Repairs

Fretless five string on refurbished vintage Vega pot assembly.

“This started life as a four string Vega, but at some point the neck was cracked and trashed and I ended up with the case and pot. After replacing some hardware and installing a new head I laid up a five piece Birch/ Ebony neck blank and an ss stewart pattern peghead and installed a Maccassar ebony fret board and Peghead veneer. The old girl rides again and has a sweet mellow tone.”

Fifties era Gibson LG1 Top Rebuild

“The top cracked under the pick guard somewhere in the coarse of this guitar’s life and someone pulled the guard, glued the crack, touched up the finish and replaced the guard figuring the problem was solved. What they failed to notice was the guard had shrunk, cracking the top and also popping two of the main ladder braces off the underside of the top at the treble side and when they “fixed” the crack they oozed loads of glue around the braces effectively gluing them loose from the body and ensuring the top would continue to sink, which it did. Long story short I removed the shrunken guard, pulled both forward ladder braces, made two new ones, fit them carefully (getting the length and radius right can be tricky), added a brace under the pick guard and cleated the cracked areas around the s-hole as well as the seam in the back. I made a new, slightly over size guard and glued it into place and after some fret and setup work the guitar plays and sounds great. The pics really tell the story, and I feel the radius of the top, while not perfectly even, is now symmetrical and structurally sound, and looks like a sixty year old Gibson top should.”

Bridge replacement on G. Autry Cowboy Guitar

“Who say’s cowboys ain’t easy to love? This is an example of a bridge replacement on a vintage piece. I made the bridge to look appropriate to the era, function well and be a cheap replacement for a non-functional modern bridge that was stuck to the front of the guitar. I did not try to make a reproduction bridge; it had to be slightly large any way to cover some gouges from a previous fix. Cost to make and install: ~$125

Cleating sound hole cracks on a Guild

“ This is a good example of a common repair performed instruments with cracks running along the fret board to the edge of the hole or in other locations at the sound hole. The pics tell the story, leveling and cleaning wax and oil from the top is important as well as the fit of the graft being good. It is often also necessary to add grafts or braces under the fret board for loose cracks, but there was no room for them here, and it wasn’t necc., as the crack was not too bad.”

Peghead Repair – Ibanez acoustic

This guitar is owned and loved by a good customer who came to me quite distraught that this instrument was dead after being handled poorly. The peghead was shattered between both “e” tuner holes all the way through, a tough break to fix with glue alone. We decided to graft a backstrap onto the headstock after gluing. A repair like this is done with structural integrity as well as low cost in mind, I know I attained these goals and believe I did so while keeping with the aesthetic appeal of the guitar without costly finish work. Cost: ~$145 including a setup.

Gibson Twelve

This beast came in with sky-high action because of a bridge that was lifting and a poor setup. The pin less bridge was warped quite badly under the string holes but I hoped we could fix it without replacing the original. This guitar was built with the infamous “top doctor”, a cross bar placed just in front of the bridge with an adjustable foot to theoretically counter-act top warping caused by poor bracing design. After pulling the bridge and cleaning the top surface I Re-leveled the bottom of the bridge by gluing rosewood slivers into the concavity under the strings and then angling the gluing surface slightly to improve the string angle over the saddle. All of the pictures without strings attached are taken before gluing the bridge, it is important that the surfaces mate perfectly without glue so that both tone and the joint don’t suffer (in my shops clamping serves too squeeze out glue, NOT make parts fit together). The beast will live too roar another day, after gluing some loose frets, installing a bone nut (original had been over cut in an attempt to correct high action) and making a new saddle that brings the intonation into reasonable territory, the guitar plays and sounds better than it ever has before.

Customized solid Body

Less a repair and more a custom build, this one was requested by a customer who likes to shred. We started with an all parts Ash body, added a brass sustain block, hipshot bridge and scooped out the treble horn clear to the last fret, and then built the neck. What was requested was a super stiff, stable, rock maple neck with a 16” radius on the board, four half scalloped frets at the top end and a super shallow profile. I laminated the quartered maple fret board to a .030” morado veneer to stiffen the neck as well as reduce the likelihood of cracks in the board, installed a low-profile 2 way rod, and added a backstrap (book match of the front) to reinforce the unusually thin neck at the throat. Danish oil, jumbo frets, a brass nut and a couple of dimarzios rounded out this plank of wood, and it shreds. Cost: ~ $750 Labor

Guit-lute Restoration

Whoa buddy, where to begin? Cracked ribs; lost binding; sky-high action; cracked, warped, and separated top; frozen tuners and a bunch of poor previous repair attempts. I started by pulling the top and braces that were left, glued major cracks, installed new braces, and cleated some fragile areas of the rosette. Next came cleaning out previous failed cleats, regluing the ribs on a temporary form, installing fitted cleats and replacing reinforcing ribbon to restore shape and stiffness to the body. After gluing the ribs back to the neck block I Leveled the rim and installed the top. The few inches of remaining binding appeared to be rosewood with a pearwood purfling, so I made some new pieces to match and glued them up. Most of the original finish had worn off, and with this many repairs I decided to put a thin French polish over the body but made no attempt to “fix” any of the dings, scratches or character from wear and tear. Careful cleaning and oiling of the machines got them working just fine, and after some compression fretwork the neck was straight and action decent enough to work well with a set of silk and steels. The finished instrument sounds even better than expected and resides in the parlor of the original owner’s granddaughter, where it serves as a family heirloom and conversation piece as well as a family instrument.

’68? Gibson SG

It’s sad to see a nice guitar practically folded in half, but here it is. This is I a Gibson SG that had multiple cracks through the body and a couple of chunks of mahogany missing. With the original pick guard cracked; most of the tremolo and some electronics missing it was time for a resurrection. The owner wanted it to be rebuilt with a stop tailpiece and painted antique Gibson white so that’s what I did. Gluing up the cracks was straightforward and afterword I fitted new mahogany patches where wood was missing and filled all the extra holes/dents left by the trem. After leveling the guitar and fixing some fretwork issues I laid out the top for the new tailpiece and bridge and drilled the holes. A few coats of thin shellac sealed up the wood for the lacquer to stick to and after getting a level surface I put down color, tint, and topcoat. After making a new pick guard to match the old (aftermarket guards didn’t fit), I installed some new Seymour Duncan’s, made a new bone nut and set the guitar to stun. This Sg really has a great airy mid range growl to it and the thin neck and lightweight these are known for. Cost: ~ $700 labor

’67 Gibson 330

Fix it right or don’t fix it at all. This peghead had been broken and repaired at least three times, the last repairman decided to glue up the cracks as they existed at the time as well as install two 3/16 splines about 2” long centered right behind the nut and inlaid about ¾ of the way through the neck. This is a style of fixing pegheads that I have seen fail often and this poor 330 is no exception. A big part of the problem is that the splines over stiffen the area they are installed in and when the neck does flex, it does so unevenly, putting too much pressure at the tips of the splines and re-cracking the neck. I started by gluing up the pieces and slotting the back of the neck/head with a fret slotting saw set to a depth of ~5/32”. With the kerfs of the saw as a guide I could quickly level out the area for an inlaid graft large enough to cover the old splines and cracks but not cover the serial number. After trimming the graft slightly oversized I bent it to match the curve of the neck on a heat pipe and glued it into place. After some trimming and sanding everything was back to the original shape/thickness and ready for lacquer. It took some thought up front but this guitar is fixed for good, the repair is invisible w/o the use of a black light and functions like new.