I have moved most of my work inside where it's climate controlled.
All instrument check-ins will now go through the front door where we may visit in comfort.
From time to time... I will be adding 'step by step' photos along with descriptions explaining what you are looking at.
Gibson ES-175 D
Here is an original Gibson ES-175-D that made it's way to my bench. This guitar had some issues that needed to be fixed to make it playable.
- It would not amplify
- The pots didn't spin freely
- The inlays were falling out
- The back of two of the tuners were pulling away from the headstock
- The neck did not have any relief
- The bridge was not 90 degrees to the body, among other issues...
In Conclusion?
Long trip short... All the above repairs went fairly smoothly. All issues were addressed and fixed without this old guitar looking as if it was ever touched!
Along the way...
There are so many repairs, and set-ups that I get busy with that and forget to come back and update here!! I do apologize for that. So, here below is a small album along with some brief descriptions of what's goin on.
Fender Set-up: One to share!!
I thought this was way too cool not to share!! Yes your eyes do not deceive you!! That is a full floating tremolo you see there.
Old Harmony electric resto:
Well for starters, on this one two of the tuners had nothing for the strings to wrap around so I had to locate two from a spare parts drawer. Next you will notice the missing knob... Very proprietary knob I will add to those potentiometers. Literally no other knob would do so it was left missing. I only had to clean the oxidation out of the electronics and at test, discovered that the potentiometers and both capacitors were of very high quality!! Remember, this was a Sears shelf bought guitar back in 1965. Anyway, then a very deep cleaning and it was done. Here is some TRUTH: I would easily compare this guitar to a contemporary Fender today as far as the electronics go!!
Old Harmony:
This was crushed and the neck was half off. It was originally red white and blue but years of nicotine has added a lot of yellow... I'm looking for my finished set of pics I took for this restoration. If I find them, I will post them!
Martin Neck Reset:
This is one of those bolt on necks. The owner was complaining that one day the action just snapped high and the guitar was harder to play. He didn't tell me the reason for the sudden rise in string height.. but ooops. Someone tried to install a strap button on the heel without pre drilling a pilot AND they used a screw that was way to long!! Worse for the guy? The screw he was using bottomed out against the pressed formica body material and broke off inside the heel. That repair wound up being the value of the guitar.
Lawsuit Les Paul: Complete re-wire
So we start out with the two humbuckers going to a tone and a three way switch between the two. I needed to at least restore this back to the original control pattern.
...Yes that is a telephone wire there being used as a pick-up ground!! BOTH pick-ups were wired that way. I re-wired the both correctly with braded cable.
...Yes that is a telephone wire there being used as a pick-up ground!! BOTH pick-ups were wired that way. I re-wired the both correctly with braded cable.
Gibson Acoustic tuner resto:
The only option here was to replace the tuners with new direct replacements and artificially age them until the matched the original screws perfectly!!
Gibson SG headstock break (#2 apparently)
The owner of this told me that they got a great deal on this SG but at the time was sort of suspicious of the shadow paint sprayed there at the joint where the neck meets the headstock... Then he reported that it fell off the arm of the couch and snapped completely off rather easily he thought confirming the neck was broken at one point and hidden!! (Dontcha hate that??) However, the original repair was sound and did hold, the wood around it broke and I try to show this with the arrows.
Fender Thinbody Setup...
This required a thin shim going from .001 to .050 that I made from hard maple to get the action low enough to play and innotate properly. When this came in the truss rod was way to tight and the bridge saddle was already way to low. To low because without the proper break angle, there will not be enough downward force on the soundboard causing a quieter sounding instrument. The pin and paper had to come out to do some simple geometry.. I needed a break angle of 30 degrees to louden the voice and drop the action down to 1.5mm at the 12th fret. That required a new bone saddle blank left alone. That got my 30 degree break to the bridgepins..
So... using the first two screws as a pivot (zero) I had to bring the frets to the strings .050 making a solid wedge for the entire neck joint. Doing this makes for longer sustain in "bolt on" instruments. The "shim" you see in the pics is factory. Yup... Factory.
So... using the first two screws as a pivot (zero) I had to bring the frets to the strings .050 making a solid wedge for the entire neck joint. Doing this makes for longer sustain in "bolt on" instruments. The "shim" you see in the pics is factory. Yup... Factory.
Fender PU Swap
This was a fun one to do.. I want to start out by saying that I tested the conductivity of the paint inside the cavity. Nothing... Fender puts a "ground screw" there. Huh, anyways so that needed to be shielded but the reason she was here was to get a pick-up rearranging, Then a new pickguard (mint green)
Quiet Guitar... Why??
The owner of this guitar was complaining that it was quiet sounding after he had removed material from the bridge saddle to get the action down closer to a comfortable place because, as he put it, the action was too high. The action was still too high when it came to me. As you can see, the break angle behind the saddle is way too shallow. Time to do some geometry... If the neck to body angle is perfect 90 degrees, (and this one was) then the fingerboard wood plus the height of the frets must be equal to the height of the wood in the thickness of the bridge. This will allow you to have the action set at 1.5mm at the 12th fret AND still have a 30 degree break angle forcing the new saddle downward into the soundboard raising the VOLUME of the guitar. On this guitar, I had to remove .100 (nearly a full eighth inch) off of the bridge and re-cut the channel the saddle fits in. After taking all that wood away the bridge needed to be re-finished as well. I sanded it down to 600 grit then followed that with linseed oil.
VERY OLD and unknown maker
This was a 20 hour complete restoration. Part of which was converting it from a gut string to a steel string. This involved changing the original ladder bar bracing to an "X" style brace. I however chose not to add a truss rod in order to maintain it's "originality". This meant I had to put a .012 relief in the neck and get it right the first time. I cleaned and re used the original Brazilian rosewood bridge and found a matching fingerboard I already had in my personal wood stock.
Here is an old Gibson
As one might tell, there was no serial number anywhere.. Only the name and address of the music store it was originally purchased from. After I took the back away I saw literally all the braces had broke free of the soundboard. Really, all the glue in this guitar had so long ago gotten so dry and brittle that it all let go everything it was bonding! This was also quoted at 20 hours to complete. This first set of pics is my first impression..
Now this next set are some images I took along the restoration process. Here you will see the detail that goes into even a simple cleat that may never be seen again.
This is after everything was all done. I did not replace the tuners but rather restored the originals and pressed on new buttons and I also had to replace the bushings with originals so all six matched age wise. Real age CANNOT be faked! I also had to replace the old bridge with one that I hand made out of some scrap and also the bridge plate. Everything else that made this guitar full of character was left but in some cases had to be stabilized in some way.. All the playing ware was left as a sign that this has always been a musician's playing instrument. She can now be heard and enjoyed for many, many years to come!!