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.

The cracks on the sides are pretty severe. It will take some patching and, okay maybe a little touch-up to get them stable.

Here, Dan gets the side pieces to fit together perfectly before gluing and clamping them back together.

He fills the larger gaps with mahogony and colored epoxy, then files it level.

Some stain and grain lines were enough to make these patches look like they belong.

Next it’s on to the neck reset. This is a well-known and well-documented procedure where the neck is removed from the body and the dovetail joint is re-shaped to achieve correct playing action. More than 50 years of steel strings pulling on the neck has compressed the wood inside the joint and made the strings sit unbearably high.

Not every guitar is worth the trouble and expense involved in a neck reset, but a Martin holds its value very well. Even one that looks old and worn out like this is a no-brainer for this job.

First we use an electric heating element to soften the glue under the fretboard tongue.

Once the tongue is loose from the body, we drill 2 small access holes through a fret slot and inject steam from an espresso maker to loosen the glue inside – the second hole provides a route for the steam to escape. The wooden jig helps push the neck out of the dovetail joint once it comes loose.

Once the neck is off, we quickly remove the old glue residue from both the neck and body before it hardens and prepare both the neck pocket and the neck heel for resetting.

Dan uses a razor sharp chisel to remove tiny layers of mahogany from the neck heel. Then to really zero it in, he pulls strips of sandpaper to make tiny adjustments until the angle is just right.

We like to say that baseball is called a “game of inches” and guitar repair is a game of thousandths of an inch. Each pull of sandpaper changes the angle ever so slightly; so he counts how many pulls he does on one side of the neck heel, then does the same number of pulls on the other side.

When the neck angle is just right, it gets firmly clamped and glued back into place. When the glue is set, it’s time to replace the old frets.

To soften any glue inside the fret slots, Dan heats each fret with a modified soldering iron and carefully pulls it out.

Once the frets are out, he uses a carpenters level and adhesive sandpaper to level the fret board.

Next he cuts each new fret and hammers it home.

The new frets have to be trimmed, shaped, and leveled before polishing.

Since the new frets sit slightly taller than the old worn ones, we made a new bone nut. This lets the strings clear the fret tops without buzzing.

The improved neck angle allows us to get the playing action perfect, with enough saddle left for adjustments over the coming years.

A neck-reset can effectively give an old guitar like this a new life, promising many more years of music. It would have been a shame to hang this guitar on the wall when that 50 year old wood makes such a sweet sound!

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.

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. 

In the early 1970’s, Mossman guitars experimented with an internal bracing pattern that was intended to reduce mass and increase volume. The company’s guitars from that period were built without a large spruce brace or strut that is traditionally placed above the sound hole.  In its place were two tiny braces and a pair of mahogony “feet” that protruded lengthwise from the head block (the head block is a block of wood inside the guitar where the neck is attached.) In the photo below, we’re looking through the sound hole at a mirror aimed up at the feet. Guitar repairmen before us have dubbed this Mossman condition “The Agony Of The Feet.”  The new brace will go between the two skinny ones.

Above, you can see that the two skinny spruce braces that pass underneath the feet are tapered down to almost nothing, then notched in the middle (to accommodate a truss rod wrench.) Not a whole lot of strength there. As a result, once the guitar hits 30/35 years the neck has shifted substantially – raising the action and making a neck reset necessary and long overdue. A quick check of the bass side action shows it to be more than 5/32″ – substantially higher than we’d like. The bridge saddle was too low to bring down any further, so a neck reset is in order.

Like lots of 30+ year old guitars, this one will also need a new pickguard.

First we heat the fretboard tongue, loosening the glue that holds it to the top surface. These guitars used a simple two-bolt neck joint rather than a dovetail, so we don’t need to steam off the entire neck.

With the neck off, Dan chisels a hole between those two skinny braces. Through this hole, he’s able to cut through the “feet,” creating a space big enough to accommodate a custom-made full size brace.

Here’s that new brace being glued into place. Looks stronger already!

After resetting the neck angle and re-installing the neck, it’s time to spruce up the fretboard. After 35 years of wear and tear, it’s ready for a face-lift. Yuck.

Dan removes the old and pitted frets, then levels the fretboard to create a true and even surface for the new frets.

After carefully hammering each fret into place by hand, he trims and shapes the fret ends and dresses the new fretboard.

Here’s a look at the new bone saddle – tall enough for many more years of playing.

Playing action for both guitars is now low and comfortable.

Both of these Mossman guitars sounded truly great when the work was complete. They required an extensive restoration, but the owners both agreed it was worth the trouble and expense.

Another Mossman attack averted.

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.

Here you can see the string action where the neck joins the body.  It’s what some guitarists might consider playable, but with his arthritis, it was just too uncomfortable for the owner to play.

If the saddle were sitting up nice and high like on a newer guitar, we could lower it to bring the strings down. But if we did that here, the strings would not not have enough downward pressure or break-over to produce a strong sound. It would end up sounding like a sitar. So we’ll need to remove and reset the neck angle and replace the saddle with a taller one.

The Mossman utilizes a neck joint that is part bolt-on and part glued mortise and tenon so after removing the bolts, we need to loosen the glue by injecting steam into the neck pocket. At that point the neck comes off rather easily.

Then Dan re-shapes the neck heel so that it will join the body at the correct angle.

Then he re-attaches the neck to the body.

As with most neck resets, we’ll also level and refret the fretboard.

Finally, this 30 year old Mossman is ready to go with easy action even with a new taller saddle.  It should easily have another 30 years of  music ahead of it.

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.

For more than a century, guitarists have recognized something special about Martin guitars. Great feel, great sound, great looks. But we repairmen have grown to love them for  a different reason. For most of that time period, Martin has built guitars with certain qualities that make extensive repairs possible even on very old instruments. Until they recently began bolting necks into bodies, all of their parts have been held together by precise fitting joints and small amounts of glue. A little bit of heat or steam in just the right place allows us to loosen that glue just enough to correct even very small changes. They suggest that even 70 years ago these craftsmen understood that some day their work would need to be taken apart and put back together. Thanks guys!

We began this repair by addressing the most obvious problem: a split in the lower side that stretched across most of the lower bout. We glued and clamped it together using spool clamps and traditional hot hide glue. For a guitar like this with its original finish intact, we’ll skip the touch-up and just try to smooth and clean the crack area so it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

Next we move on to the neck. Over time, the pull of steel strings has pulled the neck into a steeper angle. As a result, the string action gets higher and higher, requiring the bone saddle to be lowered nearly to the top of the ebony bridge. Since we can’t go any lower with this saddle, we’ll remove the neck completely and reset the dovetail joint so we have a healthier angle and more comfortable playing action. At the same time, we noticed that the back of the bridge was beginning to pull off the top, so with the owners permission, we removed it and cleaned the gluing area. We’ll glue it back down later.

The neck reset begins with removing the thirteenth fret and drilling a tiny hole in the fret slot where we’ll inject steam to loosen the glue that holds the neck joint together. Why the thirteenth fret? Because That’s where you find the end of the dovetail’s tenon on every guitar. In the picture below you can see the two drill holes right at the edge of the tenon.

Once the neck is off, Dan removes the remaining old glue while it’s still soft. Then he changes the neck angle by removing small amounts of material from the neck heel. How small? He pulls strips of sandpaper against the neck heel, keeping count of how many pulls per side. Once the angle is right, the neck goes back on. (You’ll notice the bridge is now back in place too.)

The next day, when the new glue is set, he planes the fretboard level and replaces the frets… usually. But in this case, the fret wire is actually steel bars, not modern nickel fret wire. Bar frets are not only part of the guitar’s history and character, they’re also no longer made. So to make the original frets taller, he raises them by filling the fretboard slots with glue and ebony dust. Then he hammers them back into place, levels the tops and dresses the fretboard.

The final steps are a new vintage style bone saddle, handmade here for this guitar alone, then a fresh set of lightweight strings – to put minimal stress on this old instrument, and our Works setup.

This pre-WWII Martin has survived nearly seventy years and with this work, should be playable for many more. It sounds incredible.

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.

When an older guitar like this 1974 Gibson Dove comes into our shop with high action, we make sure to check the neck angle with a steel straight edge (above.) We would like to see the steel pointing over the top of the bridge rather than touching it. So this is a candidate for a neck reset. We will steam off the entire neck, reshape the dovetail joint that holds it in the body, and reglue it.

By injecting steam into the dovetail joint, we can loosen the glue and remove the neck.

Here’s Dan shaping the neck angle by pulling sandpaper through the neck heel area. This is how precise this work has to be; he counts how many times he pulls sandpaper through each side of the neck. We’re talking thousandths of an inch. Once he’s pretty sure he’s got it right, Dan double checks the neck angle with the straight edge…

When the angle is correct, the neck is reglued to the body and clamped into place. Handmade clamping cauls protect the body and the fretboard from the pressure of the clamps.

After the glue sets and the clamps are removed, there’s some work to be done to the guitar’s appearance. At the factory, Gibson guitars are painted after the neck and body are joined together so the finish has to be scored when we remove the neck. This means we will need to do some touch up in our spray painting booth after it’s glued back on.

Now that the neck angle is correct and the repair is invisible, we can move on to making the guitar play right. Most of the time when we reset a neck, we need to also level and refret the guitar to get optimal playability. That was the case with this Dove as well. We’ll be posting photos of the refret process in a separate blog.

Now this beautiful old guitar has low, comfortable action; new frets; and many more years of great sound ahead of it.