Official Luthiers Forum!

I often get requests for guitar repair work, always word of mouth stuff as I don't really have time to do it but it is interesting to me. But they always seem to an issue that is inside the guitar, so I get out my little flash light and my little mirror and remove all of the strings and contort myself so I can see inside. I was doing that to a friends guitar last week and he said "there has to be little cameras for this stuff". !!! Why hadn't I thought of that before! So I got a small gooseneck camera for my macbook and a small double gooseneck lamp (from the music store actually designed to read sheet music) and now I can inspect the inside of guitars with the strings still on and the owner and I can look at the same thing at the same time! You all probably had thought of this already and just neglected to tell me but I thought I should let everybody know that I now know!! (and for those who didn't, I am on your side!)

Shane

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Canada

To be honest, I'm sure people have thought about this. You could use goosenecks or even fiber optic cameras (available from surveillance and spy camera stores). The only thing about this is it's just a good deal more expensive and probably initially more complicated to set up than a mirror, which is why I would imagine more people haven't already done this.

Personally I'm all about convenience, so I would probably consider a camera setup to be well worth my time and effort... Good looking out, though.

Shane, can you post a link to the camera you use (being a Mac guy myself)?

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The member formerly known as erikbojerik....

I just went to my local computer store (I live in a community of 15,000 people and the next largest community, of 60,000 people, is 400 miles away so options are always limited) and looked to see what they had. I bought a Macally's Ice Cam. They are about $40 so quite reasonable, and they will work with Mac or Windows. Oh ya, I bought a 6 foot usb extension as well, that was another $15.



The convenience and ability to get a really good look makes this an almost indespencible tool! I can already see how much easier it is going to be for me to install K and K pickups from now on!

What would be even better is if it could take still pictures as well. It might be able to do it I just can't see how yet, but even if it can't that is not too big of a deal as I have often just stuck a digital camera inside when I needed pictures. I have even used a small digital to take pictures to look at damage in areas where I just couldn't get a good view with my mirror.

Shane

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Canada

Since the resolution of the camera is less than your screen resolution on the Mac, just take a screen shot of the video image. It will not be high or even medium res obviously, but it will be as good as that camera can get. As you may know, screen shot is Command-shift-4, and then use the cursor to draw a box around the desired image area.

Brook

COOL, Thanks Brook....

Shane

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Canada

Shane, there's a very useful ap on your mac - that should be in your applications utility folder - called ' GRAB'
It's like the screen shot that Brook mentions, you can select any part of the screen and snap a shot of it.
Once you've got it running, just go up to the tool bar at the top of the screen, select 'capture' on the pop up menu -
then click on 'selection'. Then you can draw a rectangle around the portion of the screen you want a shot of. If you save it, the
file will be in the TIFF format. If you want it saved in jpg or another format - you can close it and reopen it and save in the format
of your choice. I use Grab all the time and find it very handy. You can keep the icon on your dock to open it up fast.

j

That's cool Shane, I'm a Mac user as well and just ordered one. Thanks for the tip!! Along that same line, here's a picture of a good way to get a lot of light inside and it'll fit through the soundhole with the strings on. Learned it from Marty Reynolds, the repair person at The Podium in Minneapolis.
It's a 7watt fluorescent bulb hooked to a ballast that screws into a light socket. I just used connectors I found at Ace Hardware to wire it. Gets warm but not bad. You can leave in it for a few minutes safely.
Terry

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.