I recently bought a Williams 700 U12, a very nice guitar, but I wanted to change the copedent so I could be like Jeff Newman's setup in his video. I re-rodded the guitar, but discovered I had one long rod too many, and one shorter rod too few.
Stay with me, now!It's all very well to order a new set from Williams but I can't be sure to get it within 2 weeks. USA can put a man on the moon but real-time postal services defeat them utterly <evil grin>
Meanwhile, what to do? I want to play this weekend at a steel guitar workshop put on by Dave Hartley. I measured the diameter of the rod: about 2.35mm. I spotted a wire coathanger, and put the micrometer on that. About 2.25mm. Close enough, I thought.
I have a set of tiny metric taps and dies, so I tried it and here I am, playing, it works! No substitute for ingenuity - but I will never speak harshly of the humble wire coathanger again.
Sometimes it's the small successes that seem the sweetest.With any luck it may get warm enough in another week or three to get out into the workshop, tidy up, and restart the work on my PSG body that was interrupted by the arrival of winter at the beginning of November. It's been the longest winter I can remember.
Will C