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.