Seizing the lead in our long-distance-traveler competition, this Vintage Gibson Mandolin arrived from South Africa in desperate need of a good refret.

We were more than a little surprised to learn that  this 1930’s era Gibson A Style mandolin (which was built a mere 100 miles away in Kalamazoo, MI) traveled more than 8,000 miles to get here from South Africa. Unfortunately, the instrument repair options there must be pretty thin, as it had one of the strangest looking attempts at fretwork we’ve ever seen. We cleaned it up and gave it a proper refret along with a new set of tuning buttons for the original tuners. Take a look.

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In this post, you’ll see how we tackle a very difficult neck re-repair on a Chicago-made Lyon and Healy Style-A Mandolin.

A new customer brought us a remarkable and beautiful Lyon & Healy mandolin that was made here in Chicago nearly a century ago. This is a “Professional” or “A” Style instrument that was at the top of the company’s  line of mandolins in the 1920’s. It has a very delicate and ornate scroll headstock that unfortunately broke apart many years ago. It was fixed and the repair held for a long time before recently coming apart. Our challenge is to get the headstock solid enough to play again, while maintaining as much of the instrument’s original qualitity and character as possible. What’s more, we’ll need to work around a few unexpected elements of the previous repair. Continue »