Repairs & Customizing

Adjustment

Fine tuning of a guitar is specialized work. Unfortunately, we see too often that people get through with a badly playable instrument for a few years. Often people who start playing have no idea how a guitar should play. It's quite a bad thing for young children, which makes playing no fun. At Vox Humana, 4 people work on your guitar. Everyone specializes in his own field.

What does it mean adjustment?

Topnut filing, Raising topnut.
Neck adjustment.
Frets inspection / polishing.
Adjusting bridge saddles.
Adjusting bridge height.
Intonation.
Adjusting Pickups.
Electronics inspection.

One of the most important parts is the topnut. If it is not properly installed, an instrument does not play very well. Often plays hard in low regions (F-chord). A guitar with a tremolo bridge is almost unusable / unplayable.
Adjusting the curvature of the neck is also strongly dependent on the key, used strings and the desired play style. Bad adjustment usually gives fretbuzz around the 10th to 15th fret even with a high sttring action. The same goes for the bridge / saddles. They also need to follow the radius of the fretboard for good playability.

Obviously, there may be many more problems, often instrument (type and brand) related.

A small example: lowering a bridge saddle from an acoustic guitar with a piezo pickup must be executed correctly, otherwise the pressure on the piezo is uneven. Followed by one of more strings that do not pass well. But the bottom of the saddle slot must be good, not too narrow. The material of the saddle may also bend too much, the piezo element may be clamped. The string pressure is too low, too little angle after the bridge, the working part of the piezo is too short etc ... And the question is how do we solve this?

In the 60 years Vox Humana exist, we have almost come across everything. As a result, Vox Humana offers a solution everywhere. If not, we will make one. In addition to an extensive woodworking workshop, we also have a metal workshop. Here we can often customize or produce custom-made items and parts.

Another neck on your bass guitar, replacing pickups. Maybe you've seen hardware on this website that you would like to have! You want to customize your instrument to your own taste. But you look up to the work or doubt whether it will fit. Come along and we will give you a solid advice on all possibilities.

Electronics

Cracking potentiometers, stuttering switches, no output? For all repairs and adjustment of the electronics you can contact us.

Leveling frets

Many problems such as fretbuzz, double tone, poor sustain are caused by poor fretwork, worn or loosely / resilient frets.
In 75% of these cases, leveling the frets and good adjustment is the solution. Even if you want your instrument in top condition, it is often the solution. Leveling means bringing all frets to the same height. The crown of the fret again rounded and polished.

ATTENTION: Too often, a handy neighbor will easily ease off a fret without taking into account the string tension, neck tension, turning of the neck and fretboard radius. As a result, the frets are often too low in the wrong places, the radius is changed locally, etc.. Often with a disappointing result. Usually, this only provides us with additional repairs.

Fretting

If leveling is no longer possible because the frets become too low or you want to replace the low narrow frets with medium or jumbo frets, the frets will have to be replaced.
This can be divided into 3 types:

Necks with fingerboards of e.g. rosewood, ebony.
Necks with lacquered maple fingerboards.
Necks witht bindings along the fingerboard.

The fingerboards are always tidied up and fine sanded after removing the frets. Lacquered maple fingerboards are repaired or repainted.
Refretting the leveled fingerboard, carried out with the Vox Humana specially developed fret press block, using materials that literally form into the local radius of the fingerboard, leads to  perfect fretwork that hardly requires the leveling of the frets. For fingerboards with compound-radius this method is a must!

End / Semi-finished products - Custom orders

That Vox Humana offers the opportunity to produce semi-manufactured products for you is well known in the Netherlands and Belgium. We offer the possibility of finishing semi-finished products. E.g. Whether or not fretted, paddlehead, or not dotinlay etc .. Any builder can still give his own finishing touch to the instrument.

The benefits to you are, besides the great flexibility and time gain, that every builder can process and / or finish the product, whether it's standard scale, 24 frets, 50 cm scale, with or without inlay and bindings , 6 stringed basses with neck thru, fretted or fretless. Vox Humana can handle any semi-finished product for you on any specification!

Glue and Lacquer

Accidents happen. You do not pay attention and somebody walks your stand, or the guitar was just not right, the wallstand was not properly attached.
Tear in the upper deck, rear deck, side wall. A loose bridge, edge bumped, loose binding, broken headstock.
Painful but often Vox Humana is very skilled in repairing such damage.

Martin Repair Facility

Something to be proud of. Authorized Martin Repair Facility.
It is clear that you're on the right address for repairs of acoustic instruments.

Repair and Service

For special requests on repair or customizing area or price indication, contact us, make an appointment or visit our workshop!