Month: July 2021

First loves are special. You may find other loves along the way but you rarely, if ever, forget your first love. (Acoustic) Guitars are much the same! No matter how many guitars you buy over the years, your first guitar will always hold a special place.

One such special guitar came to me for some TLC. That the owner thought of getting it ‘serviced’ and into playing shape, said a lot about the sentiment involved.

‘gb&a’ that was its name spelt on the label inside the soundhole and strangely the headstock carried no marking. If it ever carried a name, time had removed all evidence of it. 

There were a few problems that the instrument had.

The bridge was lifting (can you see it?)

The binding was coming loose around the waist

The plastic nut had seen better days and the instrument would sound much better with an intonated (bone) saddle. So, both of these elements were thrown out and their bone substitutes were put in.

When I did remove the saddle there was a little chit of card in the saddle slot, the thickenss (height) of which was dialled in while sizing up the new bone saddle. 

As I tried to tighten the screws of the hardware on the headstock, they just kept on turning in the slots. So, I pulled them out and found them all rusted. I filled up the holes, redrilled them and installed new steel screws.

The bridge was reglued properly and while the glue was curing, I decided to give the instrument some new strap buttons and let the rusty ones go.

However, the shoulder strap button had to be moved from the heel to its side. That left a hole at the original spot

This was filled, levelled and polished such that it all but disappeared

With the glue still curing, I turned my attention to the headstock and the rusting hardware there.

Once the glue cured and the clamps came off, only the stringing of the guitar remained.

And those are the new nut and saddle in place.

Here’s a full view of the whole guitar done.

The owner was pleased with the results and even sent me a video of him and his ‘first love’ in action.

I have mentioned this before but I will say it again. When you bring your acoustic guitar to me, of course, I will listen to the complaint that you have, but I will also assess the instrument on my own, to find if there are other faults in it, which may become a bigger problem if not dealt with immediately/soon.

That is my job! However, there are ethical issues involved here (personally speaking). If I find something and I tell the owner that it needs to be tackled, I have to be very correct in my choice of words, my tone, and even in the intensity of my gaze. Just a little too emphatic or forceful and the owner may get a feeling, ‘Oh, he’s trying to rack up a bill’!!!!!!!!!

Thus, I try to put it across the issue and the cost as calmly and as matter-of-factly as I possibly can. To those who understand, they forego pain in the future. Those who don’t, are sure to return. But, if it’s a ‘yes’, it’s a yes, and if it’s a ‘No’, so be it!

This guitar came to me

I had not heard of it, and though a laminate one, it seemed like a sturdily built instrument. It was also an electro-acoustic

and it had a rather neat fretboard.

 

The fretboard…well, there was enough skin, body oils, caked dust and grime to make me wince, but…

 

and the nut and saddle had seen better days

Look carefully at the photos above. Of course, you can see the paper stuck under the ‘B’ string on the saddle, but that little wisp of paper on the ‘e’ string, near the nut, was also IN the nut slot, endeavouring to keep the string afloat. If you look with even more care, you will see that all the slots on the nut are chewed up bad. And so, the plastic nut and saddle had to go and get replaced by a bone nut and saddle.

What the owner did not know was that the bridge was lifting – the last picture with that chit of paper shows it by how much. More importantly, and I don’t know whether you’ll be able to spot it, the bridge was showing signs of a split just beginning to take shape. While there is a long crack taking shape just in front of the bridgepins (and between the saddle), there were at least three minor cracks taking shape between the bridgepins. If you can spot them, shout ‘Eureka’!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I told the owner what was happenning and he was polite in letting me know that he was willing to take his chances! And that is exactly the point where all discussion about those problems was dropped.

It is certain though that the bridge on this guitar is going to pop off. Whether that happens before or a bridge split, remains to be seen.

The rest was routine. Measure, sand, replace, some new strings, and it was done!

And yes, I did clean the fretboard with a lot of elbow grease and some ‘love potion’. Here’s a look at it

The owner was pretty pleased with how the instrument sounded and left thanking me!

 

About 15 years ago, when I lost a beloved 12-string guitar because its bridge was lifting and I knew of no one who could repair it, and also didn’t know that it COULD be repaired, I took it upon my self to learn how to repair acoustic guitars. The ‘workshop’ that you see today, as well as this blog, is a natural consequence of that incident.

My effort is always to help out in whatever way I can. Strangers have reached out to me from Assam, Karnataka and from foreign shores as well. I know that I will never work on their guitars for I am too inaccessible to them. Yet, the effort is always to guide them through whatever it is they are troubled by.

When a guitar does come to me for repair, believe me, it is not just the instrument that I try and lend healing to. Some part of the distressed owner too is healed in the process.  And so, as I look over the instrument on the counter, I make small talk with the owner. For him/her it would seem like small talk, but in fact, I am gauging him/her: attachment levels, socio-economic standing, thought process – is he/she only trying to squeeze out the cost of the instrument, or, does he/she actually want the instrument repaired, etc.

I am particularly partial towards those instruments that hold a sentimental value for their owners. While rectifying faults in those instruments, my heart and mind goes back to the 12-string that I had to literally throw in a dumpster in Doha, Qatar. When I am able to satisfy such customers, the personal satisfaction that it brings, no amount of monetary gain can equal. When I fail, it is that much more depressing.

Take for example this guitar,

which came to me. As I looked at it and ‘chatted’ with the owner, I learned he was an out-of-job engineer (I think that is what he said he was). Because of health issues, he had to give up his job and was under treatment (for what, he never said, and I never asked).

This was his first guitar and it was evident that he was attached to it. The problem as I saw it, was this

Can you see the saddle leaning forward? I remember asking him if he faced intonation issues, and his reply that the intonation was spot on, posed a bigger problem. It only meant that the bridge itself was glued in the wrong place. If the saddle is leaning and does not affect intonation, that is the only inference that could have been drawn.

However, that was not what the guitar was in for. The owner had experienced string buzz 4 or 5 years ago and had taken the guitar to a shop in Aminabad. Over there, this is how he got back his guitar

The fretwires were flatter than a ruler’s edge! The owner told me that he had been so disheartened by the episode that he had just kept away his favourite guitar. Now, after all these years, he decided to try and get it repaired and that is when he brought it to me.

He was interested in getting all the fretwires replaced. I told him that it would be costly affair and asked him to have patience and let me work on the fretwires. I told him that I can always make the instrument playable for now, and he can get them replaced at a later date. In hindsight, I feel that if I had acceded to his request, I would have been a happier person: less work, less hassle, more money!!!!!!!

Anyway, he agreed to my proposition.

I also told the owner that considering the age of the strings, they would need to be replaced, and that he should get me a set. I also pointed out the saddle situation and suggested that he should get that – at least – changed. Of course, the best would be to get both the nut and saddle changed and get bone elements put in.

However, he politely declined to all proposals saying that the cost was too much for him, and I understood his position.  For those of you who have worked with old strings, winding and unwinding them, you know how easy it is for them to break.

With as much care as I could possibly take, I unwound the strings and pulled them away so that I could access the fretwires, though I didn’t dare slipping them either out of their holes or out of the peghead.

The fretwires needed a proper crowning and polishing. Now, I have more than a few crowning files with which I work on instruments.

However, there is one by reputed US luthier supplies’ firm, StewMac, which I own (frighteningly expensive) which I reserve for very, very special jobs. It is double sided with different coarseness on each side.

I pulled out this file and went to work on the instrument. Slowly, a crown began to take shape and I was very happy thinking about the owner.

After the crowning, the frets had to be polished so that the marks that any file invariably leaves, can be removed. And so: ‘mummyfication’!

Of course, the fretboard and bridge was oiled too, for it was very dry. Looking at the finished job, even I was satisfied.

Certainly not what healthy, new fretwires would be like, but these would do and the owner would be able to play the guitar quite easily.

When I handed over the instrument to the owner, he was thrilled with the results. He told me what a wonderful job I had done on something that he had thought could never be mended.

I just told him that I was happy that he was happy!

However, a couple of days later he called me up to say that it wasn’t very easy moving up and down the neck and if I could do something about it. I said, sure, and asked him to bring over the instrument.

When the owner came, he showed me what was happening. He held the ‘usual D’ chord and tried moving that shape up the neck. According to him, this was where his fingers were getting caught at the fretwires.

Again, my problem was the owner not wishing to change strings and me having to loosen them and tighten them all over again. What I decided to do was to work on fretwires in the areas where the treble strings would strike. This would mean loosening just the ‘G’, ‘B’ and ‘e’ strings.

I did that, worked on the frets, but did not polish them. When the owner came, I told him that it was possible that he might feel that a certain ‘grittyness’ while playing but assured him that when he was ready to change strings, he should bring them to me. I would take off the old strings, polish the frets all over and put on the new strings.

However, the owner was not at all pleased with the work done on his instrument and left saying that I had spoiled his instrument!

I was shocked and for long after he had left, I did not know how to react. When I called him and tried to explain to him again saying that I could not complete the work on the instrument because he wanted the old strings retained, and that I would finish the polishing before new strings were put on it, he was not willing to understand. There was a lot that he had to say, much of what I would rather not repeat here.

In hindsight, maybe, if I had taken photographs of the effort the second time and shared them with the owner, things would have been different.

I have since moved on from the incident, blaming it on the Law of Averages. After so many satisfied customers, there have to be a few dissatisfied ones too – for whatever reason!

 

This guitar came to me with the complaint that the ‘e’ string (and probably the ‘B’ string) was buzzing around the 13th, 14th fret. I thought this one would be quick and dirty and that is where I usually go wrong: when I start thinking.

Anyway, since the instrument had been left with me, I decided to give it a once over.

I noticed that it had the usual tail-block strap button and was tied to the headstock at the other end. I decided to give it a proper strap button – at the proper place.

Apart from that everything else seemed to be in order. And for a laminate, it wasn’t too badly built. Considering it was half-a-decade (or thereabouts) old, the way it was holding up, was ample testimony to that.

Turning to the problem area, I first ‘mummified’ it and then went to work with first a file and then a crowning file and then through 600, 1000, 1500, 1800 and 2000 grits of sandpaper. This was what the job looked like after the files had done their job.

And after the various grits of sandpaper had worked their magic

So far, it was smooth sailing. But for all this work, I had to take the strings off (as you can see). After the work was done and I tried putting the strings back on, the ‘D’ tuning machine refused to wind after a point. It turned when I tried to turn it but the post would not move.

I unwound it and it worked fine. I wound it and again, it wound to a point after which the machine head would turn, the tuning post would not.

Nothing worked: tapping, tightening, wringing (I even tried abusing it!)

Exasperated, I loosened the string, unscrewed the tuning machine and pulled it off the headstock. The idea was to open it and see what could possibly be wrong.

Everything seemed fine and so I put the machine together again, but before I screwed it back on the headstock, I tried turning it to see whether the problem had been solved. It turned as did the post, and continued to do so! Well!

I put the machine back on the headstock and began winding the string but it wound to a point and stopped after that! WTF???? No matter what I tried, the string refused to be wound.

Again I took off the machine, opened it up, dismantled it, couldn’t find anything, put it together, tested it, put it back on the headstock and tried winding the string. Again it turned to a point and stopped after that. 

Believe it or not, I repeated the entire process four times and even after that when the machine was playing up, I decided to call the owner and tell him what was happening. I called him over to take a look at it.

And as I was demonstrating to him, it worked absolutely fine! No hitch! No problem!

While he had a good laugh (at my expense), I could only purse my lips and frown in consternation.

Tuned to pitch, the Buzz Ghost had been well and truly exorcised!

Whateva!! It was done and I was glad to get rid of the instrument. And since I haven’t heard from the owner, even the ghost in the ‘D’ tuning machine had been exorcised!