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!

Here’s a project with humble beginnings that grew into a full vintage restoration. The owner picked up this very old Epiphone Devon at an estate sale (along with several other groan-worthy items I won’t even tell you about.) It had been rather sloppily stripped and refinished and the binding had entirely peeled off. Initially, we planned only to add the binding to the body and unfortunately didn’t bother to take pictures. So the photos here begin after the new binding was already in place, when the owner decided he’d like it completely refinished to look like it did originally. It was a good decision.

Here, Dan prepares the body for finishing. The previous finish job was topped off with some white paint or nail polish inside the F-holes, an apparent attempt to make the holes look bound. Based on some good photos of a Devon in its original condition, we decided to clean off the white paint and leave them unbound. After sanding away the old shellac or varnish, Dan sprays a sealer coat, taping off the fretboard.

Next comes the sunburst on the top. Below, he scrapes the dark brown finish off the white binding by hand.

Then full darkening of the back and sides and a vintage amber top-coat.

Once finishing is complete, the new binding blends in and looks beautiful.

The final product fully assembled.

Originally, a Devon would have had a thick and fully-bound tortoise-shell pickguard. Since a hand-made bound guard would have cost $300-400, we opted for a more affordable 3 ply tortoise reproduction. The shape is right and the white middle layer gives a satisfactory illusion of binding.

The original tailpiece and bridge and some period tuners made the whole thing look just right.  The thin lacquer finish helps bring out this guitar’s full, rich tone. A real beauty.

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!)

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.

Here’s another couple of shots of that crack along the fretboard. This is a common spot for humidity cracks because it falls along the edge of rigid areas like the fretboard and head block and runs parallel to the grain of the top.  Most often, we see these cracks soon after they occur, unlike this one that went untreated for years.

Closer inspection reveals yet another crack along the edge of the pick guard – another common spot for humidity cracks. This repair requires removing the old pick guard, gluing a spruce splint into the crack, and making a new pick guard. (The old one is usually so dry, shrunken, and caked with old glue that to reuse it is rarely worth the trouble it would take to make it look right again.)

It wasn’t until this repair was complete that we realized we hadn’t taken pictures of the process. But thanks to the owner, we have the before shots above to compare with the after shots below. Looks like a new guitar!

That’s a protective film on the new tortoise shell pick guard giving it a dulled appearance here. It peels off easily to reveal  a shiny surface and a fit that perfectly matches the old pick guard’s “footprint.”

The newly leveled fretboard and new frets, reset neck, and comfortable playing action.

Thanks again for the before photos Ronald!

Hold on there! Refinish a vintage Gibson? In candy apple red?? There better be a darn good reason to do something like that… and there was.

As mentioned in previous posts, the guitar repairman’s rule of thumb with vintage instruments is to leave it in as close to original condition as possible while still maintaining its playability. In the case of this 1960’s Gibson ES-355TDC, a couple of previous repairs have left it far from its original condition. When it arrived, the most obvious change was that it had been painted white years earlier and that white finish was flaking off in big chunks. A little closer look revealed a headstock repair the likes of which we’ve never seen. Throw in some long ago water damage, cracks in the body, and stains in the wood and the vintage value of the guitar is pretty well gone. You may as well paint it blue; or as the owner of this guitar decided, candy apple red.

Our original plan with this guitar was to strip off the old white paint and restore it to as close to original condition as possible – meaning refinish it in its original translucent cherry red color. But once the flaking paint was off, we saw that the headstock had been entirely rebuilt, with the new headstock made, curiously enough, out of plywood. There were also a great number of cracks in the surface layer of the laminated body. These cracks were likely the result of extensive water damage and could be the reason it was originally refinished.

The body cracks and flaws would be visible through any transparent color. We know because we tried it, even darkening the red color to try to hide the cracks. It just didn’t look very good.

So the owner called an audible and told us he’d just as soon have us paint it something flashier – candy apple red and while we were at it, could we add binding to the F holes. It was an unexpected color request, particularly since Gibsons were rarely finished in candy apple red, but one we felt was not out of line given the condition of the guitar. He loves the way this guitar plays and decided he wanted to love the way it looked too.

We began the new work by gluing white binding to the inside of the F holes. This guitar didn’t have binding , but plenty of other old Gibsons do, so it didn’t look out of place. It’s tricky and sticky work that takes time and patience.

Once the binding is in place we can sand the F hole areas level. Next we add a coat of white primer/sealer…

…and a couple coats of the sparkly candy apple red.

Before spraying clear top coats, Dan has to clean the red paint off the body binding and the black paint off the headstock and Gibson logo.

Next it’s time to top the finish with clear nitrocellulose lacquer. To get the finish smooth and glassy in appearance, Dan has to wet sand the clear top coats up to 1200 grit sandpaper before buffing out the whole guitar (hence the hazy appearance in this shot.)

Before final buffing, Steve carefully threads all the electronics back into place. On a hollow body guitar like this there is no easily accessed control cavity (like the back of  a Les Paul) or pick guard (like a Stratocaster) on which to mount the pots and jack. They have to be pulled through the pickup hole using fingers, dental floss, surgical tubing, or all of the above. It’s kind of like building a ship in a bottle.

Then, once the pieces are back in place, Dan buffs out the entire guitar.

Finally, we install  the hardware and a new pick guard to replace the crumbling and decaying original one you saw in the first picture. A fresh set of strings and this red rocket is ready to roar.

Oh, yea, and Dan refretted this guitar too. He worked so fast I couldn’t get pictures of him working! We’ll cover that subject in a future Workbench post.

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.

A beautiful Taylor 914CE acoustic guitar came to us with two top cracks that had opened up after being ‘repaired’ by another shop (that shall remain nameless.) The previous repairman made three errors in our estimation: first, he enlarged the cracks with a small router or Dremel tool – removing too much wood in the process; second, he spliced in sitka spruce patches that do not match the original Engelmann spruce top; and third – well he just didn’t do a very good job of either since the cracks opened up again. The owner paid more than $4000 for this guitar and he wasn’t pleased with the look of the previous repair or the fact that it held for less than a year.  We made a decision to not just replace the 2 bad patches, but to replace the entire area between the cracks with a carefully chosen set of Engelmann. That turned out to make this repair less expensive to perform and gave us a much better outcome than just filling the cracks again.

We started by removing the bridge and using a Dremel tool to clear away the original spruce material.

“Wait wait!” you say. Wasn’t the Dremel part of the problem with the old repair? It was. But we’re using it in a different way here. We don’t want to damage the delicate bracing below and by making very shallow sweeping cuts, the Dremel allows us to slowly shave the whole area down a little at a time until the pieces can be easily removed. Take a look:

By dropping an inspection light into the guitar, we backlit the braces and traced them into the top to make sure we didn’t cut into them.  Then we cut the rest of the way through the spruce until the pieces started coming out.

We then bookmatched our patch of Englemann spruce, taking care to match the width of the grainlines in the original top. Once it was joined properly, the edges of both the patch and the outer lines of the hole are precisely fit so there are no gaps.

Touching up the patch alone and getting it to look right would have been nearly impossible, so we stripped the finish from the entire top, …

…then refinished the top, reglued the bridge, and reassembled the guitar.

Beautiful. Compare this repair to the previous one. It’s more stable, much better looking, and much better sounding.

*******

The Moral of the Story: Top cracks like these on an acoustic guitar, are usually a direct result of the wood drying out. This guitar wasn’t dropped or mishandled; it simply was exposed to the extra dry air that we find in Chicago when the weather gets cooler and the furnace comes on. Dried guitars also see problems with loose frets, bridges, braces, and even necks.  We recommend that you store your guitar in it’s case year round – not on a wall hook or stand – and that when your furnace is on you keep a damp humidifier inside the case as well. It’s a cheap and easy way to protect your guitar from the changing weather conditions in our city.

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.

Here’s a good look at the damage to this guitar. There’s a good size top crack there, but next to that huge side split you almost don’t see it. To keep all the crack’s from slipping under clamp pressure, we want to get all of the main breaks glued up at the same time. This means four hands on the guitar, pushing from the inside, pushing from the outside, applying glue, and setting clamps. (Not to mention one set of hands snapping a quick picture or two.)

After letting the glue set up we removed the clamps and found things looking a little less scary already.

After replacing the missing mahogony, we overspray the area so the repair lines are less visible. Then we draw in grain lines, …

…match the side finish to the rest of the guitar, and apply a matted top coat. Add a fresh set of strings and “The Works” setup and this guitar is ready for a safe landing!