A great reason to check out estate and garage sales. You never know when you’ll find a 1950’s Epiphone Devon archtop for a song!

Here’s a project with humble beginnings that grew into a full vintage restoration. The owner picked up this very old Epiphone Devon at an estate sale (along with several other groan-worthy items I won’t even tell you about.) It had been rather sloppily stripped and refinished and the binding had entirely peeled off. Initially, we planned only to add the binding to the body and unfortunately didn’t bother to take pictures. So the photos here begin after the new binding was already in place, when the owner decided he’d like it completely refinished to look like it did originally. It was a good decision.

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Sometimes we have to get a little creative with refinishing. Here’s what happens when someone wants an unusual color for their guitar.

We had a couple of unusual projects recently that required some creative work with color. The owners of both this 70’s Fender Precision Bass and a modern Gibson SG knew they wanted to refinish their instruments, but wanted to do something a little more unique than just choosing a standard Fender or Gibson color.  Interestingly, both ended up with colors more reminiscent of  vehicles than other musical instruments. Continue »

In this post, see how we made some ugly previous “repairs” look right and brought a great vintage Gibson back to life.

This 1960 Gibson Les Paul Jr. is a terrific playing and sounding specimen. But it sure didn’t come in looking this great. After the owner picked it up in an auction, he emailed us some rather scary pictures of some truly scary looking “repairs” he hoped we could correct. We assured him we could make it look great and, more importantly, play great again. When it arrived from Florida, we took some deep breaths and assessed the damage. Continue »

Here’s an early 1980’s Greco Super Real Goldtop as it arrived in our shop. Take a look at how we gave it a more authentic and vintage appearance.

The Greco Super Real is one of the more sought-after copies of the Gibson Les Paul. They consistently fetch upwards of $1500 on eBay and in our opinion, outshine many of the more common varieties. It’s got great weight, feel, and sound but the appearance is a little less convincing. The owner of this guitar noticed that it had an orange-hued finish that was clearly not the traditional nitrocellulose lacquer found on Gibson guitars. He asked us to refinish it in nitrocellulose and relic the appearance so that it looks more like a genuine vintage Les Paul.

Those original goldtops got their look from clear lacquer finish applied over bronze powder. Over time, the clear finish would wear thin and ‘check,’  exposing the bronze to arm sweat and the oxygen in the air. As a result, many of these 50+ year old guitars have taken on a greenish appearance in the more heavily worn areas. The Greco’s owner knew this and specifically wanted to see this subtle effect on his guitar – which means simulating fifty years of wear and tear in a brand new finish. You’ll see we were up to the challenge. Continue »

When it rains it pours, and my partner Dan has been up to his elbows in binding repairs this year.  Here, he replaces the dried and crumbling binding from a vintage Gretsch Country Gentleman.

A common problem on vintage Gretsch guitars is the decay and crumbling of the outer celluloid binding strip. Sometimes, owners will opt to leave the cracked binding alone, but in this particular guitar’s case, the owner wanted it repaired. In areas, it was loose enough to be scraped off with a fingernail and in others it needed to be scraped and even chiseled off. We ended up replacing the outer layer entirely, then touching up the nitrocellulose finish.

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Hold on there! Refinish a vintage Gibson? In candy apple red?? There better be a darn good reason to do something like that… and there was.

As mentioned in previous posts, the guitar repairman’s rule of thumb with vintage instruments is to leave it in as close to original condition as possible while still maintaining its playability. In the case of this 1960’s Gibson ES-355TDC, a couple of previous repairs have left it far from its original condition. When it arrived, the most obvious change was that it had been painted white years earlier and that white finish was flaking off in big chunks. A little closer look revealed a headstock repair the likes of which we’ve never seen. Throw in some long ago water damage, cracks in the body, and stains in the wood and the vintage value of the guitar is pretty well gone. You may as well paint it blue; or as the owner of this guitar decided, candy apple red. Continue »

Can’t afford a real 1952 Telecaster? We made this new guitar feel like it was 55 years old. De Leon’s nightmare.

For a variety of reasons, some folks just prefer old guitars. Maybe it’s the neck, worn smooth by years of handling. Maybe it’s the checked and cracked finish that looks like granddad’s old tube radio. Maybe it’s just the charm of something that’s played some music in its time. Or maybe it’s the fact that vintage guitars’ values are reliably and steadily rising – making them a good investment. But some of us can’t find or afford our real dream guitar. So at Chicago Fret Works, we’ve developed a relic process that will simulate aging in a guitar, giving it the look and feel but not the pricetag of a genuine vintage piece.

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*Beware: another one of those ‘I found this vintage Les Paul in my dad’s closet’ stories follows. I like to think that if my dad had one of these in his closet I’d have found it by now.

This 1956 Les Paul Junior belongs to a friend who, yes, found this guitar in her dad’s closet. But she couldn’t play it because there’s a pretty obvious piece missing: the entire headstock! This isn’t your average reglue job. This will require building a new headstock, replacing the truss rod, and making it look as if nothing ever happened. Read on to see how. Continue »

Watch how we restore a vintage guitar that was quite literally “trashed.”

If your 1963 Polaris White Gibson SG Junior had a broken headstock, you wouldn’t throw it in the garbage would you?  Well the lucky new owner of this guitar found it sticking out of a Chicago trash can with all of its original parts! He brought it to us to repair, still amazed by his fortune.

After the head shaking and jaw dropping was finished, we got down to making this gorgeous vintage piece look and sound like nothing happened. Continue »

See how we improved another shop’s repair gone bad and learn how to prevent this damage to your own guitar.

A beautiful Taylor 914CE acoustic guitar came to us with two top cracks that had opened up after being ‘repaired’ by another shop (that shall remain nameless.) The previous repairman made three errors in our estimation: first, he enlarged the cracks with a small router or Dremel tool – removing too much wood in the process; second, he spliced in sitka spruce patches that do not match the original Engelmann spruce top; and third – well he just didn’t do a very good job of either since the cracks opened up again. The owner paid more than $4000 for this guitar and he wasn’t pleased with the look of the previous repair or the fact that it held for less than a year.  We made a decision to not just replace the 2 bad patches, but to replace the entire area between the cracks with a carefully chosen set of Engelmann. That turned out to make this repair less expensive to perform and gave us a much better outcome than just filling the cracks again. Continue »