posted by Steve | January 18th, 2010
This Martin guitar took a serious fall, snapping the headstock off completely. See how we made it look like it never happened while keeping every bit of strength it had before.
This is never how you want your Martin to look. But if your headstock does break off, you’d like to at least see a long break like this one with plenty of lateral gluing surface. Modern wood glues work their way into the pores of the wood, fusing them together again with incredible strength. Some repair shops take the approach of cutting away some of the wood and inlaying a dowel or a new piece to splice the two sides together. There are times when this is called for, but we try to avoid such measures whenever possible because it breaks and cuts even more of the wood fibers. If it ain’t broke don’t break it! Continue »
posted by Steve | January 15th, 2010
Two more vintage Mossman acoustics get the superhero treatment – a neck reset, refret, custom pick guard, and a new brace.
Not long after posting photos of our previous Mossman neck reset, we received two more Mossman guitars that needed the same treatment, but with an extra necessary step. Since they received identical work, the photos in this post will jump between the two guitars. You’ll see them receive neck-resets, re-frets and that extra step – the addition of a brace that was missing in the original design. The guitar in that previous post was made a few years after these and by that time the design flaw had been remedied. After years of not seeing this company’s guitars, it was interesting to see a number of them arrive so close to each other. Continue »
posted by Steve | November 12th, 2009
A family heirloom gets a new life for the next generation of strummers.
We weren’t sure we believed a phone caller who said his vintage Gibson acoustic guitar had a crack in the top that was open more than a quarter inch. But when he brought it in, sure enough that crack above the sound hole had buckled and bent until it was open wide. This crack likely started out as a hairline split on a guitar that hadn’t been sufficiently humidified. It wasn’t repaired right away and over time the top wood curled up and almost completely separated from the brace underneath. It’s a tricky repair that came together quite nicely. While we were at it, we reset the neck, planed the fretboard level, replaced the frets, and replaced the dried and curling pickguard with a custom-cut new guard that fit right in with this old beauty.
See how you can properly humidify your guitar to protect it from damage like this in our recent special post on guitar case humidifiers.
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posted by Steve | August 3rd, 2009
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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posted by Steve | July 1st, 2009
Not your average 1970’s acoustic, this Mossman South Wind is a great example of one of the better small manufacturers of that era. We reset the neck angle and refretted it for more comfortable action and sound.
Mossman Guitars is a smaller American guitar company with an interesting history dating back to the mid 1960’s. They have always sought to focus on high quality construction and materials
The owner of this South Wind model suffers from arthritis in his hands and needs his guitars to be set up with low action. But this particular guitar, like most acoustics over 20 years old, had gradually developed an under-set neck that is evidenced by high action and a low bridge saddle. A simple set-up just wasn’t going to give us the results he needed so we opted to reset the neck angle. Continue »
posted by Steve | June 23rd, 2009
Thinking of tattooing the name of that special someone on your arm? You might try inlaying a fretboard instead. At least it won’t hurt when it’s time to move on.
The owner of this bass had the Guild custom shop inlay his wife’s name on the fretboard several years ago. And they did a great job. The bass sounds terrific. The only problem is that they are no longer married. It seemed like time to move on, so in a relatively pain-free procedure, we replaced the fretboard and inlaid some slightly less specific fretboard markers.
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posted by Steve | June 10th, 2009
A true pre-war Martin rides again with a neck reset, crack repair, and bridge reglue!
The owner of this 1930 Martin 518 saw work we performed on another Martin and entrusted us to repair a lengthy side crack, separated bridge, and to reset the neck angle. This is work we frequently perform on older Martins, but we thought you might like to see it done on a real pre-war model.
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posted by Steve | October 30th, 2008
*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 »
posted by Steve | October 28th, 2008
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 »
posted by Steve | August 22nd, 2008
It’s hard to say how many times we’ve repaired a guitar that was damaged by airline baggage handling. It’s a big number though. This Martin 000-15 had a rough flight and split open like a can of beans. Unfortunately the damage was bad enough that sizeable pieces of the side were missing completely. For this repair, we needed to repair the cracks, replace the missing areas, and touch it up to make it look like it never happened. Make sure your seat is in the upright position; this ride gets bumpy.
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