Touring Guitar Techs: Essential Tools

[nedorama]

besides the obvious tuner/strings/picks/leads/batteries...

soldering iron setup
gaff tape, 2" black and 3/4" yellow/green for marking off stage, etc.
assortment of screwdrivers, slotted and philips
1/2" deep socket for volume/tone pot nuts
Hum-X isolation transformer
iPhone with local guitar shop addresses for every stop & GPS
Sharpie markers
gum/mints
Emergen-C

[Bob Ross]

A dummy-plug jumper (1/4" Male>Female with tip shorted to sleeve through 1k-ohm resistors) for chasing down ground loops in long pedal chains.

[Jazz Noise]

WD-40 or whatever preffered contact cleaner you want.

Strings

Digitial Multimeter

9 V battery

Coffee

[crosscutred]

Please, not WD40 in pots, that will do more harm than good.

Servisol is ok.

WD40 is good on spark plugs leads.....

[nedorama]

As someone who destroyed volume pots with WD40, agreed. It's not a contact cleaner at all.

[FFTT]

From the pro guitar tech who advised me.

Peterson Strobosoft Tuner on your laptop back stage and in the dressing room.

Temperature changes are the leading cause of guitars going out of tune,
within minutes.

Deoxit Tuner & Pot Cleaner

[chaosgow]

A good high powered torch will come in so handy. Recommended

[fastlanestoner]

Glad to see this thread is still alive! So how do you other techs usually find your projects? Are you friends with the bands, word of mouth, etc?

[chaosgow]

I'm not a tech but I got friends who are. Most of them have some gear that works for them and they try to travel as light as they can. I think they got work by getting friendly with TMs and guitarists (and that they know what they're doing).

My personal tech box is as follows=

It's a custom made flight box that's 1u wide. I mounted a cheapish Korg rackmount tuner in there, cut out some foam to put tools into for easy access (peg winders, screwdrivers, torches ect) and storage compartments for stuff like picks, cables, strings, cleaning stuff, ect ect. At the bottom of the case, I mounted a small marshall ms2 amp and a cable tester. Literally everything I've ever needed to service a guitar or amp is in that box. I'm looking into some luthier tools for fret work and better action adjustment but for now, I'm happy that I could service any guitar with what I have.

The other guitarist in my band is pretty awful (but a great friend/person) so I service her guitars for her regularly. She buys some of the shittiest guitars and expects me to make them good

I'm sure you'll get good use out of all the tools you buy. More important than what you take is what you do with what you take.

Oh I've found keeping a diary of problems for each bit of gear helps too, so when you service it next time, you know to check on previous repairs

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Originally Posted by fastlanestoner

Was just looking for the opinion of some other touring guitar techs. Aside from the obvious stuff like peg winders, what are some of the tools you can't go on the road without?

For me it always comes back to that multimeter. I'm interested to hear what everyone has to say!

I'm not a tech, but I have a couple with whom I am friendly, like Freddy Kowalow who was Zakk's tech for 7 years. I've talked with tons of techs over the years, and the real answer is that you carry everything you can think of to keep the guitars working and the gig alive. Spares of everything, tools, testers, strings, ... whatever it takes. And if a favorite guitar is out of service or worse yet, a gig goes down because of something you did or didn't do, or something you didn't have, you can probably kiss that job goodbye.

The big-assed road boxes that open to provide a work area for repairing guitars hold plenty. The toughest issue is for fly dates where you don't have a 50 foot truck, you have to consolidate into some small briefcase and hope.

[fastlanestoner]

Excellent advice Bill! I imagine Zakk runs a pretty tight ship!