DiPinto Guitars

Customer Dan Curran brought in his original 1961 Les Paul Special because it has a back-bow in the neck. The bridge needed to be raised really high in order to get the first few frets to sound clearly. Not a fun guitar to play to say the least!
I humidified the neck beyond what you’d think would be acceptable and then heated it hotter than you’d ever what your guitar neck to be heated too, all done safely without alternating the finish or binding. My thinking is that guitar necks get ruined in hot cars or damp basement…conditions that are really bad for the structure of the instrument but don’t seem to bother the finish. I try and recreate these situations to get the thing to bend back.
After I’ve heavily humidified and heated the neck, I clamp it to a metal bar and bend it way more than you’d ever want your neck to be bent, literally to the breaking point.

It’s nerve racking and I hate doing it, especially to a classic. Luckily this one had a relic’d refin done to it so I wasn’t so stressed, even though the refin work was done incredibly well to where I was fooled.
Good news is the neck came back with just enough relief for it to be playing beautifully with a set of 9’s.
This guitar plays and sounds incredible now!

Here is an old 50’s Kay acoustic that we made a new bridge for. The original bridge had a wrap around style design which limited how low the action could go. We removed the old bridge, routed off the wrap around top and glued on a new rosewood top and converted it to 6 pins. Then we routed a new slot and installed a bone saddle. Now the action can be lowered further. The action is excellent and the tone is greatly improved. The tone is warm and loud and rivals a Gibson LGO. The aged mahogany sounds beautiful.
The top is ladder braced and appears to be spruce. The top was refinished black at some point in its history.
Frets are clean. Neck is straight and truss rod works. Original tuners work well.
Comes with newer hard case
$575 with hard case

Here’s a great deal. $1850 for a super clean 2006 340 with 3 pickups. All original with original hard case. Plays to perfection with low action. Pro setup. Frets are clean, neck is straight. Not delamination anywhere on the guitar. No cracks, breaks or repairs. Sounds splendid as it should. Clean as a whistle except for that small ding on the back, see pic.
Case is clean too and no odors. No surprises except for sacrificially low price. Grab the deal while it last! Hit link in bio or in comments

An old customer of mine named Jeff Schmidt brought in this 60’s/70’s handmade (Russian maybe?) electric guitar for repair. I will need
to confirm or refute that guess.
The problem was that the intonation was off at the first fret. I was thinking it was gonna be a compensated nut situation but it turned out that the nut was just cut too high. The bridge intonation was way off too and I spend a few hours dremeling and re-dremeling the aluminum bridge to set the intonation properly.
I did get it playing in tune, which was a bit of a shock!
But take a look at that fretboard radius!! That’s like a cello radius! Yet you can’t really bow it, so what gives?
And that handmade tremolo is so cool. I think it had a bar at one time but that flat palm piece works beautifully on its own.
You see all those rockers? Well they’re hooked up to all those crazy caps and resistors…and they do nothing 🤦.
The pickups are wired to the 3 tiny pots which are impossible to turn with no k***s…and I have no k***s that fit. I just cranked the neck pickup to 10 for the best setting.
All the molded shapes like the neck joint, tuning machine platform and the clear guard are just weird and wild ideas that just love. The plastic-on-cork back is a nice touch too. And the pickup bezel? cork as well, of course!
Wild and fund and now working and playing in tune!

Old NASA oscilloscope and various tube tester for sale. They power up but other than that they are untested. Cool gear if you know how to use them but probably better for the set of that low budget sci-film you’ve been working on. $200 takes them all. Pickup in Philadelphia

Old NASA oscilloscope and various tube tester for sale. They power up but other than that they are untested. Cool gear if you know how to use them but probably better for the set of that low budget sci-film you’ve been working on. $200 takes them all. Pickup in Philadelphia

Nice playing and beautiful sounding ‘83 SG Special.

All original except pickguard, which appears to have been added later. Pickups are original Shaw pickups. Pots date 1982. Neck is straight with no breaks or cracks. Frets show a little wear but not bad. Action is great with a pro setup.
Cosmetically it is rough. Scratches and dings in various places but not bad. No breaks, cracks or repairs. Original chainsaw case working perfectly.
$1600

Every once in a while a brand new pickup comes in wired wrong from the factory.
This Ibanez bass came in with some new Aguilar pickups installed by the customer. The bridge pickup sounded thin and buzzed really bad. I just assumed he got the colors wrong on the wringing. But no, it was wired properly. It sounded like the coils in the humbucker were wired out of phase. But in order to flip the phase I had to snip the coil linking wire and criss-cross the wires to reverse the phase. Not the easiest thing to do but I got it done. Wouldn’t you know it, it fixed the problem.
It’s possible that the magnet slugs were install upside down which is an easy mistake to make. Definitely a quality control issue. It rates perfectly on a meter but out-of-phase doesn’t show up on a meter. You can test it with a compass, but when I do it, I just install the pickup into an instrument and play it to be sure. That way you know for sure it’s in phase by the sound.
I also had to flip the phase of the neck pickup because my fix threw the two out of phase. All good now!
Sounds robust and no buzz.

1972 Mustang bass playing beautifully. All original. The only thing that’s changed are the 4 foam mutes that are missing because they deteriorated over time. The pickguard has shrunk over the years and shows some warping but it is intact and works well with no cracks or separations.
Neck is straight and frets are clean. There was a high fret around 14 so we leveled and dressed that area. Now the notes are clear and strong all up and down the board with low action.
Pickups sounds strong and electrons are original. Neck dates 1972 as do the pots. Lots of dings and scratches but all honest wear. Comes with original hard case in good shape with a new handle. Original strap is in the case but one hole is ripped so it is not usable.
$3200

Nice old Kay acoustic. We did lots of work to get this one to play nicely. A neck reset was done to increase the neck angle. Now action is nice and easy on the fingers. The bridge was shimmed to increase the string break angle. Now strings stay put in their slots. Frets were leveled so they all sound clean. This guitar came to us with a missing 14th fret so we moved the last fret up to solve the problem.
Great feel and great plunky old timey tone. For those of you (and me) who sometimes cringe at the modern, crisp/clean acoustic guitar sounds of today. $295 no case