This well-worn 1957 Martin 000-18 has definitely earned some ’spa treatment’ – a neck reset, refret, and side crack repairs.

Guitars are meant to be played and enjoyed, so it always makes us smile to see one that has clearly been doing just that. This 1957 Martin 000-18 wouldn’t color its hair to hide the gray; it wears its age proudly.  So we put away the airbrush and the buffing wheel  and focused on getting it structurally stable and playing better than ever. It took a neck reset, refret, and some sealing of cracks to get it there, but the results were worth the effort. 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 »

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 »

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 »

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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If you really think about it, a steel string acoustic guitar is trying to break itself from the first time you string it up.  It’s two pieces of wood (a body and a neck) that are glued together with metal strings tied to the opposite ends of both pieces. When you tighten those strings up to pitch, they put over 150 lbs of pressure on that glue joint; extrapolate that over 20 or 30 years and it makes sense that the wood gets compressed and shifts position a little. The result is that the neck angle changes and string action slowly gets higher and higher. So as techs, we chase that changing angle by lowering the saddle a bit every time we set it up. Eventually we run out of saddle material and need to reset the neck angle.

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