[petelanger]

Ughh StewMac nut file set costs $138! That’s nearly the price of the guitar I’m fixing. Might have go for a lower grade set.

[petelanger]

Again, worth the listen even 2 months after Christmas. Are you tucking your fretting pinky under the neck when it’s not fretting a note? Just curious, sometimes my fingers trip each other up so like to watch other’s handywork.

[petelanger]

I may have been one of those wise guys you mentioned! lol

But I’ve always appreciated your enthusiasm, thanks for sharing your experiences on TAC!

[petelanger]

So beautiful @DiscostewLA !

I didn’t click on it immediately because I usually don’t like hearing Christmas songs out of season, but I shouldn’t have hesitated. What a treat!

[petelanger]

[petelanger]

I was looking for a public link in my saved links library and came up empty. Here is a pdf that I put together, some of them come from a previous program I was in, the others are diagrams I downloaded frome somewhere (don’t remember where. The second page has chord diagrams I created for 5* Hotel bench mark challenge, you’ll probably find them handy.

Essential-Chords.pdf 327 KB PDF - Click to view

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[petelanger]

Also consider the skill courses, lots of useful stuff in there.

Just to reiterate, you never have to back track or worry about playing catch up. The challenges repeat in a cycles but the subject matter is repeated even more frequently in different challenges. You always want to move forward and be on the same page with everyone else in TAC because that’s where the discussions happen under the challenges.

[petelanger]

Thanks @Skyman911 for your concern. I am up to the task, I’ve been handy since I was a teenager building various things out of wood or leather as I was growing up. I worked as a handyman in my parent’s motel from age 16 until about 24 as well as maintaining my cars until they started making them where you needed specialized tools just to change light bulbs. I’ve also built entire houses as a real estate investor here in Florida.

I’m really just trying to setup my guitar for the experience. I want to learn how to setup a guitar myself, probably going to build one eventually. So I need some tools and the proper hardware and I’m retired so I have time to watch videos.

Mine being a low end unit, I don’t have to be concerned about ruining anything. It has already served me well as my learner acoustic. I do have another one to play that used to be my wife’s. Even before the onset of arthritis a few years ago, she had not played her guitar since 1989. It’s a Takamine F-340 from the mid 70s, a nice but full size guitar lacking a cutout. For everyday playing I just prefer my little cheap Rising G1 so I’m going to see if I can bring her back. If not, I’ll have acquired some helpful luthier tools and learned a few things in the process so it’s still gain.

[petelanger]

Yeah, I just ordered a fret rocker after watching some videos on the subject. I had been using a my Action Ruler to check the frets and it works somewhat. But you want a proper Rocker with 5 different length sides so you can check 3 frets at a time all the way up the neck. I also ordered feeler gauges (0.002″) so I can test for raised frets.

Yes I agree, it’s good to practice these things on a cheap guitar so that when I have a more valuable one I will have honed my luthier skills.

[petelanger]

While I’m waiting on nut files, I tried sliding a spacer under the original nut. That doesn’t resolve the issue, so this is what I’m thinking:

the saddle needs to be raised instead of the nut.

Now that checking again it seems the 15th fret is somehow raised, and that seems to be causing all these weird problems.
Evaluating again the 15th fret is very high. Would you recommend filing it down?

[petelanger]

@Bill_Brown nice resource! Thanks!

[petelanger]

@Tpolecastro I just wanted to give you feedback on the Site Speed after 6 weeks of this announcement. Tony, it’s still very, very slow and definitely impedes learning and especially interacting with others on the site. There have been moments when it’s been slightly better but I have to say overall it’s not good. Sometimes it takes 20 or 30 seconds for a page to render. I haven’t seen this anywhere else in the last decade and generally not since the early 2000’s when I was on a dial up connection (woohoo 28.8 kbps!). In addition not being able to post more than once a day under daily challenges has now discouraged me from commenting there at all. Yes, there’s a workaround to make more than an single post but with the site speed what it is, I’ve given up.

[petelanger]

That’s kind of cool that you can access an out of range (today – 6 weeks) challenge by going through another member’s favorites. I just tested this out myself. I pulled up “Wonderful (This Evening” from jumpinjeff’s profile and I don’t have it favorited.

There are at least 5 ways to access previous challenges:

1. Your own favorites
2. Another member’s favorites
3. Moose408’s Masterlist
4. From the TAC homepage (Previous Challenges – only 6 weeks back)
5. With the name of challenge inserted into the URL: https://tonypolecastro.com/lessons/enter-name-of-challenge-2/
   remove the string name-of-challenge and insert the name of the desired challenge. It must be accurate and entered hyphenated.

[petelanger]

@3Fortner this thread might have all the explanation that you need:

https://tonypolecastro.com/family-forums/topic/beginning-30-day-confusion/

tonypolecastro.com

Beginning 30 day confusion - Community Support - Tony's Acoustic Challenge

Beginning 30 day confusion - Community Support - Tony's Acoustic Challenge

[petelanger]

@jumpinjeff for sure! The community has a lot to offer!

I wasn’t saying the chats have no value, only that we’re students of guitar and we aren’t getting referral points or whatever. I was sensing pushback from some of the new members and just wanted to make the point there are no affiliates in the forum, we’re just here trying to help.