Month: January 2025

‘N’ae pas peur d’essayer’ is French phrase meaning ‘Don’t be afraid to try’! I doubt the author was referring to intricate rectifications to your acoustic guitar!

Glue-up jobs on acoustic instruments are not one of those things that I would advise my readers to undertake – unless they have an experience of instrument-making or woodworking. Then too, I prescribe a generous dose of caution.

Imagine, you have a Rs 50K guitar and (God forbid) something were to happen to it. Would you try and repair it yourself or take it to someone who sees five such instruments in a day? While you might see superficial defects (cracks, dents, chips and breaks), experience will check for the unseen that may also have got affected in the trauma.

Even if you own a Rs 5K instrument which you love dearly, and which suffers trauma, maybe an expert set of hands will be able to rectify it in such a way that the repair does not become an eyesore, a life-long and painful reminder of an accident that should not have happened.

Recently, I was handed over one such Rs 5K instrument which somebody had shown their ingenuity on. It seemed to me that the guitar had fallen on the endpin and the impact was such that the top had been knocked out of the sides.

The owner, or someone, decided to take it upon themselves to ‘rectify’ the issue and threw on a generous helping of epoxy and slapped the top in place!

Almost the entire periphery of the top bore signs of epoxy that had been wiped off in a very haphazard manner. In places like the immediate surrounding of the end block, where the seam separation was much more pronounced and the seam didn’t quite come together, the services of a Philips screw were employed – leaving me aghast!

I am in the process of trying to make the guitar playable for a child but I don’t think there is much I can do about the nearly botched repair.

 

Having a tall saddle is always a good thing. For one, it increases the break angle of the strings (the angle that the strings make, rising from out of the holes and leading up to the saddle).

This, in turn, affects the sound emanating from your guitar. Greater the height, greater the break angle, more is the downward pressure exerted by the strings on the saddle, deeper is the contact of the saddle with the top of the guitar, better is the transfer of  energy, and thus, better is the volume and sustain of the instrument. This is something that most of my customers would recall me talking about.

However, there is a flip side to having too tall a saddle. The saddle slot in the bridge is of a certain depth. With a very tall saddle, there is always the risk of it leaning forward under the tension of the strings.

Over a period of time, this can lead to tragedy with the front edge of the bridge breaking off completely. If that does not happen, the bridge cracking from that point is a very distinct possibility.

In an ideal world, we would like to have a tall saddle and still a very low action height at the 12th fret. But that seldom happens. Usually, if the saddle is tall, then the action on the instrument will be high too.

And so, to manage the action, we have to shave down the saddle.

So, when you’re inspecting guitars to choose one, don’t listen to the sound, don’t look at what colour it is, don’t even worry about the size of the body. Look instead at how low the action is, and correspondingly, how tall the saddle is. If you find a guitar with a tall saddle (say exposed height between 4mm to 3mm) and a very comfortable action, it means that the neck angle (the angle that the neck makes to body of the guitar once the two are brought together during the manufacturing process) is excellent. Short-list that instrument immediately.

Over time, as the strings exert pressure on the guitar and neck, trying to bring the two ends of the guitar together, this geometry changes, and the neck starts lifting. Thus, over the life of a guitar, one may have to shave down the saddle two or three times to keep the action on the instrument within comfortable playing limits.

The point I am trying to make is that when you look at a guitar with an averagely tall saddle and satisfactory action, know that you’ll be pulling out the saddle to shave it down so that you can make the action comfortable. In another three or four years time, you’ll be repeating the process as the strings are constantly acting on the neck and body of the guitar. Where would that leave the height of the saddle, the break angle, the volume and sustain?

Select an instrument which has a saddle standing 3-4 mm above the bridge (measured between the ‘D’ and ‘A’ strings) and yet has comfortable action. Never mind what brand or how the guitar looks, nine out of ten times such a guitar is going to sound good and serve you for many years. 

 

 

 

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR, FOLKS!

While being a post about a repair I undertook recently, this also is an illustration and proof that you must always bring your guitar with the strings on, even if they are tuned down.

This helps me check out a whole host of problems: belly, lifting bridge, action over the fretboard, relief in it…

Without the strings, I will have to put on a fresh set of strings, because I need to measure the parameters mentioned above, the cost of which will be PASSED ON TO YOU!

This guitar a, #Pluto, sporting a handsome sunburst, came to me for a cracked bridge – without strings, and for a fresh set of strings.

I can understand the thinking behind the missing strings: take them off so that they do not cause any further damage. Correct to quite an extent but having them on and tuned a step or one-and-a-half steps down won’t hurt anymore, but, in fact, aid me much.

Anyway, I went about cleaning and repairing the bridge, and while it was healing, I worked on the fretboard and fretwires, cleaning and polishing them.

I put on a fresh set of strings to find the action a bit high. Just for the heck of it, I decided to see how the bridge looked from the end block end of the guitar. There was a gap under the bridge right around.

And so, the strings were taken off in preparation for bridge removal and the knives were brought out.

The bridge came off and with it some of the top too, glued as it was with super glue.

The bridge and its footprint were cleaned to the margin marked and then readied for glueing. The glue job went well.

After a wait of a day, I strung the guitar up again and sent it home.