could choose their own luthier, they'd be queuing up for this guy
Oh behave 😂
I dearly wish I could hire him to refret my ‘55 Junior and my beloved ‘77 Les Paul Deluxe.
I would have him record every word in the current version thesaurus.
"The luthier you want and your guitar needs!" has a nice ring to it. Should look great on a business card lol.
Yea he’s really great
Still thankful for the algorithm that matched with the channel which significantly drops my blood pressure. Thanks, Ted.
Every time you upload a new video my day gets a lot better
From Jazz to Rockabilly then back to Jazz again, that Instrument needs to be heard.
Ted pays his respects to we Brits by pronouncing "de-solder".....lovely ! What astounds me is that he opines that he's not the best of luthiers.....how humble is this bloke ?
"Sodder...or soulder..." is something of a meme on this channel. I wouldn't be surprised if some viewers have incorporated it into their drinking games.
@Street-shitter-2 Your story sounds apocryphal. Could you get your mate to chime in here and corroborate this claim?
There are a lot of good luthiers out there. Some are not so good, but the good ones are out there. You don't need to ship your axe to Canada to get this quality of work done. Ted's awesome, but he's not alone. The others just don't make videos like this. I think Ted's gift is being an awesome luthier while also being very good at sharing how this kind of work is done. And he makes everyone who watches his videos feel good!😊
Even Ted is getting bored of just saying “polishing polishing polishing”. And I’m from Poland. You can always Polish.
My father-in-law was a WWII vet and guitarist with a big band that played swing and jazz mostly from the '30s & '40s. He had an L-5 that was gorgeous. He played with that band until he was well into his 80s before he finally couldn't schlep the thing plus an amp around anymore and retired. IIRC I think he told me his was a '68. My wife seems to remember it being a '68 as well.
Be a good boy and show initiative you might get it
Thanks for your nocturnal sacrifice to bring our weekly fix. 🙏
I find myself watching many of your repair videos over again.
This is one of them.
Such stellar work, such patience,such knowledge, such wonderful delivery of the experience.
I’ve heard you say that you’re not found of praise.
But you Sir are awesome…!!!
What they did to that poor L5 is a damn crime. You did a magnificent job (as usual) to restore it to its former glory.
Ted always gives 110%. What a champ.
She's a big, beautiful girl. You did a great job, as usual.
Absolutely rad work!
I can watch these videos for hours. This is my Xanax. Sooooo calming and zen.
Watched you enough to say, "If I were and an Angel with a harp to repair... you'd be my guy!" Don't get a big head... you're cool. and I'm 70." But seriously Ted, amazing work and empathic decisions for the care of the L5. Dude!!! I actually pray for you. Consider that brother! Your are the right stuff to preserve he quality of Communion. That's a true believers post.
I love P90s, but those PAFs really suit the guitar much better. Nice work.
It looks nice with gold pickups, and especially with the pickguard notched to fit around the pickup rings rather than over them.
Thanks, Uncle Ted. Sounded worlds better after your work.
I have an L-5CES ('68, as I recall) that's cosmetically worn out. I paid like $400 for it in the early 80s and it was 'the guitar immediately available' for a lot of years. It has a bunch of wear.
I do not plan on having it repaired. It plays fine. It's just worn and flakey. I no longer play it often. It is more a testament to time.
The part you refer to is named the string spoiler, made by Vibramate. Just to clarify. Vibramate manufactures a range of Bigsby adapters allowing no drill installations.
Ted, I can't thank you enough for these videos. I do a bit of my own guitar repair, and for friends, but I'm no luthier. Somehow, and I don't really know why, I find your videos incredibly relaxing. Your work is inspiring, your history informing and entertaining, and you voice soothing. I really look forward to and enjoy your videos. They are a positive contribution to my life. Thank you, really, thank you.
It's Ted.. 🙂
Love your work man! Inspiring to see a serious craftsman like yourself document your work. This guitar really deserved the PAF restoration.
Don’t apologize for your playing, I love what you do to expose us to the sound. And truth be told wish I could play like you.
I watch every video and love every minute of dialog and find myself nodding in agreement.
Many thanks for sharing your time, knowledge, and work with us.
I would suggest soliciting repairs on a Dimebag Darrell Explorer that you can blast through a Marshall stack at the construction crews next door, but they love that sort of thing and would be asking you to play it during their lunch breaks 💀
You mean a Dimebag ML? :P
Sure, vash 🙄
Thank You Ted! I had the same lacquer problem on a 1972 L-5 S! Cherry Sunburst, solid flamed Maple, and gold plated Low Impedance Pickups. I'm a Doyle Low impedance luthier (huge smile). With mostly LUCK I was able to match the cherry Red Sunburst over a cigarette burn in the upper bout, but the Lacquer was just weird, and wouldn't cure. 6 months later it was hard enough to polish, and looks great..from a galloping Horse. After the color tinting into a french Laquer Stew Mac Lacquer clear gloss and made the mistake of Not testing it on scrap first. I think that Gibson used a different formulation in their finishes. For me it was a very expensive mistake for not TESTING the Lacquer on scrap before spraying a rare $7K L-5 S with gold plated LP Low Impedance Pickups.
"The lacquer's getting harder"
"And Leon's getting laaaaarrrrrrrger!"
Airplane!
Classic movie that maybe only 2% of the world's population remembers now.
Hey hey ... I am no luthier but like to keep my guitars played and loved. Really like your tubes Ted.. I am a UK stressed complex needs teacher and one of your you tubes and a cup of good English tea before I set off to work really works!
I appreciate that you even put a video out with all of that going on - we do appreciate it with a watch and thumbs up. The guitar does look pretty sexy and sounds pretty good too. Great work Ted!
Just fantastic! Thank you.
They don't make em like you anymore Ted ! I wish we had just 1 Luthier like you anywhere near me .Happy thanks giving to you and your family and thanks for showing us what and how you do what you do
Beautiful guitar, beautiful work! 👍🏼👍🏼
Been Jonesing for a wdfrd video. Thanks, Ted!
Early Thanksgiving treat🎉Happy Thanksgiving Twoodford
100% agree on the pick guard. That would drive me nuts. Beautiful work as always.
1:14 I always wondered why the '54- '57 Les Paul Customs didn't have a "staple" pickup in the bridge position...
another successful surgery! excellent work on a magnificent guitar. very well done.
A work of art, and a beautiful guitar all rolled up in one instrument. You never cease to amaze.
Nice to see you putting it straight from the butcher that abused it before. I'm currently working on a Hondo L5 Fatboy which I know isn't a mark on a Gibson but I must say for a guitar that's nearly 40 years old it's pretty solid & well crafted. Great work Ted ❤
That’s a beauty. Great video! Thanks.
I absolutely love your attention to detail.
Ah, the things guitar owners get up to! Humbuckers without polepiece screws. Mmm, okay. 😸 I do hope the owner is happy.
Fantastic work, as always. Thanks!
The pole screws were on the underside of the pickups.
See 6:49
Going from wincing at the beginning of this video to absolute awe. Ted, you’re awesome
Excellent work Ted, you are the master!
I am excited to see you on Psionic Audio soon!! I can’t get enough of Lyle. It’s going to be fun.
I love the big boxes! My go-to electric is an Aria Pro II FA70 (L5CES clone). Had to wait a few days for my moment of Ted zen, but it was worth it!
Beautiful guitar. I would have liked to see it stock. As always, great job. Thank you!
Sounds waaay better with the new pickups. And, as always, an amazing job.
A beautiful repair job, to undo the sheer *butchery* that was inflicted on this guitar! NICE job, mate!
Well done young man. Well done indeed...
I love to watch fine craftmanship in real time.
It sounds awesome thanks for sharing and Gods blessing to you and all your family
Ted, Vibramate is the manufacturer. The actual name of the part, is called "The Spoiler".
Sells for anywhere from 32 to 60 Dollars. Not worth any of it.
Just another chunk of hardware.
Thanks for fixing that. I've had a lot of L5's and that one being modded was hard to look at. As far as playing you play better than Trogly.
Such a beautiful guitar Ted. Well done on another guitar rescue. I don’t understand how people can ruin something that valuable and butcher it with non original parts, especially the original tailpiece
What a beautiful guitar and excellent repair work as always. I used your dental floss method to fish the pots, switch,and output jack in my 2 latest builds of the Gibson Birdland guitars. Needless to say it worked very nice, it was much easier than I thought it would be. I love these old Gibson Archtops, They are a lot of fun to play, and the tones are just fantastic.Thank you for sharing your talent and skills. Please keep them coming, I can hardly wait for the newest post every week, your channel is my favorite out of all of youtube land. Peace to you and all the viewers out there.
I love that guitar, but those black knobs are offensive. [ WTF?! ] OK...a bit of comments click baiting.
Personally, I think that a set of gold top hat knobs with the silver inserts would look very classy, indeed.
Those black ones are so...proletariat. The gold ones would better suit the upper class royalty of the guitar.
Well, I'm being a bit facetious here, but that is one gorgeous instrument. The gold plating was sanded off because - drunkenness? Insanity? Ignorance? Possession of an evil paranormal entity?
It kind of boggles the mind, doesn't it? I actually winced when I saw that scoured tailpiece. Horrors!
Great video, as usual. I am now going back in time to see any of Ted's videos that I might have missed.
I can't begin to tell you Ted how much I've learned from you over the years.
I appreciate your insight and knowledge as well as your technical sharing.
WooHoo!! Thanks for sharing Ted.
I’m a fan of that wide fb binding look with the outside strings practically on the edge.
Very nice to see a job done properly. Best wishes from England.
I don’t remember seeing the tuner clamp before!
Ted has used his tuner clamp a number of times to secure interior bracing and cleats.
Love the Jazz improv at the end 👍.
Excellent video Mr. Woodford! Much thanks for many pieces of your work. The main being the cutting of the pickguard. For I am putting together a StewMac mini-T kit and putting a blue mother of toilet material and mulling over the best way to cut it to shape, all that for a grandniece, with the guitar itself in pink. A beautiful job on the L5! Thanks so much!
Sounds like your grandniece's guitar is going to be a beauty.
Hope everything goes well. 😁✌🖖
As always, beautiful work.
Love your work, like always. But this is the first one I've seen where I thought to myself, "I would have left it alone" IF I was the owner 😉
Gorgeous! Such elegance! No wonder that is a flagship model! Thank you for getting through the neighbors remodel and making this happen!
Ted, your insanely brilliant. Beautiful.
Always so neat jobs and very inventive finding the right solution for every problem.
Thanks for another enjoyable video, great to see a wonderful guitar getting a nice touch up like this!
*MAJOR* sympathy on the destruction noise next door...
I had to move 5 years ago, and from the day I moved into the place I moved into,
there has been condestruction all around me.
even the lock down didn't bring peace, because deconstruction was considered essential...
Man that is a lot of work to both repair the guitar and produce the video. Kudos for all the hard work to create this for us budding luthiers!
I've never seen your 'tuning clamp' What a great gadget!
Gorgeous guitar... nice work ...as always.
Thanks for sharing
oh man... them staple p90's though, I do wonder if they will be on the Reverb? The L5's are skookum fo sho, not really my playing style but a very special guitar, If you get the chance Johan Segeborn pushes one through a full marshal stack... epic to say the least.
I love the stylized design at the end of the headstock!
The headless guitarist is back, I was starting to wonder where he had got to. Sounds gorgeous.
Ohhhhh fancy 😍! Six string superfluous sensation 😎😎😎
Awsome video thumbs up. I truly hope you & your family have a blessed Thanksgiving.
"with the simple acceptance of some contusions..." Everybody is always praising Ted's brilliant work, and justly so, but the bone-dry humor is what keeps me coming back!
It's like watching the Stooges. The action is one thing but
the best part is the dialog. 😁✌🖖
Nice guitar and repair. I'd suggest Flat Wound Strings for that real Jazz tone. I use D'Addario Chromes ECG25 (12-52) on my old ES-175, and they sound quite good. I tried Wound strings on it, and all the Jazzy tone went away, negating much of the reason for having a Jazz Archtop.
Beautiful guitar and amazing work!
I grew up in the jewelry trades (my grandfather was a horologist and owned a small jewelry shop on Jeweler’s Row in Philadelphia). It can be replated by any jewelry finisher. I’d expect $100-150 USD
I know they likely picked those Duncans for their sound, but if they'd just got the 'ear-less' versions they could have 'notched out' the corners of the 'bucker openings to fit them. Sure, you'd need to glue a couple of blocks to the back for the P-90s' mounting screws, but that's easy enough and then you don't even need spacers! 😁 You'd also want to hide the 'buckers' mounting holes to make it look nice, but a little doweling and some touch up lacquer would hide those pretty well, being so close to the pickups and also black.
If they'd done that, swapping back to the PAFs would have been a simple 1 hour job (ten minutes of which would be waiting for the soldering iron to heat up, lol)!
Happy early thanksgiving ted ive learned a lot from you over the past year im thankful to have you around! 😊
Thanksgiving in Canada is first or second Monday in October!
Beautiful!!!!
very cool. It looks great..thank you.
On one hand, I do appreciate someone who throws "collector's value" to the wind and purely uses an instrument as a musical tool. On the other, did the owner have to pick an L5 to be their modding platform?
The staple pup sound reminds me of an ES 135 i once had. I fell for the looks but the sound was so thin. It were P 100 s I sold it.
these are the ones that make it worth it
Even a bit late, your uploads are always a treat!
Happy Thanksgiving Friend...
Thank you Ted for putting out these videos, we do appreciate the time and effort in making sure there's a weekly video. You truly are a treasure.
I like the previous owners hold my beer attitude. It was one of a kind
Insane skills. Thanks for sharing!
Much better now. Nice work as usual
Couple of nice Lifeson chords towards the end there!
love the work and the narrative, thank you Ted
Nice work, as always. I was really hoping to see the Bigsby go away, but not my call. ☮️
Exquisite guitar, exquisite craftsmanship (of course...) but (not questioning the owner's choice) all in all I liked the P90's better....and black is my fave finish too. Thanks Ted!
I suppose the owner didn't realize he could have left the L-5 alone, and bought a decent ES125 for what it likely cost him to mod the L-5..
This is one guitar, that I liked how it looked like before. Ill bet those Seymour Duncan custom shop pickups were EXPENSIVE. But as always, it sounded awesome at the end.
Crazy guitar, I HAVE seen a Super 400 that had staples in both positions.
That particular instrument sounded great but perhaps an anomaly. I have several in the shop. We put one in the bridge position on a Les Paul Deluxe that we switched to P90's and it just sounded strident.
We put a regular P90 with the staple in the neck position where it generally belongs.
I love your content by the way!
Beautiful guitar.