Lowdown Guitars

09/26/2022

A small-bodied Gibson acoustic with a few issues. This instrument is in player condition and is not a museum piece.

In years past it's neck joint was reglued, probably at the same time a repair was made to a crack in its top parallel to the bass side of the fretboard tongue.

This repair seems to have left the guitar with a significant rising hump in the fretboard tongue from the 14th fret on up.

The bridge saddle is made of rosewood, and is height adjustable by way of two machine screws threadwd through brass inserts in the top. However, even when lowered as much as it will go, the action is still unplayably high.

I'll be tackling these problems in two ways.

At the bridge end, I'll be removing material from the underside of the bridge saddle, as well as removing material from the top of the bridge with a coarse rasp to thin it out and expose more of the saddle. I'll also be cutting ramping channels between the leading edges of the bridge pin holes and the saddle to increase the break angle. The lower action will cause the strings to fret-out on the hump, so the hump needs to go.

On the fretboard tongue, I'll be removing the frets from the 14th on up, then removing wood from the fretboard to turn the upward hump into a negative fall-away. Once done, I'll re-install the original frets.

Due to removing wood from the top of the bridge I'll need to re-chamfer the bridge pin holes.

Incidentally, as with a lot of inexpensive models made in the 50s and 60s, the bridge is bolted through the top as well as glued down. I'll need to re-chamfer the holes that hold the 1/4" pearloid dot that hide the screw heads.

07/28/2022

Refurbishing a Gibson Les Paul custom of unknown vintage.

The rear of the neck joint has been filled with Bondo and reshaped to look like a neck-through body contour.

At some time in the past it was roughly refretted and the ebony board sports multiple chips that must be filled in. Once done I'll correctly refret it.

The whole guitar has been refinished with blinding white spray paint. The paint will stay as-is, but I'll spend time scraping the overspray from the neck and headstock binding.

07/11/2022

Leveled frets before and after re-crowning and polishing.

One at a time. By hand. Always.

Neck: DanoCaster heavy relic

07/11/2022

Well that's a wrap on the import Les Paul copy.

- fret re-setting, leveling and recrowning
- nut and saddle adjustments
- straighten out and re-set the tuners crookedly installed
- re-string with Ernie Ball 11-48 Power Slinky
- tune-up and full adjustment

NB: The big white control button is a factory installed kill switch.

07/08/2022

Working on an Asian made Les Paul copy.

The instrument was brought to me with a lot of string buzz, due in part to improper neck adjustment, but mainly due to poorly installed frets.

Budget instruments are built to a price point, with most attention given to the appearance and not the fit and finish. The main cost-cutting measure is to reduce or eliminate the detailed hand work required to produce well installed and finished frets.

Many of the frets were popping out of their slots, so I re-seated them. Before leveling the high spots I locked all of them in place by wicking water-thin superglue under them. The superglue prevents them from creeping upwards out of their slots, and provides the added benefit of filling up the small air spaces between the fret tang and the walls of the fret slot. This goes a long way to improving the tone of budget imported instruments.

Now that the frets are leveled, I'm re-crowning and polishing them.

07/08/2022

Working on an Asian made Les Paul copy.

The instrument was brought to me with a lot of string buzz, due in part to improper neck adjustment, but mainly due to poorly installed frets.

Budget instruments are built to a price point, with most attention given to the appearance and not the fit and finish. The main cost-cutting measure is to reduce or eliminate the detailed hand work required to produce well installed and finished frets.

Many of the frets were popping out of their slots, so I re-seated them. Before leveling the high spots I locked all of them in place by wicking water-thin superglue under them. The superglue prevents them from creeping upwards out of their slots, and provides the added benefit of filling up the small air spaces between the fret tang and the walls of the fret slot. This goes a long way to improving the tone of budget imported instruments.

07/03/2022

A Norman B20 12 string that spent too much time in a dry environment, with strings that were way too heavily guaged.

Pro tip: 12-string guitars don't need string sets heavier than .010-.047, which most string manufacturers classify as light or extra light. Remember that with twelve strings the vibrating mass and tension is virtually double that of a standard 6-string, so no need to over-do things. Using strings that are too heavy just puts unneeded stress on the neck, neck joint, bridge, top and bracing, and ultimately leads to premature degradation of the instrument's structure.

Exception: When tuning down to D standard (whole step down) or lower, you can increase the string guage to prevent flop and buzzing.

07/03/2022

06/10/2022

Now here's a first for this repairman.

This is a very roughly refinished Gibson Les Paul, with many non-original parts and mods to the body. More about that later!

I've been tasked with, among other things, replacing the import metric tailpiece and tune-o-matic bridge with Gibson original parts.

Once I pulled the body bushings, I discovered the holes contained remnants of the original 1/2" diameter bushings. The person who replaced them with metric neglected, or failed to remove the originals, so they simply center-bored them to accept the metric ones. This left an inner ring of metal inside the holes, making them too small for the new 1/2" ones.

Using a 1/2" drill bit chucked into my hand droll, I carefully reamed the remaining metal to collapse it enough to extract each one with pliers.

I'll line the inside of the holes with strips of mahogany veneer to take up the little bit of slack to ensure a tight fit when I install the new ones.

06/08/2022

Progressing on the Martin D-35 partial refret.

The original frets above the 8th were leveled at some time in the past, but were left flat and never recrowned. I'm crowning all of them to make them match the new frets.

06/07/2022

After a bridge removal and reglue, rehydration and reconditioning of the bridge and fretboard wood, and a fret en bevel, the Fender ABG is ready to go back into service.

The bridge and fretboard were so dry they had lost their natural color and turned grey.

06/05/2022

Progress on the Martin D-35 refret. Spot leveling the few minor high spots prior to trimming the ends.

06/03/2022

Another pre-1985 Martin D-35 came in for some attention.

Partial refret on frets 1 to 8 in progress.

05/30/2022

Well, the '78 Martin D35 is ready to go back into service.

- bridge saddle slot filled and re-cut to the proper narrow Martin style, and in the right position for proper intonation
- new bone saddle hand-shaped from a blank and radiused to match the fretboard
- fret sprout filed flush and rounded
- existing bone nut polished with 1500 to 12 000 grit to give it some shine
- reconditioned the ebony fretboard with lemon oil
- full fret polish and overall cleaning

Note: Because this guitar is a '78, its trussrod is the fixed, non-adjustable type. Martin only started using adjustable trussrods in 1985.

This is a linebacker Martin, meaning a full, woody sounding strummer.

05/30/2022

This acoustic bass guitar was brought to me with a problem bridge. The instrument is essentially brand new, but the rosewood bridge is lifting away from the top in several places.

I carefully removed the bridge by carefully applying some controlled, dry heat to it using my trusty household clothes iron set to the dry setting. The heat softens the glue just enough to slide palette knive underneath the bridge to help separate it from the instrument's top.

With the bridge removed, my suspicions were confirmed; the factory had glued the bridge directly to the black lacquer finish and not wood to wood. This frequently occurs with quickly made mass production instruments, which ultimately causes the glue to fail.

To correct this problem, I first scrape away the lacquer to expose the bare top wood. I leave just enough lacquer so the transition to the bare wood is hidden under the bridge. Next, I remove the old glue from the underside of the bridge carefully using a sharp wood chisel, cabjnet scraper, and finally sandpaper.

I then cut a cross hatch pattern into the bridge wood with a refret saw, taking care to start and finishing the saw lines inside the edges of the bridge. This is referred to as waffling, and it helps provide a better gripping surface for the glue.

After spreading fresh wood glue on the underside of the bridge, I repositioned it, then clamped it firmly using a bridge caul and variety of clamps (soundhole and cam types), taking care to use a board as a backstop in order to protect the back of the instrument, and provide a solid surface for the cam clamps. Any glue squeeze-out was wiped away with a damp rag.

I'll leave the clamps in place for 48 hours. In the meantime, I'll work on other repairs.

05/28/2022

Re-cutting the saddle slot on a '78 Martin.
The previous owner had widened the original slot with a chisel, and installed a hacked-up saddle in its place.

I filled the slot with two-part epoxy. Once it dried, I filed and scraped it level with the top of the bridge. Afterwards, I recalculated the position of the slot for proper intonation using a Saddle-Matic gauge, then re-cut the slot by router and my shop-made plywood router deck.

05/12/2022

Well, the battered Yamaha FG830 that had an unfortunate accident at a party is now ready to go back into service.

As you may recall, it came in with the neck almost completely cracked off the body, straight through the neck heel, with the fretboard extension separated from the body.

A lot of work was required to remove wood splinters that would never mate back together, gluing down shattered pieces that could be put back in place, then followed by a lot of creative glue and clamp work to get the neck back on the body.

I touched up the finish with polyurethane, beveled and smoothed the fret ends, then gave it a really good setup and a fresh set of strings.

Despite major surgery, it's projection and tone sound right on point.

05/01/2022

A custom base plate/surround made to fit a Fishman pre-amp into a Fender acoustic.

The guitar was brought to me with an aftermarket no-name preamp, jammed into a cut-out in the upper bout that was way too far forward into the curve of the shoulder.

The Fishman preamp was much smaller, but adding wood to patch the gaps would be too noticeable, and not as stable as it should be.

I decided to fabricate an over-sized sourround/base from PVC to hide the over-sized opening. The Fishman has a basically flat frame that doesn't follow the curve of the bout, and I didnt want to make a surround with too much blank area.

So, once I had the basic size and shape and mounted the Fishman frame to it using its original screws, I gave both pieces a gentle curve by warming the plastic at arm's length using a heat gun, then slowly bending everything to follow the curve. I had detached the pre-amp from the frame beforehand, so no electronics were cooked in the process (just some singed hair on the backs of my knuckles).

Four black pickguard screws took care of holding it through the side of the guitar.

The rest of the process involved rewiring the Fishman wiring harness (3 wire Molex connector) to the output jack assembly (4 wire Molex).

03/14/2022

Taking down the high spots of the glue joint prior to filling in the low spots with gap-filling superglue.

03/10/2022

Moving forward on some structural repairs.
Broken neck on an Ibanez acoustic.
Broken neck and neck heel on a Yamaha acoustic.

02/28/2022

Sometimes wood just has a mind of its own. Our wonderful, but harsh, Canadian climate doesn't help.

The neck on this Fender Eric Clapton Signature has a tendency to wander. It absorbs and releases humidity as the seasons change, so it moves around. When it does, that changes the relationship between the plane of the strings and the tops of the frets. The action can rise with the bowing of the neck making it hard to play, but also causing buzzing at the upper frets. At other times the action will drop when the neck back-bows and buzzes will appear in the middle of the neck.

My client babies this guitar, but it's a bit sensitive. However, it responds well to adjustments - no radical tightening of loosening required of the truss rod.

The neck will hopefully become more stable over time and wander less, so long as it's regularly adjusted as soon as it happens.

My approach in the meantime is to minimize how noticeable those changes will be my making sure the frets are level and properly crowned. That way they won't stick out like a sore thumb as soon as the neck moves slightly.

Lots of handwork, one by one, carefully.

02/21/2022

Getting to the heart of a problem sometimes requires invasive techniques.

An inexpensive Yamaha RBX170 bass was bought to me with a badly bowed neck, and in dire need of a tune up.

On closer inspection, the trussrod adjustment nut was completely seized; no amount of penetrating oil or heat could get it to budge. To add to the fun, the hex nut was already partially stripped.

Because I'm always up for a challenge, the way to get at the adjusting nut was to remove the wood below it at the base of the neck. A few careful passes with the router and some fine work with a chisel allowed me to expose the adjusting nut and rod anchor.

I then bored out the center of the hex socket to thin it down, then cut through the length of the nut with a Dremel cutting wheel, being carful to not cut into the threaded end of the rod.

A few careful careful taps with a cold chisel and ballpeen hammer split the nut which I could then extract in pieces.

I fitted a new hex nut filled with a mix of graphite power and petroleum gelly, then hand cut and fitted a block of maple that I glued in place, then trimmed to fit.

01/28/2022

12/09/2021

Completed refurbishing of a vintage Gibson J50.

- frets 1 to 8 partial refret
- straighten the key shafts of the D and G string tuners
- full cleaning and tune-up
- new strings

The bridge saddle is adjustable to set the action height. Interestingly, the saddle is made from porcelain which is very hard and dense. As a result, its sound is punchy, but also quite warm.

11/30/2021

Trussrod replacement on a Guild acoustic.

09/13/2021

Refurbishment work on a 1970s Magenta brand acoustic made by Ahed Corporation. The manufacturer styled it as a down-market alternative to the better quality Gibson Dove.

As was common in the old days, the logo is a zinc casting attached to the headstock by two tiny nails!

I'll be replacing the old, worn out original tuners with modern and more precise Kluson style copies.

There are gouges and missing wood the neck edges on either side of the nut slot, so I'll be filling them in.

The bridge saddle and nut are genuine bone. However, the nut was either cut too low (the was cardboard glued under it), or it wore down with playing over time. I'll be cleaning up the nut slot and re-setting it with a glued-in shim made from mahogany veneer.

Finally, the bridge pins are the wrong taper, in addition to being worn-out. The owner is complaining the string pull causes them to pop out. I'll replace them with a fresh set of matching pins of the proper taper.

09/09/2021

Just the right amount of glue, and the right amount of clamp pressure to reattach the fretboard to the neck shaft and heel tenon.

09/08/2021

Step 1 of the Yamaha reglue in progress.

09/08/2021

This Yamaha FG830 went to a party, and arrived home a little worse for wear.

- cracked neck heel
- fretboard partially separated from the neck shaft
- top cracks on both sides of the fretboard tongue

Due to loose splinters deep inside the cracks, the gaps won't close under dry clamp pressure, so it all needs to be pulled apart.

Once all the pieces are separated, I'll remove any splinters that can't be repositioned, then I'll work on gluing and clamping in reverse order all the broken wood, ending with the neck heel.

08/16/2021

Progress on the refret of the vintage Gibson J50.