James Fry-Bio

 James Fry has been a luthier and guitar technician for 25 years. He is certified as a gold level warranty technician by Martin, Taylor, Fender, Gretsch, Jackson, Charvel, and Squire.  James learned his trade in the greater Chicago area of Valparaiso, Indiana at Front Porch Music. He now resides in Calgary, Alberta and has been an integral part of the guitar repair scene there for two decades.

Studying repairs and guitar construction with Roberto-Venn graduates Mark Dillon and the late Greg Kent, James went on to further his soundboard bracing techniques during an onsite hands-on workshop with Master Luthier Ervin Somogyi. James has also participated in learning workshops with Frank Ford, Judy Threet, Bill Collings, Bryan Galloup, Joe Glaser, Dan Erlewine, and others through various guitar symposiums over the years. He has visited and trained on multiple occasions at the Taylor guitar factory and the Martin guitar factory and has spent learning days in the repair departments of Gruhn's Guitars and Glaser Instruments. 

James’ acoustic and electric guitars that he has built over the years are played all over North America and the UK.  Two of his custom builds are electric slide guitars for Canadian bluesmen, Brother Ray Lemelin and Tim Williams.  

James has shared his repair expertise by teaching at guitar clubs in Alberta, teaching a class on guitar repair at Keyano College in Fort McMurray, Alberta and a Guitar Maintenance Workshop at Mount Royal University in Calgary.

James co-founded Guitar Repair Shack.

Gretsch White Falcon neck reset

We had a 2008 Gretsch G6136DS White Falcon come in this summer with a loose neck joint.  The owner had bought it used, knowing that it had potential issues.  There was a clear gap at the neck joint.  Sometimes this means that the neck has shifted but is still solid.  Other times, it means that it is failing.  After a simple test of visually inspecting the joint as it was being flexed it was unfortunately loose.  I had done a neck reset on a Gretsch from the 1960's before, but not on a newer Gretsch.  As a Fender and Gretsch service centre, we have access to techs at the manufacturer, so I decided to send an email down to Gretsch and get some advice.  I heard back from one of them, and he helped get me off to a good start.  A shout out and thank you to Ed!
I decided to document the neck repair because I was not able to find any info online for newer Gretsch guitars that needed this work.  Be advised that a neck removal and reset is not recommended for a first time try on a guitar like this.  I will mention many of the steps that I went through for this job, but not all of them.  This is not a how-to for a first timer.  It is meant for other technicians as a helpful reference.

Above are two shots of the failing neck joint.

I scored around the neck joint with a fresh razor blade to minimize potential finish chipping on removal.

The fifteenth fret was removed.

Not knowing the exact place to drill the access holes for steaming off the neck, I used 1/4" in from the edge of the fretboard.  However, the holes barely cleared the neck joint and I could have gone in another 2/32".  These holes were drilled at about a 60 degree angle.

I removed the tailpiece, bridge, pickguard and neck pickup so that I could properly work with the guitar.  The neck pickup is in the way when you are trying to manuever the neck for removal.

I use the StewMac steaming hose and tip, hooked up to a capucino maker.  Because I had drilled my holes a bit off, I had only drilled into one side of the neck joint so the steam did not flow as nicely.  Also, I had to watch the inside of the cavity of the guitar through the neck pickup access hole and clean up water dripping from the neck block onto the back.  It took me 45 minutes from start to finish to remove the neck.

Here are two shots of the body and neck joint after removal.  The glue looks like a PVA.  Tedious to clean up.

After cleaning up, I added some maple shims to the cheeks of the neck joint for an extra tight fit.

I needed to do a bit of touch-up at the neck heel and around the body.  Given that this is a newer Gretsch that does not have a lacquer finish, I used cyanoacrylate glue for repairing small chips and then level sanded and buffed before gluing up the neck.

After getting the neck back on I popped the 15th fret back in and did a complete fret dress and set up with fresh strings.

A new addition to the Creosote guitar collection

Over the last several years, my friend Brother Ray Lemelin commissioned me to build a series of guitars with a particular design and all with neck wood from a large chunk of wood that he provided me with from a 100 year old telephone pole from British Columbia. God knows where he found this stuff, but the maple is flamed, dark, and has veins of creosote running through it. Thus it was named the Creosote guitar series. The very first one I built was called the Creosote Slide. It was simple. A maple neck, mahogany body, and maple top cap. I transplanted a 1950's Supro lap steel pickup , bridge and controls right into the body. It had banjo tuners and was set up for slide and chording. Ray loved it, and so did his friend and fellow bluesman, Tim Williams.

The next one I built was for Tim and it had some modifications to it per his request. Two vintage Teisco pickups from the '60's, a Bigsby, a roller bridge, and six drop-d Schaller banjo tuners. You can view pictures of it if you go back further on my blog. Tim loved it, still loves it, and has toured with it as his main electric guitar. As a matter of fact, I haven't been able to see it since he was given it over two years ago.

Fast forward to today and I have a brand spankin' new five string bass. My first, and maybe only, bass I've ever built for longtime friend of mine and Ray's, Bob Richardson. Bob has been patiently waiting for his bass for longer than I would care to admit. This year though, Bob must have been VERY good, because Santa brought it for him. Same body idea as the guitars but for a bass. Same woods. A fine set of Hipshot tuners. Bartolini pickups, and an Ultra Deluxe heavy duty bridge. CTS pots, Sprague Orange Drop capacitor and lots of love. Unlike the recent guitar projects I've been doing from some pre-made bodies and necks, this bass was handcrafted from scratch starting with raw blocks of wood. It was worth it, and lots of fun.

My first custom relic guitar

This is my latest addition. It's a totally simple and straight forward guitar. One pickup, one volume, that's it. It was also my first stab at a relic. For those of you who are wondering what a relic is, it's taking a perfectly fine guitar that's brand new and then beating the crap out of it until it looks old. I know it's crazy, but I can't tell you how good it feels to bang up a guitar when I all I do every day is take every precaution to not put a scratch on one!

Here's the specs:

Musikraft Fat "C" neck, one piece of maple. 9.5" radius with Dunlop 6105 medium frets.

Sperzel custom open gear tuning machines, chrome with pearloid buttons

Two piece light weight alder string through body supplied by Musikraft

Callaham Vintage Hardtail bridge distressed

TV Jones P90 pickup. This pickup is fantastic. It sounds killer through a Vox amp as well as others but that's my preference. It's got some fat tone and it doesn't muddy out when you dig in.

250K CTS control pot

The neck and body I ordered from Musikraft. It's my third time ordering from them and they do a great job. The neck/body joint was super tight and the guitar just rings and sustains like a darn. Everything just came together so well with this guitar and I know that it's the quality of parts that I used that made a huge difference.

Very thin nitrocellulose finish on the body and neck. The neck I used a satin lacquer to give it a worn in feel.

Super Tele

For those who know my situation, I haven't had much time to build guitars lately because I've been so busy with repairs. I also do not currently have a full scale shop set up for building guitars, but that won't be lasting hopefully too much longer. I have not been totally idle, though. I've had an idea kicking around in my head for some time now to put together a telecaster with some mods.
Over the last several months, I have ordered and collected choice parts and pieces to put together what I'm calling my "Super Tele". Here's the breakdown:

Body: I ordered a modified Tele body from my favorite electric guitar body company in New Jersery, Musikraft. They made me a two piece alder body with their Dakota Red finish and humbucking pickup slots.

Neck: I made my first order with Warmouth and boy was I happy. They made me a nice tele neck with 1 11/16" at the nut and a "V" neck. Maple neck with a rosewood fingerboard.

Pickups: I went to my all time favorite pickup company, TV Jones, and ordered a custom set of pickups. The bridge pickup is their Powertron Plus, which is a Filterton on steroids. The neck is their Magnatron, modeled after a DeArmond but humbucking. A beautiful warm pickup. I dug out a vintage oil filled .047 capacitor to go with the pickups and CTS pots. Switchcraft 4 way selector to split the neck coil for some extra options.

Hardware: Roller bridge, Bigsby Vibrato, Bakelite pickgaurd. I ordered a custom set of Sperzel open gear tuning machines to finish it off. Sperzel is best known for their locking machines, but I didn't want locking. These chrome beauties are open gear and just look so cool.

The guitar is reminiscent of a Tele but has other personality to it given the TV Jones pickups. It's much more versatile than a standard tele and can go from warm jazzy tone with the Magnatron in the neck to full on ACDC with the Powertron Plus in the bridge. I totally love it and I had so much fun putting it together. Who knows, maybe I'll draw up my own design and start making some from scratch in the future.

-James

A custom guitar for bluesman Tim Williams

I've been working on this guitar for about three years. It just so happened to get delayed by my shop moving, beginning fatherhood, etc. I'm so happy it's finally complete, and I'm sure Tim is to.
If you have kept up with my blog, you may remember a guitar similar to this that I had built for bluesman Brother Ray Lemelin. Brother Ray provided the design and direction for where he wanted things to go in the construction and I put all of those things together and built it for him. Ray spread the news and now I've had the pleasure of building another Creosote Slide for bluesman Tim Williams. Tim is a 40 year veteran of roots music and it was an honor building a guitar for him. You can check out a bio of him here: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/belzners/timbio.htm
The body is Honduran Mahogany with a Flamed Maple top cap. The neck is maple harvested from a 90+ year old telephone pole from British Columbia that at one time had been soaked in creosote, so Ray named it the Creosote Slide. It is made for slide guitar playing with two growly, brash vintage Teisco Gold Foil pickups taken from Ray's vast collection of cool guitars. The banjo tuners are all Schaller Drop D tuners so that various tunings can be created. The finish is old school nitrocellulose lacquer. Master volume and two tone controls with a three way toggle switch make up the controls. The control cavities were customized to take away as little wood as possible.
Here are some pictures of the finished guitar for you to enjoy.

-James

New Guitar with hand carved rosewood neck

I did a custom neck for a customer who wanted a VERY wide profile neck. He's got big hands and needed something in a category that's only offered by manufacturer custom shops at very high dollar amounts. The neck would fall into the category of an acoustic guitar neck profile, so you can imagine how hard it would be to special order. I sourced out the body from a great little company in New Jersey called Musikraft. They build their parts there on site. I chose a '65 Strat body design built from one piece of very light swamp ash and built the neck to fit the body. The body was finished in a very thin amber tinted finish. All of the hardware I hand picked and installed. The neck I carved from a chunk of East Indian Rosewood to the customer's specifications. The pickups are Seymour Duncan Alnico 2 Pro for the neck and middle position and the bridge pickup was a Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates. It was wired up like a standard strat except the bridge pickup had a coil tap option at the middle position tone pot. With the all rosewood neck the pickups sounded warm and had just the right combination of brilliance to them for what the customer requested. It was a really fun project to do.

Martin Trip