So you broke the headstock off of your nice Paul Reed Smith? No problem, just bring it in and we can reglue it for you. Just make sure you don’t try to slap it together yourself with bondo or plaster or …

…Oh no! Yikes. This is ugly. And it obviously didn’t hold.

And there’s a major body crack too. This PRS is going to take a lot of  attention if it’s ever going to play again. It’ll take grafting on a new headstock and re-gluing that big crack at the body.

The body crack is where we start- gently applying enough pressure to open it, inject glue, and clamp it shut.

Once the body is glued up, we move on to the neck.

We need to graft on an oversized piece of mahogany using a scarf joint. To make sure the string tension pulls the new joint closed rather than open, we need to remove the fretboard, cut the useless piece of the neck away at an angle opposite the break, then attach the new section.

After heating the fretboard (don’t worry the discoloring of the inlays will sand away later,) Dan uses a modified putty knife to remove the fretboard. He then pulls out the truss rod, to be re-installed in the new headstock.

Next, he carefully saws the end of the neck off, creating an angled scarf joint.

He rough cuts the new headstock from a block of mahogany…

…and glues it into place on the neck.

Once the glue is set, he hand carves the new headstock, using another PRS neck as a reference so that all the dimensions are perfect.

Then, he removes the old and worn frets, files the fretboard level and clean, and hammers home the new frets.

He drills the tuner holes, prepares the new wood for painting and over-sprays the whole neck and headstock area.

Since we had clear finish in the sprayer, we decided to go ahead and put a new coat over the body too to better mask the repairs on the top and make the whole guitar look uniform.  Here’s Dan scuffing the finish before spraying.

After applying a new logo and clear-coating the neck, it’s time to put it back together again. Some PRS Dragon pickups, new hardware, and new wiring are installed.

Finally, we give it The Works set-up and try it out. It looks great, sounds terrific, and ultimately cost the owner less than buying a new (or used!) Paul Reed Smith.

The 1952 Goldtop is where it all began for the Gibson Les Paul. Guitars from this first year of production have an obvious historical importance and, as with all vintage pieces, the conscientious repairman does not make an irreversible alteration to one without just cause. This one was sold to the current owner with full disclosure of some previous repairs to the headstock. Those repairs were well done, solid, and the guitar sounded amazing (vintage P90’s really are something special.) But they simply did not look right and that’s where we come in.  It took heating, sawing, chiseling, filing, and painting to get there, but this is how we made this vintage classic look and perform the way it’s supposed to.

The beginning: It looks pretty good. There’s no arguing that. But what this guitar’s owner noticed is that this headstock just seemed a little … short. And sure enough, it was.

Here’s why. The headstock had clearly broken at some point – a common occurrence with Gibson necks.  It’s usually a relatively simple repair consisting of gluing the pieces together and touching up the paint. But this repair looks strange – with a black “stinger” painted on the back. Why was that done? A closer look revealed that for some reason, the repairman who fixed this break decided to add several steps.

First, he took the broken end piece and the remaining neck section and smoothed out both surfaces- possibly on a belt sander. This is the step that shortened the headstock, as it removed some of the wood. We can see this already by looking at the break line (below the low E tuner) which is uncommonly straight. Usually this is a naturally jagged-looking fracture line. Next, he removed some of the back of the headstock and used a piece of maple to add strength to the repair. You can see where that piece terminates at the far left of the  picture above – just below the black stinger. It’s hard to see here, but there are even drawn-in grain lines to make the brown part of the maple look like mahogany.

A line in the finish between the low and high E tuners shows where that maple piece ends.

So at this point, we’ve seen enough to make the decision. We’ll remove this very strong but unattractive repair and replace it with an entirely new headstock that will look more historically correct.

Step one, we heat the fretboard to soften the glue that joins it to the neck and gently remove the whole thing – carefully removing and preserving the original inlays beforehand.

We decided to take a closer look at what was underneath the paint on the old headstock and discovered that our theory was correct.

The above picture shows that straight cut between the low tuners.  It also shows that the logo overlay – made of holly wood – was sanded away below that cut, probably to make the two surfaces line up smoothly.

The back of the headstock reveals that maple support piece the whiter area – painted brown first and then over-sprayed with the black stinger.

Next we stared at the neck for a few hours. Drew a few deep breaths. And sawed the neck off a 1952 Les Paul. Gulp!

No turning back now. Time to make a new headstock. We begin by band-sawing a piece of mahogany to fit the angled cut. The direction of that angle is critical as we want the string tension to pull the repair closed. If we were to leave the fretboard on and saw the other direction, the string tension would be pulling the repair open – making it much less stable.

We were lucky to acquire an original Gibson holly headstock overlay complete with a period-correct inlaid logo. When it came time to cut it to size, we wanted to get all of the dimensions correct. So we went right to the source – Gibson Guitars. While the company did not keep complete records at the time with all the relevant measurements, one of the workers in the repair shop actually owns a very similar 1953 LP. He was kind enough to take the measurements himself and email us a tracing of his headstock. Huge thanks to Timothy and Phil at the Gibson repair shop for helping us get it just right!

As luck would have it, and just when we needed it, a customer of ours brought in another 1952 gold top which we used to confirm all of our measurements. Always good to have more than one source for this sort of thing!

The Gibson headstock profile begins to take shape.

Once the neck looks and feels right, Dan strips the remaining finish from the neck. As much as we would like to preserve every bit of original finish, there just isn’t a way to finish the new section and blend it in with the old without refinishing the entire neck.

First comes dark brown pore-filler to make the grain jump out and more importantly, produce a level painting surface.

Next some brown stain matches the old and new portions of the neck.

Then precise measurements are marked for tuner placement.

After drilling the holes for the tuners, we’re ready to paint the face of the headstock. Dan uses a clear adhesive to protect the inlaid Gibson logo from the black paint (hard to see, but that’s what he’s trimming here.) At this point, we’ve also re-glued the fretboard, replaced the inlays, and installed new frets.

The final touch is applying the water-slide Les Paul logo and spraying a few more light coats of clear finish.

We made a new bone nut, used the original tuners and truss rod cover, and did some light distressing of the finish to blend the appearance in with the rest of the guitar.

The new scarf joint is visible; we’re not trying to fool anyone here.  But the color and finish match makes the seam look natural and, well.. seamless.

1952 Les Pauls did not come with a stamped or inked serial number so we left that area alone.

Here we are, strung up with new frets. One non-original part that makes a big impact with this guitar is the addition of a Joe Glaser-designed tailpiece end which fits easily onto the old trapeze. It sits lower and has an intonation ridge – solving the well-know problems of poor action and bad intonation that accompany 52’s. This guitar plays beautifully and the pickups just sound incredible.

This was a lot of work for a rare and classic instrument. The end result was completely worth it however. We restored the original look while protecting as much of the original features as possible. It’s going to be making music for at least another 60 years!

This is one scary looking headstock break. The headstock is completely off the neck and with a close look, you can see that someone attempted to repair it with both glue and wood screws! If you do that glue-up right the first time, there’s no need for the screws (which didn’t hold anyway.) The dry glue poses a problem because it seals the broken cells of the wood, making it impossible for new glue to do that.  And that’s just the beginning…

Here’s a close look at that original “repair.”

But there’s more problems here than just the headstock break. These frets are loose, worn flat, and covered in tarnish. They’d need to go too.

Some heavy water damage at the base of the guitar tells us that this once proud Les Paul probably spent a lot of time in that basement. But the wood is still strong and repairing the finish is at the bottom of our priorities on a repair like this.

The owner gave us the go-ahead to attempt regluing the headstock.  We”ll use a heavy-duty wood epoxy and cross our fingers. If it holds with some strength, we’ll continue with the refret, touch-up to the headstock, and put it all back together.

The epoxy held fast (we tested it under string tension for a week to be sure.) So we began filling it the areas where wood had gone missing.

And got to work replacing the old and worn-out frets. We planed the fretboard to clean it up and to insure a level playing surface for the new frets.

Now we’re ready to touch-up the area of the headstock break, blending it in with the original sunburst finish.

A little clean up of the top and this is starting to look like a real guitar again.

We replaced the rusted and twisted old bridge with a new nickel bridge from TonePros (keeping the original in the case of course.)

A fresh set of strings and we were ready to try this beauty out through an amp!

The vintage mini-humbuckers sound great!

This was a fun rescue to perform. It’s always rewarding to bring a guitar back from the grave and have it turn out this nicely.

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.

The first thing that jumped out was a nasty headstock break with an awful looking mix of glue, epoxy, and maybe some bondo caked around the outside. Yuck.

Next there was a deep crack in the neck heel…

…and a large chunk that had broken off and been glued back onto the lower bout.

Finally there was an odd look to the ends of the fretboard. Can you see what’s wrong?

The fretboard has been removed and re-glued – in the wrong spot! That gap between the fretboard and pickguard (above) tells us that the previous repairman slid the board to the back of the nut shelf rather than the front, leaving A) no place to put a nut and B) a scale length that is off by nearly a quarter of an inch. So we knew the fretboard had to be removed and re glued in the right position.

The dots come out and the board comes off. The rather stingy amount of glue residue under the fretboard is yet another mark of the sloppy work that was done before.

At this point, we noticed another problem; the neck itself was loose where it joined the body. So we steamed it off the rest of the way and reglued it properly.

Once the neck and body are properly joined, we can move on to leveling the gluing surface between the neck and fretboard materials and gluing the fretboard on again.

With the fretboard in the right spot, there is once again a nut-shelf.

Now we can start cleaning up the messy headstock. We begin by smoothing away the rough globs of paint and glue from the previous work and using a leveling compound to make the surface level and smooth.

We do the same for the back of the headstock – which already makes it look much better.

It’s still an ugly looking repair, but to make sure it would hold, we put strings on and applied even more clamping pressure (to see if it came open.) It surprisingly held fast and strong. So the previous repairman avoids the shutout and manages to at least get this part of his repair right!

After applying some red finish to match the original color, Dan draws in grain lines by hand.Then he shoots clear top-coats of nitrocellulose lacquer, blending it in to the original finish. He does the same for the crack at the neck heel.

For the body crack, we wanted to take a minimal-impact approach. So we used a colored filler to level the area around the break and again sprayed a light coat of nitrocellulose to blend it in.

Once the new nitro finish is cured, we can level and prep the fretboard and hammer in new frets.

Finally, we go back to the crack repairs and distress the new finish to make it look like nothing ever happened.

This classic guitar looks great again and is ready for many more years of music.

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!

Before applying any glue, we used molding plastic to create a protective caul that fit the exact shape of the headstock. This will keep the clamps from crushing the neck while still applying enough pressure to actually heal the break. Once we have a perfect fit, we apply the glue and clamp it back up.

After the glue is dry and the clamps are off, we apply a small amount of colored finish over the break line. Then we carefully draw in dark grain lines to blend in with the rest of the neck.

The break is now completely invisible…

…and strong as nails. We guarantee this repair will hold until the next time it gets dropped and hits the ground (hopefully never again!)

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.

The Lyon & Healy company began in 1864 as a partnership between George W. Lyon and Patrick J. Healy. Throughout the company’s history it produced a wide variety of musical instruments including brass, percussion, pianos, organs, harps, and assorted stringed instruments. George Lyon’s middle name, Washburn, was used for its  line of  guitars, mandolins, banjos and other instruments. That company obviously still exists today and has revived the Lyon name for a side line of economy guitars.  While Lyon & Healy no longer makes guitars or mandolins, the company still exists  here in Chicago, building some of the finest harps in the world.

Here’s how the mandolin arrived in our shop.

After  removing a peghead overlay, we found a break that occurs at nearly a 90 degree angle to the neck. That’s a difficult job on any kind of neck since there’s very little lateral gluing surface to give the repair strength.  But a close look shows that the previous repairman used small dowels to splice the two pieces together. The dowels and holes are easily visible, but simply gluing them back together is not going to do enough to strengthen this neck for future playing.

After a lot of deliberation and plotting, we decided that we’ll need to rout a channel and splice a larger piece of mahogany across the break to increase the amount of gluing surface and to solidify the interior of the neck. The trick is doing this without further damaging the neck or the headstock. The repair begins by fitting the dowels and the fingers of the broken pieces and simply gluing the two pieces together. The wood block and wedge (look closely- the small darker piece of wood) at the end of the headstock kept the loose piece from squirting away as the glue set.

After allowing the preliminary repair to fully cure, we rig a routing platform inside a vise and by using a Dremel, carefully clear a channel for that mahogony splice. Dan has to be careful not to go too far and rout through the back of the neck.  When he’s getting close, he stops and shapes a block to fit perfectly into the channel.

After meticulously cleaning and shaping that rout, we mix some mahogony dust and epoxy together and slide our mahogony block into the rout.

Next, Dan chisels away the block until it fits the profile of the headstock.

Often, we’ll touch-up a headstock repair to make it disappear. In the case of a mandolin, we might even refinish the entire neck. But in this case we decided against that, given the instrument’s vintage status and the time/cost it would take to properly finish all of the ornate curved surfaces that make up this neck. Nevertheless, it looks and sounds tremendous and most importantly, this repair should last for many years to come.

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.

Our friend Laura told us this guitar had been in that closet in this condition for more than 20 years before she brought it to us. She recalled that the headstock had broken off years ago and had been repaired, only to break off again. You can see why; the repairman sawed off the end of the neck, cutting straight through the truss rod and creating a very small and unstable gluing surface that was never going to hold under the tension of guitar strings. One flying leap off the drum riser and it probably popped right off!

Look closely at the angle of that cut. If you can imagine, the string tension was pulling the headstock in a direction that would encourage that glue joint to open up. We’ll be cutting a new angle that points the other direction. This will have the strings pulling the joint closed rather than open.  Before we can do anything else, we’ll have to remove the fretboard. We start by removing the inlay dots and heating the fretboard.

Once the fretboard is off, we removed the remnants of the old truss rod. This took some serious negotiating with rusted metal that had fused itself into the wood over 52 years.

At this point, we need to create a scarf joint (aimed in the right direction this time) and graft on a piece of mahogony from which to carve the new headstock.

Next, a new truss rod is installed that matches the look and function of the original one.

Now it’s time for this angel to get it’s headstock “wings.” Gibson headstocks have 3 pieces of mahogony that are joined together, then shaped by hand to form the profile that’s become so familiar to us.

In the background you can see a 1959 TV yellow Les Paul Jr. we used as a template to match all of the dimensions of a 50’s Gibson headstock. Once the neck shape is correct, we apply stain to match the color of the new wood to that of the old.

Next comes the Gibson logo using a waterslide decal.  Just like the original.

We apply a top coat of traditional nitrocellulose lacquer and distress its appearance to match the original finish on the rest of the guitar. While we were working on this job, the owner found the original tuning machines but with their white plastic buttons dry and crumbling. We replaced the buttons, allowing us to keep and use the vintage tuners.

Vintage Gibson fans will notice that the serial number we stamped does not begin with a “6″ as a 1956 model would have. The truth is, we aren’t trying to fool anyone with this repair. Anyone who knows what to look for will recognize that the headstock is not part of the original guitar. To make up a correct-looking serial number might bring it a little closer to what an original would look like, but it wouldn’t change the fact that the headstock is a replacement. So we decided that since the number could be anything at all, it may as well be Laura’s father’s birthday. It’s just a little tribute to the man who first bought this guitar when he was 20 years old in 1956.

What a great guitar!

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.

While you and I would never throw a guitar like this away, you can certainly understand why someone might have looked at this break and said, “Well, this old guitar is finished. Toss it.” But we’ve seen and repaired worse breaks and we knew we could make it sing again.

First, we glued the pieces together, making sure the fit was precise and that the two sides came together perfectly.

Then we filled the pits and gaps, matched the color on front and back and aged the new paint to blend in with the old. All of the original parts went back on the guitar with a fresh set of strings and… Voila!

If you’re thinking of throwing away your broken 1963 Gibson SG Jr., please contact Chicago Fret Works at (773) 698-6246. We’ll be glad to take it off your hands at no charge.