Month: March 2022

Yes! This one has jumped ahead of a few instruments because I noticed a disconcerting trend in guitar construction that needed highlighting.

It is most certainly a trend here in India, but readers of this blog the world over need to chime in and either confirm or deny whether they have noticed it in their country/region, or not. However, comment only if you have SEEN the trend. Commenting on the basis of traditional knowledge (how it was done in the past) would mean little.

The recent trend that I notice in India: Acoustic guitar manufacturers have resorted to super glue to stick the bridge to the top! The guitar that I am going to talk about in this post is the 7th instrument in 60 – 75 days that I have seen with super glue being used for bridge attachment to the top. The first four instruments I brushed away as mere coincidence, but a couple more and I was forced to take note of it.

Why is it used? It is cheap, it is quick, it is less messy…almost everything is in its favour!

So, what is so wrong about it? Super glue is great for furniture like a sofa, which just has to sit (or stand) in one place. However, the strength of super glue is its weakness too. So strong is the super glue bond that it is brittle.

Think of an acoustic guitar which has a bridge glued on with super glue. Imagine this instrument sitting tuned through summer and winter to spring and summer of this year. If you don’t get a warped neck, you will certainly have the bridge popping off. And even if the bridge doesn’t exactly pop off, it will start lifting.

Once that happens, believe me, it won’t be a pretty sight. For a dynamic instrument like any acoustic, string instrument, ONLY WOOD GLUE does the trick.

Why? Because when it comes time to remove a glue joint, all you need to do is apply some heat, a bit of moisture (steam provides both), and a bit of elbow grease, and…viola! Whatever you need removed can easily be removed. For example, the lifting bridge on that instrument that has been standing for a full weather cycle, if it had been wood glue, would have come off easily, without damaging the top.

A super-glued bridge is bound to rip off lots of wood from the top when it comes off. Cleaning a taken-off bridge that has been glued with regular wood glue, is a 10-minute job. With super glue, you may easily multiply that value 10 times, maybe even 20 times! Believe me. Remember this is the 7th guitar of the type that I was working on!

Right! So, this came in

If you can’t read the logo on the headstock, it reads ‘Hofner’. Read all about Hobner, Hovner, Hofner, here

New strings and some TLC for this Hobner!

Now that you know about the company, maybe you’ll respect the instrument a little more if I told you it carried a factory-fitted bone saddle. The nut had got misplaced so I needed to put in a new bone nut.

As bad as the headstock break was, the bridge was lifting too

The first job was to get the head and the body together again, as was meant to be

 

And while that joint cured, I turned my attention to taking off the bridge.

And anytime you heat a bridge and try getting under it, and it starts to crackle and pop (like popcorn), those are the first signs that you are taking off a bridge stuck with super glue! This one crackled and popped too!

The very dark spots is where the adhesive collected and dried without attaching to anything. Knowing that my work was cut out, I began scraping.

Take a better look at it. The white powdery stuff getting scraped off the bridge is dried super glue. At best dried wood glue will come off as a transparent-yellowish film, and it does not shine in the light.

25 minutes and it hasn’t come off.

Another 25. Has it come off? Nope!

Another 20 minutes later! And the mess it created…

And that was one surface clean. What about the other surface (the top)?

What you see inside the margin is partly finish and partly super glue. This took me another 35 minutes to clean. Once that was done, all large pieces of wood dislodged in the process of taking the bridge off and cleaning its footprint on the top, were glued back.

Meanwhile clamps came off the headstock and the joint stood. Experience has taught me that the joint will stay together only as long as you don’t put on strings!

In order to ensure that the joint stays exactly the way it is, it was necessary to strengthen it with strategically placed dowels.

This entire operation took me some 25 minutes – almost 1/3 the time I took cleaning just the bridge. What helped me along was the very dry weather.

Structurally, the neck of the instrument was now sound. But aesthetically, it was quite unsightly! So, I mixed up some tint in some wood putty to camouflage the insertions.

And while this dried, I returned my attention to the bridge area. The old clamps came off and the bridge was glued on and clamped well and proper.

And while the glue-up was drying, it was just the right time to take care of the itty-bitty things, like, shaping bridgepins

and getting the strap button in the right place.

Also, the bone saddle seemed to have been raw sawn to size and put in the slot. I buffed it out a bit so that it wasn’t too harsh on the eyes.

When the clamps were pulled off, the bridge looked as if it had never come off

Now, to re-drill the holes (blocked by the wood glue I had used) and to re-thread the piezo element through its hole in the bridge

I fell in love with the piezo element for I have never seen something as slim as this!

A little more love for the fretboard and bridge, and, wow

However, when I strung it up with new strings and the new nut, the action was too high. Shaving down the saddle brought the action down to where I wanted it to be but there was no break angle left. In fact, the ‘e’ string was running straight through!

I got out my files and cut slots from the the bridgepin holes up to the saddle which would change the angle of the string, in turn, increasing sustain and volume.

And here she is…all ready to go home!

 

P.S.: Do write in and tell me whether you see ‘the trend’ in your part of the world – wherever you may be. 

Ever since I repaired a guitar and removed a ding in its top – one which the owner had fond memories of –  I have made it a point to only do as much as I am asked to. Yes, I point out problem areas during the initial inspection and whatever else I notice while working on the instrument, but to do or not do I leave to the owner to tell me.

While pointing out the problems, I also tell them how the unresolved issue is going to affect their playing/instrument’s health. And after that it’s the call of the owners to use their wisdom and decide whether they wish to get the problem rectified or not. After all, it is their instrument and their money!

There was this Hertz that I tended to recently.

There was a hell of a lot wrong with the guitar. For starters, it had a crunched (plastic) saddle and a broken (plastic) nut. If you can’t see it, the portion of the nut after the ‘e’ string has got knocked off.

And if you can make out, the saddle is curved as it sits in the slot. It wasn’t the fault of the saddle but the slot itself was curved.

There was quite a handsome belly behind the bridge area

The bridge itself was lifting from its extremities: the markings on the paper show how deep the paper went in

The bridge was cracked through

The fretboard (and the bridge) was dryer than tinder

All the strings on the treble side had been wound from the outside (and not inside). Go back up and take a look at the third photograph (the one showing the broken nut). See if you can see the strings wound from the outside.

And though the owner had pulled out the instrument out of a soft case in front of me, the guitar was as dirty and as grimy as an instrument left out in the open for a couple of years.

The owner’s explanation was the same as I have been hearing for a few months: instrument in one city, owner in another, lockdown, two years…And after I had pointed out the problems, the owner chose to get just the crack in the bridge repaired. He did not wish to have the the bridge glued down, nor did he want the belly tackled.

Who am I to argue?

I knocked out the nut and as I pulled on the saddle, it refused to budge. I had to pull it out with a pair of pliers

Can you see the curl in the saddle now?

Anyway, since both the nut and the saddle had to be replaced, I put in a bone set.

Then I set about filling the crack and sanding the fill flush.

Cracks in the bridge appear primarily when the bridgepin holes are not wide enough for the pins and the strings. So, after repairing the bridge, I took a reamer to the holes and worked it just a wee bit.

Once the saddle had been cut down to size, something needed to be done to stop it from being pulled forward due to the curve in the slot. A portion of an old plastic card was most useful.

Now that the instrument was ready to be strung up, I took some warm water and gave it a bath (probably the first of its lifetime).  I got the muck off it, polished up the body, cleaned the headstock, cleaned and snugged-up the hardware on it and cleaned the fretboard, oiled it (and the bridge).

Here’s a final look at the bone nut and saddle under string tension

After it was finished, I just wondered what and how the owner would play with that high action due to the lifting bridge and the belly bulge. I felt as if the owner’s money and my effort had been put to waste. If the owner was so attached to it, he could have just cleaned up the guitar and hung it on a wall. Why get one-third of the problem sorted with two-thirds of it left to plague the guitar?

I just hope nine-10 months down the line the guitar doesn’t return to me with the bridge ripped out of the top, where I have to repair the top for damages caused by the bolts holding the bridge to the top!!

Those white, pearly dots next to the bridgepins hide bolts and if seen from inside, one would be able to see the nuts holding them too.

Now, the fun part!
I called up the owner a day after he gave me the guitar, asking him to come collect his instrument and he landed up exactly a month and two days later!! Oh, he was unwell, he was out of town, he had asked his cousin to pick it up…

 

FAIR WARNING!

Because of this experience, I am forced to inform prospective customers that henceforth, Lucknow Guitar Garage will accept instruments for repair only on full advance payment of the expected cost of repairs. This, of course, will be an estimated cost. Whatever the difference is – either way – will be taken care of at the time of delivery.

Also, I have only a small space and cannot store instruments for months on end. If customers are unable to collect instruments till three days after the date of delivery, a charge of Rs 100 per day will have to be paid, at the time of delivery, fourth day forward.

Look carefully at the photograph above and check out the humidity levels. If you own a solid-wood instrument, are situated in North India, and the humidity is below 45%, this post concerns you and this post should concern you. In this scenario if you’ve left your solid-wood instrument tuned to pitch and standing in a corner of your house, you should be very worried!

A refresher course

What is a solid-wood instrument? One that has the top made out of a single wood, and the back and sides also of a single wood, eg, spruce/cedar for the top and mahogany/rosewood/walnut for the back and sides. Thus, they are also referred to as single-wood instruments. ‘All-mahogany’ and ‘All-koa’ wood instruments (having top, back and sides of mahogany or koa wood), also fall in the solid-wood-instrument category. 

How do you know if it is a solid-wood instrument? Carefully note the ‘design’ of the grain of the wood on the top or back, or sides. Now try and spot the exactly the same pattern at exactly the same place on the inside. If you find it, hurray!

What is the ‘other’ kind of instruments? Ones that have a thin veneer of spruce or mahogany but under that, the bulk of the wood is some ordinary wood. Or, an instrument that is made up of several thin layers of different woods. Thus, the ‘other’ instruments are also called laminate-wood instruments.

What is the difference between the two? Price and sound quality! A laminate-wood instrument will always be cheaper than a solid-wood instrument. Understand the issue like this: a leather jacket which has only two pieces for the back and the front, and single pieces for the sleeves, will always cost more than a leather jacket made up of leather patches.

A solid-wood instrument produces a much ‘purer’ sound than a laminate-wood instrument. Revisit the school physics class where the teacher was talking about refraction of light. Remember how that ray of light passed straight through a homogeneous material, retaining its intensity, and how the same ray of light came out crooked passing through a heterogeneous material, with lower intensity?  Much of the same happens to sound waves as they traverse through single-wood (homogeneous) instruments and laminate-wood (heterogeneous) instruments.

A solid-wood instrument, despite its advantages and price, is a delicate instrument, akin to a pure-bred pet that demands a lot of attention, care and maintenance. The laminate-wood instrument is like a mix-breed pet, not given easily to diseases and ailments that normally afflict pedigreed pets.

The solid-wood instrument, due to the nature of the wood used, is also given to dramatic effects of nature: too much humidity, too little humidity, high temperature fluctuations, etc. Laminate-wood instruments, due to the nature of the wood used, are not given to these effects.

So, if the solid-wood guitar is so much hassle, why buy it? For the sound of it, baby, the sound! Play a solid-wood instrument and you will never be able to play a laminate-wood instrument again.

Course ends!

Right! So, the humidity in the atmosphere is less than optimum for your (solid-wood) guitar. And you’re certainly in trouble if you have left your guitar tuned to pitch and not played for even 3 – 4 weeks.

Here’s why. Wood is an organic material and reacts to changes in weather conditions. Reduced humidity in the atmosphere sucks the moisture that is present in the wood. Add to that the force being applied by the strings. In a laminated guitar, because different woods have been used, those woods lose moisture at different rates, making the instrument much sturdier. A solid-wood instrument succumbs all too easily.

It often starts off with a fret buzz. The loss of moisture from the neck pushes into a back bow, pulling the strings closer to the fretwires.

Don’t be surprised if you see the centre seam separating on either the back, or the top, or, both! The wood loses moisture and the glue eventually gives up holding the two halves of the back or the top, or both together: much like this one

Beware! Dry weather can do this to your guitar too!

In some (solid wood) guitars, loss of moisture from the wood also causes the area of the top behind the bridge to sink – the opposite effect of the belly bulge. While the belly bulge may partly be caused due to over-humidification, the belly sinking is a sure sign of a dried up instrument.

Equally dramatic is the effect on bridges. Look at the bridge pin holes – six perfect breaks in the grain of the wood – a huge incentive for the bridge to crack, stuffed as it is with strings and bridge pins. Add to it the loss of moisture and you have the perfect recipe for a bridge-split. Just like this one

Split bridges – here’s an Ibanez!

Often, a thin but obvious crack, running under the fretwires, through some length of the fretboard is a sure sign that the guitar is dry and dehydrated. Correcting this is some job indeed. Fretwires through the length of the crack need to be pulled out, the crack needs to be filled and then the area sanded level. Then the frets have to be reinstalled and (many times need to be) levelled, crowned and polished.

When the dehydration is to a lesser degree, one sees a phenomenon called fretwire sprout. The wood shrinks having lost (some of) its moisture content. However, the fretwires are metallic and remain their original length, giving the impression of having ‘outgrown’ the fretboard.

The Remedy

KEEP TRACK OF THE HUMIDITY! As soon as humidity levels fall below 45%, know that your guitar is thirsty. Give it that life-saving drink of water.

While there are umpteen contraptions available in the market to humidify your guitar, remember, the idea is to put the water back into the guitar that it lost. A small plastic vessel containing water stood in the guitar will also do the trick, as long as it does not tip over.

Keep the water in the guitar for a few days and repeat the process the following week and the one after that till the outside humidity levels return to being above 55%. Of course, if you put the water vessel and forget about it for a few weeks, that also works. However, for people who must play the instrument every few days, the first method works well.

Whichever method you choose to follow, by doing it, you ensure that your guitar has all the moisture it needs. By following it religiously, you will ensure that you don’t have to encounter all the problems described above, when the humidity dives. If the damage is small, rest assured that enough humidity will return it close to normal.

For the rest of the procedure, I remain at your service!!!

 

 

 

 

This was the first instrument of its kind that I had the opportunity to work upon – well, not actually work, but assess and recommend changes, if any.

It qualifies to be the first instrument in its category because this is a previously loved instrument and the new owner decided to run it by me. It is always a good idea. And it was a Baby Taylor, in fact, the largest of the Babys!

And like all Taylors, it had a bolt-on neck

Structurally, it seemed to be healthy: the neck joint was nice and tight, no other joints opening, no braces rattling inside, no tuning machines ready to fall off…but there was this

The treble side of the bridge was lifting, just that much.

However, the frets and the fretwires were a bit crusty and the fretboard seemed a bit dry. What made me raise both eyebrows though was that it had those artificial plastic (micarta or something) nut and saddle in place.

So, I went about my job, snug up the hardware on the headstock and adjusted the truss rod to take out a wee-bit of extra relief from the neck.

cleaned up the fretboard, the fretwires and gave some love to the fretboard and the bridge

Then there were slight abrasions like this one

which were duly banished

All that was left to do was to string ‘er up, but before I did that, I worked on the bridgepins and gave their ends a little angle so that string ball-ends would not catch on the ends of the pins

Then I strung up the guitar with these, for the owner chose them

I told the owner to take the instrument back, play it to his heart’s content and look for things that he would like changed. After six months, if the bridge had lifted any more, we would have to take it off completely and reglue it. If it hadn’t moved much then we could risk just seating that lifting corner down.

Also, the six months would help familiarise the owner with the instrument. Once, he had got used to its volume and sustain, the change to a bone saddle and nut would surely make him go, ‘Woah!!’

Besides the nut had to go, most certainly, for the slots in it were way too deep.

Here’s the Baby, all cleaned up and ready to go home