Author: Amit Newton

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.

Last week I left you at the point where all was in readiness to glue the bridge to the top – well, almost all.

When I placed the bridge on its footprint, just to see how it sat, this is what I got to see.

Not encouraging at all. What the lifted wing tips told me was that due to the continued strain of the strings on a lifting bridge, the front corners had warped. Not good at all!

So, for me to have any chance for the bridge to glue properly to the top, the bridge would have to be sanded till the warp in it was removed. So, sanding it was till the bridge became straight, or at least till the point till the bridge wings reached a point from where they could be forced down to be glued to the top.

After a lot of sanding and checking with a ruler, things seemed to fall into line and the glue up process began. The clamps and cauls were readied, and once all was in readiness, the bridge was glued to the top and clamped.

After more than 72 hours under clamp pressure and when the humidity was well below the 45% mark, and the bridge sat perfectly in its footprint, I was very optimistic about the outcome.

While the clamps were on, there was ample time to tend to other things – the fretboard for example.

The fretboard was cleaned and the fretwires were polished and oiled.

After the period in quarantine, the instrument was released from the clamps and made to rest for another two days before the thought of strings was entertained.

The strings which the owner chose were, naturally,

But before these went on, first the bridgepin holes needed to be re-drilled.

The strings were put on but tuned a full step down (D) instead of the standard tuning (E). The instructions issued to the owner were to keep it at that tuning for at least a month.

Among the new(er) guitars in the Indian market, Tanglewood is a brand that I have come to like for its simplistic yet sturdy design.

Yet the Tanglewood that came to me recently

had a lifting bridge, and one which seemed to have taken a bit of the top as it lifted. Also, the belly behind the bridge was H-U-G-E!!!!

The owner, a returning customer, pleaded with me to get the guitar into shape again and I had to explain to him that I would try my best but as things stood, it did not look too promising, for as I would take the bridge off, more of the top would come off. How would I reconstruct the top?

I can tell you now that I have never taken more time to take a bridge off the top as I did with this guitar. After some 25 mins (usually it takes no more than 10) of prying and prodding, and crackling sounds (which told me I was trying to break CA glue/epoxy) the bridge came off.

It was a huge sigh of relief that I heaved when I saw the bridge footprint was indeed intact and not a gaping hole. However, much of the material from the top had remained glued to the underside of the bridge.

This seemed the right time to clean up the bridge footprint on the top.

However, the astounding thing was the belly on the instrument. It was like a whole step

But first, the pulled up bits of wood needed to be glued back. There were three major spots.

After that I turned my attention to the belly, to try and reduce it as much as possible. I began…

After two or three days, the belly had reduced but not appreciably

Again preparations began to attempt a second time

Again, after a couple of days, the results were encouraging but not complete. And then I got thinking. What if the braces were loose on the inside? I checked and, indeed, both arms of the ‘X’-brace were loose.

I apologise for the muddy photographs but that is a .006 inch feeler gauge finding enough room to wiggle underneath the braces. These needed to be fixed first before anything else.

While these were glued, I turned my attention to the bridge and cleaning it.

Here too, there is a funny story to relate. The more I worked on the bridge, scraping it, the more I felt that I was working with ebony.

Now, this was not a high-end instrument and I was a little surprised that Tanglewood had used ebony on it. However, when I checked the instrument specifications online, it read that the bridge was of rosewood! Try as hard as I might have, I failed to notice a single attribute of rosewood in the guitar bridge, which was blacker and plainer than any rosewood I have seen till date.

Were my eyes lying or had Tanglewood made a boo-boo while compiling specifications of this model? Let’s see if we get a clarification from the company.

After the clamps came off, I measured the belly, and it was much lower than earlier, but there was enough there to throw the action of the instrument out of whack!

Again, the belly was put into compression mode

And again, after a two-day interval when the clamps were removed, the belly was measured.

This time, the results were most encouraging.

The stage seemed set for the glueing of the bridge to the top. But that is a story for next time!

So, this came in a few weeks ago. It was a pretty all-Mahogany Martin (and I got so excited I forgot to take a photograph of the label in the soundhole!!)

I looked it over and except for some battle-scars, along the lower bout periphery, could not figure out what was wrong with it. And true to a Martin, it had that beautiful mellow sound, though the action could have come down a tad.

It was left for the owner to point out this

And then as I thought, all those battle scars were in fact, repairs carried out earlier. The other side of the bout had opened up previously for there was enough glue in the area to take care of this repair!

Also, the couple of large dings and scars – all on the lower bout – were previous repairs. Pretty easy to surmise then that the instrument had had a rough ride till then.

Anyway, that was in the past. The job at hand was to stop the instrument from posing as a prop for the next edition of ‘Jaws’, and put it together. It also needed fresh strings.

Many times, when the back or the top separates from the sides more than a couple of inches, the two seams don’t want to come together. This happens especially when any seam has remained open a day too long.

But thankfully that was not the case here. Even though the seam separation was at least a foot or even 1.5 feet the two came together perfectly – thus showing that it hadn’t been long since the seam had separated.

So glue was pushed in and my trusty spool clamps, which I made almost a decade ago, were pulled out and put to work.

While this was clamped, the glue residue on the other side was cleaned up, the fretboard was paid attention to – cleaned and oiled – and the fretwires were burnished.

Strung up with fresh strings, the owner took it home with quite happy with the results.

Remember this one?

Guitar repair – Tackling Techno trouble II

Well, this was the second in the series of (failed) repairs initially undertaken during the jinxed period of July to October. It came in about a month ago for me to take off the bridge and try and reglue it.

And as you can imagine, taking a bridge off is generally a very destructive process.

It takes off material from the bridge footprint (the top) which needs to be replaced.

I did that and clamped the repair with a block of wood to keep the filling flat.

Of course, I put in some butter paper between the wet surface and the block of wood meant to flatten it out, otherwise, there would have been a lot more filling than was required!!

After two days, the clamps were taken off. In the meantime, I had been busy with the bridge, cleaning it.

The cleaned bridge and its repaired footprint were now ready to be put together – hopefully never to come apart again.

Both were adequately painted with glue and the two parts were brought together and clamped.

I think for 4 – 5 days I did not look in the direction of the guitar, and just let it lie.

After that it was the regular process of threading the piezo element back through its hole in the bridge, under the saddle, and stringing up the guitar.

After stringing it up, the guitar was again left standing for a couple of days, after which it was sent home as healed!

So, this came to me – a comparatively new buy, which met with an accident.

From the looks of it, something heavy seemed to have fallen on the guitar top, crushing it in and damaging the top-side joint too in the bargin.

All in all, the crack/break stretched some 32cm.

But first let me introduce the guitar to you. It was a Cort

with an almighty high action

which I was also asked to correct and bring within playable levels.

The first order of work was to stabalise the break on the top. That was done with some strategically placed dowels in the soundbox propping up the top in place and some liquid cyanoacrylate glue.

Catching the light is the filling of the glue, which was later shaved down to the surface of the top.

Then, the top and side seams were brought together and glued. Spool clamps that I made years ago, held me in good stead.

After, the joint had sufficiently cured, the seam was sanded with a makeshift sander

and the gaps and unevenness were smoothened out, so that all was in level.

Then followed the job of refinishing the break-site. It was a painstaking job of taping off areas where you did not want a certain colour to intrude and recreating the purfling-like black paint.

Then followed the set-up of the guitar and I was very happy with where I finally left the guitar – both at the 1st fret and the 12th fret.

Sometimes, life presents such scenarios that just trying to visualise the solution can leave you sapped of all energy and leave you exasperated. And yet, in the end, it can all be very anti-climatic!

Guitar repair is much like that!

A return customer – and a loyal one at that – brought me a newly acquired guitar for the initial set-up, a bone saddle and nut, and a fresh set of strings. Cool! How tough could that be, I thought. And that was my undoing.

It was a Vault – not something extravagant but a decent entry-level guitar.

However, since it had stayed locked in the gig bag all monsoon, there was enough mould on the instrument to keep a botanist interested.

I took off the old strings, cleaned and oiled everything up, popped out the plastic nut and saddle, measured them and replaced them with bone elements. Fresh strings were put on, but when I tuned up the instrument, all strings tuned up just fine, but the ‘e’ string refused to go beyond ‘D’!!

At my wits’ end, a thought crossed my mind: maybe the saddle slot on the bridge had been routed incorrectly, throwing the intonation of the guitar out of whack.

And so, I pulled out the bone shims and started to shim the saddle, trying to move the point of contact ahead of where it presently was.

Twice I strung, unstrung and restrung the guitar but to my horror, the reading on the meter showed the same ‘D’!!!!

After a lot of thinking, I gave up and called the owner to tell him the problem.

I pulled out the bone saddle and nut and replaced the originals. The bone saddle and nut could not be used elsewhere but were certainly good enough to create bone dust (used often).

I gave him a few phone numbers, asked him to visit a guitar tech in Delhi. The job at hand required the saddle slot to be plugged, the scale length to be recalculated, the position of the saddle to be marked, and the saddle slot to be routed again.

The young man talked to some people but the prices quoted for the job were so forbidding that the young man gave up.

A little fact that I missed mentioning was that his father had dropped off the guitar, while he continued to be in Delhi. He called me to say that he would be in town around Diwali, and asked me to help him with this e-purchase.

Around Diwali, he called me up saying he was in town. He said that maybe he had the solution to the problem of the guitar. According to him, unseen until now, the ‘e’ string was getting caught under the end of the 2nd or 3rd fretwire!!!!!!

When the lad brought in the guitar, indeed the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th fretwire ends were lifted. Right then and there, these were tapped in, and thankfully, continued to stay seated.

The old bone saddle and nut, minus the appendages, were put back into the instrument and lo and behold, the guitar tuned up like there never was a problem!!!

However, the neck angle being what it was left a very unhealthy looking saddle with little or no break angle (at least on the ‘e’ string).

I told the young man to play the guitar for as long as possible like this, after which point we would have to cut string slots (string ramps) into the bridge.

Here are the last few shots before the guitar left me.

Ah! When the lad brought back the guitar to me, the ‘VAULT’ was nowhere to be seen, instead there was this broom!!

I asked him why he liked the broom so much, and he replied sagely, ‘That’s Harry Potter’s broom…in any case, I am not a great one for useless branding’!!!!!!!!!!!

Every few months a job turns up that challenges you to the core, forcing you to think – as if survival depended on it!

It is jobs like these that keep that spark of creativity alive, which in turn, leads to a satisfied customer, and more importantly, a boost in self confidence: that is if the job is successful.

The owner of a guitar got in touch with me and sent me photographs of a broken headstock hanging on by a sliver of wood and a couple of broken braces. When I saw the guitar in person, it was called ‘Crusader’ (possibly China-made).

As I went through the guitar, I was left very impressed by the construction quality, the quality of wood used  – it seemed a solid wood instrument, and the simple lietmotif of the cross – the Huguenot Cross – running from the fretboard, covering the soundhole, embellishing the wings of the bridge and embossed as the logo on the tuning machines.

It even had a secondary sound port!

However, when I took off the strings and pulled out the saddle, it was a really chewed up, plastic saddle which had broken in two at some point of time and had been glued together and inserted into the slot!

And, of course, there was a matching plastic nut

Meanwhile, the fretboard looked a tad dry and naturally dirty with some grime and some DNA deposition.

There were also two cracks on the top and the back, exactly where the end block ended (began?)

They worried me. Not that the instrument was in danger of collapsing, but my mind kept going back to how they might have been caused. At the most, they must be one-fourth the thickness of the surface on which they appeared. 

But I had bigger worries. With the primary soundhole blocked and the secondary one too small to get even my small hands in, how would I be able to clamp the braces after glueing them?

After much head-scratching, I dawned upon a kamikaze tactic, one which I usually would never dare to adopt. I called the owner over put my problem across and asked permission to cut out the cross blocking the soundhole. I promised to put it back exactly where it was after I was done glueing the three cracked/broken braces.

The owner chin-scratched some and then asked if I could not cut out a hole in the side from where I could gain access to the braces. I shrieked in horror and said ‘Noooooo’!! But actually, he allowed me to cut out the cross from the soundhole.

I did mark a little ‘N’ on the underside of one of the arms of the cross to point towards the correct orientation of the cross once I was ready to glue it back.

With access gained to the insides, the glueing and clamping process began. I had to repair these on the back of the guitar and there was another cracked brace on the top of the guitar (see the main photograph).

While the top brace was simple enough to glue and clamp, the broken braces on the back of the guitar required a little more innovative thinking to clamp. I finally came up with some.

While this was curing, I turned my attention to the broken headstock.

This is after I removed the tuning machines and the intricate wooden logo and the 14 little screws (no less) that held it together. Also removed was a very handsome looking wooden truss rod cover and the three screws that held that in place. And while we are counting screws (that doesn’t sound very politically correct), do keep a count of the six holding the tuning machines!!

Anyway, the idea was to glue up the headstock to hold as one piece and then to insert wooden dowels.

Yes! Four of them – three at the back of the headstock and one in front. 

I would have done splines, had I the know-how and the paraphernalia involved!

But as I was inspecting the glue-up job, I saw this, which I had unfortunately missed earlier

and naturally, it had to be corrected

Returning to the process of drilling and dowelling, this is how it went

You might notice two things: the seam where the joint is doesn’t look half as bad as it did earlier, and I used only two dowels at the back of the headstock, after initially planning to use three. This was because the third one that I planned to put in would have entered the truss rod opening on the front of the headstock.

Much later, and almost as a what-the-hell kind of thought, I drilled in third hole and plugged it. I’m sorry, I didn’t take a photograph of that.

This had taken enough time for the glue in the braces to have cured. I pulled out my dowel rods, cleaned up the best I could

and then glued the cross back over the soundhole – exactly the way it had been. 

The face of the headstock, where I had inserted the dowel, would be covered by the truss rod cover, but the back of the headstock couldn’t be left with three, big, pale wood circles staring out at you from some rich textured wood. So, I went about painting that portion of the headstock, hiding the three circles in the process.

While I was examining my handiwork, I happened to glance at the side of the neck. Now, one side I had discovered a split and had glued it shut. The other side too, there was a separation of the fretboard from the neck – from the nut to say the second fret. Again I pushed glue in and clamped it shut.

Meanwhile, the back of the headstock after the paint job, looked something like this.

No where near perfect, but not half as bad as it looked to my eyes without the paint job!

But my mind kept going back to the twin cracks on the top and back in the lower bout. After all the major work was done, I turned my attention to these and sealed them. Here are two shots of each – one from directly above and one at an angle where the crack would be visible in light. (These are the ‘After’ shots).

The main thing that satisfied me was that the cracks had been secured and there was no impending catastrophe that might strike down the road.

While these were drying, the fretboard was cleaned (finally by alcohol), the fretwires were shined up, and a little love potion rubbed in.

This is before the love potion trick.

The owner has been contacted and as soon as he informs me about his choice of strings, the strength of the headstock joint will be put to test. 

This is an under-$45 (Rs 3,500) guitar. And mind you, this is not a toy but a functional guitar. You can well imagine the quality (or the lack of it) for that price.

Repair in such instruments often exceeds the price of the guitar, and so, for the owner, the economics of it does not work out. For me, there is always doubt whether the tried and tested methods/material of repair will work in these specimens – built any which way they are.

If you would like to read more about the ‘qualities’ of such instruments, it’s here:

https://lkoguitargarage.com/attention-parents-heres-why-you-should-never-buy-a-rs-3-3-5k-acoustic-guitar/

The best way out, then, is to politely refuse such customers, and that is what I mostly do.

However, recently, in walked a lad – still in school – into the garage and carrying this. As I began to explain to him the Principle of Diminishing Returns to him, he nodded sagely and with widened, bespectacled eyes exclaimed, ‘Mumma, ne dilaya tha (Mom, had bought it for me)’!!!
That tone and his expression took the wind out of all my arguments and all I could say after that was ‘Show me what’s wrong’!

He pointed towards the neck

If it is not very clear in the photographs, the fret board had come loose from the bass side, while on the treble side, the wood of the neck had actually splintered. He also complained of high action.

My guess is that someone – maybe Mama’s Boy himself – cranked the truss rod a little too far.

I took the guitar in and began work.

On the bass side, the fretboard had let go off the neck right at the nut. To properly glue the fretboard back, the nut would have to be removed, which was then duly knocked out.

What I saw underneath was a kind of adhesive I have not seen before. Tinted epoxy? What you can also see in the first of the two photographs is the heavy pitting on the ‘zero fretwire’.

Before I got to the neck of the guitar, I decided to work on the zero fretwire first. Why? Don’t ask! And naturally, I forgot to take a photograph of the shiny transformation.

The neck job was simple. Shoot glue in and clamp everything shut. Actually, it was a little more difficult than that. Glue needed to reach the deepest recesses of the crack, and so, once glue was applied to the surface of the crack, the two mating surfaces  were pumped together for a few minutes so that the glue would move deeper inside.

After I was sure that the glue had travelled some distance inside, I brought out the clamps and pulled everything together. Then I left the whole jig just rest for 48 hours or so.

After 48 hours, the glue had dried and everything came together like it was never broken. Of course, you could see the crack but you could not feel anything.

While this was drying, I looked at the heel joint and there was some degree of separation. Although I had not been tasked to, I pused glue in here too and clamped up things.

Then the last major thing left was dealing with the fretwire sprout on the higher end. Those too were tackled with my homemade file

However, when the guitar was strung up, the action on it was more than comfortable. I had kind of expected this and had warned the young man that it could happen. I had also advised that in such a case, he could just concentrate on the lower frets, polish his playing all he could, till he was be able to buy an actual guitar for himself.

And before I go, here are a few last photographs.

Last time, I left you with the bridge area of the ‘Techno’ clamped – with the bridge removed – as corrective surgery for the bridge footprint.

If you wish to read about what transpired earlier, you can do so here

Guitar repair – Tackling Techno trouble – I

After a couple of days, the clamps were released and the process began to remove the belly (a major cause of elevated action).

Forty-eight hours in this position and the belly was all but gone.

Next step in the ‘healing process’ was the glueing of the bridge to the top. Enough glue, tight enough clamps, ample time is the recipe to do it. And so it is usually.

For a little over five days, the instrument remained in clamps, and while it was in that position, I got other work done.

A new piezo element was installed

The fretboard was cleaned and moisturised, and the fretwires were shined up some.

A new nut was installed

After the clamps were taken off, the piezo element was threaded through and a new bone saddle was installed. However, when strings were thrown on

the action was a mile high. After the saddle shave, the saddle looked like this

and there was no way to make the guitar play right without cutting string slots. I took permission from the owner and cut slots for the two outside strings as well as for the ‘B’ string.

In the photograph above, you can probably make out the slots cut for the ‘e’ and ‘B’ string, but look carefully and there’s a slot cut for the ‘E’ string as well.

Meanwhile, the headstock looked neat with the strings wound cleanly.

The one blemish I saw in the guitar was the fall-away after the body joint. I wonder if you will be able to pick it up in the following photograph

I kept the instrument with me for two days, observing it, even playing it, apprehending that the bridge may lift but it all stayed good.

Yet, the second day after the owner had taken it home,the bridge began lifting again!!!

The July-October jinx had returned!

I have asked the owner to return by the end of this month or early next month, by which time the humidity would have settled, which will allow glue-up jobs to proceed unhindered.

Some time back, as I stepped out of my house to run an errand, I spotted this man on a scooter with what looked like a guitar gig bag slung over his shoulders. He seemed to be searching for someone or something – phone in hand.

Something poked me and I went up to him and asked him ‘Lucknow Guitar Garage’?

He gave me a broad grin and nodded in the affirmative.

The man – an armyman – had just been posted in town. He brought me his guitar

If it isn’t clear, the name on the headstock reads ‘Techno’. Now, I have seen a few of these: laminate guitars but not too bad. This one too fell in the same category – at least it looked the bit. It must have been 4 – 5 years old but even though it neither had strings, nor a saddle, nor any bridgepins, it seemed cared for.

The owner brought it in for a belly bulge and high action. I checked within the guitar but all braces were securely attached where they needed to be. I asked my man if the bridge was lifting and he said, ‘No’.

Just to check, I slipped in a paper and

that was how much the paper was going all the way around the business end of the bridge.

Now, this was an electro-acoustic instrument. The owner complained that sometimes the pick-up works and at others, it doesn’t.  As I fetched into the saddle slot and pulled out the piezo element, I saw that it was pretty hefty and pretty chewed up ( I thought I had clicked a photo of it?). I told the man that replacing the piezo element should do the trick and he agreed to the replacement.

Underneath the piezo element, was hiding my friend – a card shim!

Along with the belly, the bridge, the owner also decided to put in a bone nut and saddle. With so much to be done, I decided to start right away, and to gain access to the all-important bridge area, decided to first take off the bridge. With the bridge out of the way, tackling the belly would be that much easier.

Talking of the bridge, there was a canyon of a crack between the bridgepin holes, which also needed to be addressed.

But the way the bridge ‘crackled’ when my tools tried to make way under it, I knew that nothing but super glue had been used to set the bridge in place. But boy, this bridge fought me tooth and nail before it decided to give in (up?).

Naturally there was tear out but nothing which could not be handled.

And do you see the clean margins all around on the bridge and its footprint? That is where the glue never reached, or, was never applied.

But we’ll come to that later. First, the footprint of the bridge needed to be repaired.  After the necessary steps, the bridge area was clamped down and left to rest.

In the meantime, I got down to cleaning and repairing the bridge.

I must confess that a little dab of dye never hurt any bridge. What say you?

Besides, I also noticed a crack/gouge on the fretboard which would have to be addressed too.

All this and more, next time. Stay tuned!!

That is a hobby file – not very thick, but with at least a 1.5-mm thick blade – going easily under a lifting bridge.

That was one problem and the other was a huge belly for which the owner had brought in this instrument. It was a Hertz and an old one at that, with string windings over windings.

And as soon as I see eight white dots instead of six, I know my favourite things are hiding in the bridge – nuts and bolts.

Allow me to rant! This hardware, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, does precious little to keep a lifting bridge from lifting. What it does do for sure is that when the bridge lifts, and because it is being held down by bolts, it does so ripping out everything, bolts and the guitar top.

Thankfully, we hadn’t reached that stage in this guitar.

Otherwise, it was a clean and a well-kept guitar

The long and short of it? The bridge had to be taken off – nuts and bolts and all – then the belly needed to be removed – as much as the instrument would allow – and then the bridge had to be reglued.

The bridge came off, screaming and protesting, glued with CA glue as it was and did take some wood off the laminated top.

One can easily see where all the glue was applied and where it did not touch. Besides the bridge and its footprint, lie the set of nuts and bolts that came out of it. Here’s a closer view.

To give you an idea of the belly I was talking about, sample this

Not in very sharp focus but you get the idea.

The top was clamped down with the aid of a plank of wood

and left to ‘recuperate’ for two days.

Meanwhile, the cleaning of the bridge and other work on the guitar continued.

Now, it was time to release the bridge area from the clamps and ‘prepare the ground’ for the glue up. The first thing to be done was to fill up the holes left by the bolts.

You can see in the photograph above that the footprint of the bridge has been cleaned and cleared, creating a very sharp margin, which matched the extremities of the bridge.

While looking inside to check if the dowels had not gone beyond the thickness of the top, I found something else: the loose treble arm of the X-brace.

You can make out how a feeler gauge goes right under the arm to come out on the other side. Carefully, the clamp was positioned and the mark of its foot marked so that I could get the placing of the clamp perfect, when it came time to glue up the brace.

That done, it was time to glue up the brace but how do you get glue into such a slim space? By approximation, I painted (lots of) glue along the bottom of the brace and then with a toothpick shaved in half I pushed it under the brace. Then came the easy part: clamping the brace to the underside of the top.

Again, this was left for a couple of days to dry and cure.

With all in readiness, it was now time to glue on the bridge.

For four days, the instrument stayed like this and on the fifth day it was released from the clamps to let it breathe. On the sixth day it was strung up.

Another four days of observation followed. All good and I had my fingers crossed.

On the fifth day, the bridge started lifting!!!!!!

My jinx of the rainy season continued where no glue-up job I do seems to stick!

I informed the owner that he had two options: I do it again, right now and risk failure again, or, he could come and take back his guitar to bring it back once the humidity settled down (October).

He took 10 days to come to me and decided to take the guitar back with him, and return another day. And for my labours he said he did not have money and would pay me later!!!!!

Ah! Not all days are Sundays. You get rainy days and Mondays too!      

If you didn’t know what the picture above shows, it is the neck block of a guitar, and loose from the bottom at that.

Incidentally, this is just the second Paul Reed Smith that I have seen in the six years since I have returned to India.

This was parlour-sized electro-acoustic instrument and the owner came in with a complaint of high action. But as I looked at the bridge to see if it was lifting, there was only dust that I saw.

Yes, but it did have a tall, handsome bone saddle and a nut to match

and more dust on the headstock!

And that was not all. Take a look at the fretboard

Strangely, the young man did pull out the instrument from a gig bag, which may only mean that only recently did the instrument find its way into the bag, after it had collected enough dust.

Anyway, pushing the dust out of my mind, I got thinking, ‘if the bridge has not come unglued, then why is the action so high?’ Still thinking, I turned the guitar around, more absent-mindedly than with the hope of finding something.

And there it was

If you can’t see it the area under the heel both to the left of it and right – a good six inches – the binding had come loose. As I pointed it out to the owner, he pointed out this to me

There was a very faint crack adjacent to the heel. But it didn’t strike me. I told the owner that he would have to live with it because there is no way to get any kind of glue into it because it is not a complete crack. In fact, I remember picking up the thinnest feeler gauge and trying to push under the neck block just to show that that area was solid

Later, after the owner had gone and I began pushing and prodding, I noticed the back move upwards in the area under the neck block, when I tried pushing it up. Indeed, the neck block had got loose from the bottom, and thus the raised action.

Immediately, I glanced at the left shoulder of the guitar. And there it was: the twin of the crack on the right shoulder.

I then went about looking for loose braces that may have got dislodged in what must have been a bad jolt the guitar suffered, but thankfully, I didn’t find any.

And so began the glue up(s).

After I did the binding and clamped it up, I left the instrument to rest for two full days.

Then it was the turn of the neck block to get back into position.

Another two days and things seemed to have come together nicely.

Next came work on this portion of the binding

That too was glued.

The owner had also talked about a buzz on the ‘e’ string. As I went about with my rocker finding  a high fretwire, I found two.

Can you see the marker on the outside two fretwires? Those two were higher than the Burj Khalifa!

And so, work was put into them to get them to fall in line.

Later, it was the usual cleaning and scrubbing, polishing and oiling.

But I must point out this one spot on the back of the guitar.

It looked exactly like coffee had fallen and had stuck to the back. But it was easily removed

Before I threw on the strings, I decided to give the tall saddle a little shave – no measurements just a sliver taken off the bottom.

Also, the bridgepin holes of the bass strings were a little too small, holding the pins too tightly. A reamer was taken to them and the pins sat better after the treatment

The strings that the owner had chosen were these

Strung up, the guitar had the near perfect action.

The owner was pleased with the results and told me he also owned dreadnoughts from the Martin and Hertz stables. He threatened to bring those over too.

Any time, brother!

And here are the final shots of the work done and the guitar itself

Worked on this Cort recently, which had a belly and a lifting bridge – naturally, throwing the action out of sync.

It also had a tilting saddle

And it had seen cleaner days

But first take a look at this colourful thing.

You know how sceptical I am about bridge glue-ups in the July to October period, but since it was here, I agreed to do it with the disclaimer that I don’t guarantee a fix in the first attempt.

So, the first order of business was taking the bridge off and cleaning its underside as well as its footprint on the top. Now, this was an electro-acoustic instrument. To take the bridge off, I had to take out the piezo element. The hole through which it was threaded through the top was just large enough to pull it through, but to push it back out, it was nearly impossible.

I tried pulling out the jack to which it was attached to the EQ unit and tried pulling out the piezo element wire, and jack and all through the hole in the bridge but even that did not work. In fact, due to the pushing and pulling, this happened.

Talk about inauspicious beginnings!

I replaced the broken piezo piece with a replacement

The bridge came off  but not without leaving behind an imprint of its grain of wood in the CA deposition on the top.

And then began the arduous task of cleaning the underside of the bridge and its footprint.

When you have put in the long hours, scraping and sanding, things begin to look a lot cleaner

But there was time before the two could be brought together. First, the belly needed to be tackled, and it was.

The guitar was left clamped like this for 48 hours, yet wood is a strange thing. You might think that you’ve straightened out a curve but once a familiar stress returns (read string tension), so does the belly – if not completely, partially.

Now with things nice and flat, the bridge could go on the top.

Four days of pressure and the bridge seemed to hold. Again, this season (July to Oct, of the rains) is such that one can never be sure of any glue-up job.

While it was under clamps, it seemed the right time to take care of other smaller but important tasks, vital to contributing to the playability of your instrument

hardware on the headstock was tightened,

the headstock was cleaned up,

bridgepin ends were given a shape to give them an angle, and the tilt in the saddle was sorted out.

This is the bridge reglued, and measuring the belly, it seemed to have gone down appreciably.

The new piezo element was connected to the EQ and the element was threaded through the bridge to sit perfectly in the saddle slot. If anything, the owner is going to find the guitar more playable than he ever has. The new piezo piece is much thinner than the original, leaving more room for the saddle to sit in its slot.

Now, all that remained were strings to be put on. The owner had chosen these

However, the ‘E’ and the ‘G’ tuning machines seemed to jam halfway through the tuning. These were taken off, dismantled, treated, reassembled and put back on. Again the strings were put through them but the two tuning machines refused to work as desired.

I called up the owner and told him of the situation and he instructed me to put in new tuning machines.

And so a pack of new swanky tuning machines were pulled out

and put in place of the old ones. Thankfully, the screw holes lined up perfectly and I did not have to toil.

Here are a few last images of the guitar before I let it go.

You probably remember this one from before.
So it returned for a bone saddle and nut, and a free set-up (you get one when you get a bone saddle and nut installed at the Garage).

As you can see in the picture on the top, the ‘G’ and ‘A’ strings have managed to crush the saddle.

The owner also complained that there was a slight intonation problem, to which I frankly told him, ‘Let me change the saddle and nut, if there’s still a problem, we’ll look at it then’!

It also took some new strings.

But before they went on there was a little work to be done.

The hardware on the headstock was tightened, the fretboard was cleaned off all deposit, and then the new saddle and nut were calibrated to be installed in place of the plastic elements that gave way under string tension.

And as strings were installed, the bridgepins were given the customary shave so that ball ends wouldn’t catch on the ends.

Here’s the new saddle holding up fresh new strings

and this is what this baby looked like when it left me.

Perfect sound, perfect intonation!

After last year’s failed attempts at glueing up a bridge and a broken headstock, during these rainy months of July to October, here in North India, I had vowed never to attempt any glue-up job during these months.

In fact, I had returned a number of repairs asking them to be addressed elsewhere, or else, to be brought back after October.

As June was ending, this young man, a return customer brought in his guitar

which had this for a problem

This is the bass side of the guitar, while the treble side was fixed solid to the top.

The young man reminded me that when he had last visited me, I had found the bridge lifting but not very much. He recounted that I had said then that he should visit me a couple of years later, or earlier, if the lifting bridge made playing near impossible.

I told him about the July-Oct period and how it was fraught with dangers, but the young man wasn’t too convinced, and had quite set his heart on getting his guitar repaired. I wasn’t very comfortable looking at the hygrometer in the workshop

but I didn’t quite feel like breaking his heart so I accepted the instrument with the caveat, “Don’t kill me if…”!

When I took off the strings and the saddle, the health of the saddle concerned me.

But I realised that neck angles dictate such things. If the headstock had been any lower the actual saddle would have looked closer to the one below, rather than the actual saddle on top.

Also, as I pulled out the piezo element from the bridge, it seemed to have a kink in it.

As I began work on the instrument, pulling out my knives and such, I thought it would be a good idea to see how far the bridge was lifting on the bass side. This particular knife does the job well

So, almost a third of the length of the bridge was free. I rubbed my hands in glee at the prospect of another 30-second bridge removal, but maybe, I rubbed them a little too early.

Fifteen minutes later, I was still wiping sweat off my brow, working the blower on the treble side of the bridge, trying to get even the tip of the knife under the bridge.

All the time just one thought kept coursing through my mind: how can a bridge that is so loose on one end, be so tightly stuck on the opposite end? Did they forget to put glue on one side, or did they use all their clamps on one side???

More heat, more elbow grease and finally the bridge came off to reveal the horror underneath: SUPER GLUE!!!!!!!!!

The whiteness that you see (more on the bridge than is evident on its footprint on the top), is dried CA glue. Regular readers of this blog know how much I love it. Others will read for themselves, why.

And so began the arduous job of cleaning it off from both faces. Super glue tends to permeate surfaces and sink much lower than can be seen by the naked eye. You keep removing layers and it will still be there – though in lesser quantities.

Multiple tools and devices were employed to rid the two surfaces of the glue

And while this was in progress, preliminary work to glue the bridge in the right place began

When the bridge and its footprint had been cleaned, they were cleaned once with alcohol to rid it of any oil, grime and dust.

Now everything was ready for glue-up. Glue was spread generously on both surfaces and then the two were brought together. Clamps were strategically placed so that there was enough pressure to make the two stick together.

Also, a little prayer was said.

Given the rain and the moisture in the air, the instrument was left clamped for a little over four days, after which it was unclamped.

An hour or two’s rest later, strings were put on. The owner chose these

The guitar was strung up and then rested. The following photographs were taken after a couple of hours of the guitar being strung,

A return customer brought in his two Sire guitars with the same problem: string buzz. All through March-end till now, I have had to deal with this problem.

Many times, the dryness of the wood makes the fretwires stand, and a strategic tap is all that is needed to seat them back in place.

At other times, you can tap all you want, but the fretwires will not seat. In that case, they have to be filed, recrowned and polished. In earlier posts, I have explained what a pain it is levelling fretwires: for when you file fretwires, you do so in relation to the neighbouring ones. Invariably, after filing one, you will find another one standing proud two fretwires down the line – at least that has always been my experience.

Though both instruments were beautiful in their own right, the one with the natural finish was buzzing only on 1st fret of the treble ‘e’ string, while the one with the sunburst finish was buzzing around the 11th-12th fret of the bass ‘E’ string, the owner informed me.

I decided to work first on the natural finish guitar. Getting to work, I found some six or seven fretwires between the 3rd and the 14th – 15th fret. However, some of them readily sat down when tapped. For the stubborn ones, I knew I would have to sweat a lot. But, no sweat!

I pulled out my tools, sandpapers, polishing compounds et al and got to work. Do remember that both instruments had used strings on them. I couldn’t take them off, or I would have problems when it came time to test for the buzz (you can never really test for string buzz without strings). So, loosening the strings, the first round of levelling was completed. Strings were tightened but the buzz was still there.

Again I set about finding high frets and found it at the 3rd or 4th fret.

As I tightened the strings, I broke the ‘e’ string

and had to replace it. As I continued work and continued finding high fretwires, the loosening and tightening continued and I broke the ‘e’ string again. Again it was replaced, more work was done, more loosening and tightening and the ‘G’ string broke.

At that point, a cheap set of strings was thrown on in consultation with the owner.

Finally, I could not find any more high frets and the guitar played buzz-less.

But before I had strung it up, I performed this simple operation to ensure that string ball-ends did not catch at the end of the bridgepins.

Also, I snugged up the hardware on the headstock, while it was accessible.

After all that work, the buzz was reduced but not gone completely. I looked at the nut slots and they were a little deep for my liking.

On the left is the original nut and on the right is a new nut, to show you the difference between the slot depths. Maybe, I thought, because the instrument had a very low action (both at the 1st and the 12th fret) that it was buzzing.

As I took off the nut, I noticed something strange. While cutting the nut slot, someone careless at the factory had dug in too deep. Then it seemed, he cut from the other end, leaving a step in between. I measured the two ends of the slot and both were the same height.

If the treble side of the slot had been lower, one could have presumed that the buzz was due to this, but that wasn’t the case. Also, the owner had confirmed that the buzz was a recent development.

For my own satisfaction, I bridged the step with a little piece of pickguard material.

I tried on the new nut and the buzz was all but gone.

Again I tested for high frets and found two truant ones. Once those were brought in line, the guitar played like a dream.

The fretboard was cleaned and oiled and while I was at it, some love was also shown to the bridge

I left the cheap set of strings on so that the owner could check the string buzz.

The Sunburst Sire was next on the work table. If you remember there were a couple of fretwires on the bass ‘E’ string that were causing problems. There turned out to be six of them

Unlike those on its Natural cousin, fretwires on this Sire refused to be beaten down and had to be filed, recrowned and polished. The same back and forth as before. But the buzz refused to go. Again, the relief in the neck was optimum.

Then I turned my attention to the saddle and realised that it could be raised a little without raising the action too much.

For trial’s sake, I swapped the original saddle for a new slightly taller saddle, and lo and behold, the buzz was gone!

So, it wasn’t just a low saddle and it wasn’t just high fretwires; it was a combination of both that was causing the guitar to buzz.

The new saddle stayed and I called the owner to come and pick up his guitars. He was happy with the Natural but when he sat down to play the Sunburst, he checked the treble ‘e’ string first, which buzzed like if it had a buzzer in it.

To my shock he told me that this was the problem area in the guitar and I had to tell him that he had, in fact, pointed it out on the bass ‘E’ string, which had been corrected. Anyway, since there was a problem, it had to be corrected. Besides, it was my fault that I did not check the entire fretboard properly.

The work began all over again, this time on the treble side.

That is the before and after of the work done on the treble side.

And, of course, the extra work on the guitar was also done

Hardware on the headstock was tightened,

the fretboard and bridge were treated,

and bridgepin ends were given an angle so that string ball ends would stay off them.

The owner had also provided me with two sets of these

He requested that I put on one of these on the Sunburst, and so it was.

But I was truly happy with the break angle achieved at the bridge with the new, taller saddle. The owner came, tested the guitar and took it home, but I will wait for his call to tell me that magically, the sound and sustain on the instrument has increased appreciably. That is what a healthy break angle does to an instrument.

It was hard work over some five or six days but then there is no greater pleasure than to see instruments that come to you with a problem, get cured.

As always, I leave you with last images of the Sire Siblings

PREFACE: This blogpost comes to you a day late – for no fault of mine. Saturday night, as I was giving finishing touches to the post, this website stopped responding. In response to my SOS, the website hosting this site, got back to me on Sunday afternoon, worked through the day to find the fault and rectify it. The good news is that your favourite guitar site is up and running again.

Last week I left you at the point where I measured the length of the slot in the bridge to select a proper saddle.

After I selected an excellent bone saddle, I got thinking. Does it make sense – financial and otherwise – to put in a bone saddle in an instrument that will be played only sometimes and has more sentimental value than practical value?

At the last moment, I decided to install a plastic saddle that may not be the best but was functional. Going by the neck angle I knew that even this saddle would need to be shaved down.

Now, I own a small belt sander with variable speed, but even at its lowest speed, it tends to melt the plastic rather than sand it. So, it was the old fashioned way that I went: sanding by hand.

The work that remained was purely cosmetic, namely, covering the footprint of the old bridge immediately surrounding the new bridge. After taping off the margin, I hand-painted the area.

Now, the bridgepin holes needed to be drilled to be ready to receive strings. However, care needed to be taken that the pressure from the drill didn’t dislodge the freshly glued bridgeplate. So, I clamped up the bridgeplate with these clamps

Before I strung up the guitar, there was one last job to be taken care of: shaping the bridgepins so that the ball ends of the string did not catch onto them

The strings that the owner had chosen were these

The action, as I saw it, was not ideal but the neck angle being what it was dictated it. It was certainly not unplayable, but most certainly difficult on the upper frets.

As always, I leave you with a photo of the finished job

Once every four score and some repair jobs comes a challenge that tests your patience as much as your abilities. What pushed me to take it on was the fact that it brought back memories of my own first guitar, how I lost it, and how it all gave rise to the Lucknow Guitar Garage.

The job was so painstakingly laborious and slow that I have decided to divide it into two parts.

The young man who brought me the instrument was himself very talented and accomplished. He wished for his ‘first love’ to breathe again, and as that storm of emotions rose inside me, I knew that I must do this.

But it was in a pitiable condition.

The truss rod cover was missing

The bridge was lifting (it gaped much more than it seems to in the photograph)

It had no bridgeplate – no, I don’t mean that it was broken, but, in fact, it seemed that men at the factory had forgotten to put one in!!!! I know you can’t make out much from my crappy photograph but what I say is true. It was amazing that the guitar had withstood the wrecking tension of the strings for any period of time; 20 years was unimaginable.

It was as dust-laden as anything would be after years of standing around

The purfling was coming loose, which had been held in place by ordinary scotch-tape.

So, the first order of business was to take the bridge off. It came off easily but left a horrifying sight. So damaged and flimsy was the top that I had no option but to cut it out

What was left of the top underneath the bridge footprint was so flimsy, brittle and worthless that without a patch underneath to shore it up, it would never have stood against string tension. Also, since it did not have a bridgeplate, there was need to install one.

For the choice of wood for the bridgeplate, I thought hard and I thought long. Finally, I decided that putting in a maple patch into a guitar which will serve as a leave-at-home guitar and be sparingly played, would be a waste and rake up the cost too.

I decided to go with these

These look like ice-cream sticks but these are actually craft sticks – much sturdier than your usual ice-cream sticks. Yes, these can also be used as ice-cream sticks.

Both sides of each were first sanded and then their edges too, to roughen them up so that they would hold glue and stick better to each other. Three layers of these were stuck together, slowly

which finally resulted in this

These are the two sides of the bridgeplate. While the first one was the face which got stuck to the top, the second one is the face where the string ballends would rest.

But the bridgeplate was too big for the space in between the braces, and so, through trial and error, the right size was sawed and sanded out and stuck

Now, came the difficult part: recreating the top in the part that was missing. That too I decided to fashion out of the sticks.

Fitting in the last bit of the ‘top’ was more laborious than the entire bridgeplate. First, I cut out a dummy on a piece of card, refined it, tried inserting it into the gap, refined it again and again till I thought it was perfect.

Transferring the shape onto wood, I discovered that it wasn’t as perfect as I thought. More refining, more sanding till the piece fit in.

The little spaces all around were filled in too till I had something that looked like a top, on top of which, the new bridge could be glued.

Meanwhile, as I was working on the bridgeplate, I also moistened the top and clamped it down, so that it would stay straight. 

Once the bridgeplate was ready, it was carefully glued in

Next came the new bridge. I drilled out the holes and scored the back, but by just placing the bridge on the top, I knew that it was much smaller than the footprint of the original bridge.  The owner was okay with me painting the overshooting border of the top, in black, by hand.

But before I glued the bridge, I marked its position in tape.

Inside this boundary, the glue was smeared and the bridge glued on

Thankfully, with the amount of glueing that had to be done, I had the humidity on my side:

While the glue under the bridge cured, I got to the other smaller jobs.

The purfling on the side was glued in,

a truss rod cover was fashioned out of some pickguard material I had lying around,

the hardware on the headstock was oiled and tightened,

the zero fretwire (which had developed divots) was filed and polished,

and, the new saddle’s length was recorded.

Read about the rest in the next post. Until then…!

I have written about this earlier too, but never actually dedicated a post to it. So, I decided to do so now and explain to my younger readers what all the brouhaha is all about.

So, the first frertwire on the neck of your acoustic guitar stays where it is, but right after the nut, another piece of fretwire is installed, over which the strings ride. And because this piece of fretwire comes before the first fretwire, it is called ‘zero fretwire’.

It does the job that the nut ordinarily does, for the strings ride over it, but it is not as if the nut is relegated to the dust bin. It stays very much where its spot is, only, the string slots in it are considerably deeper. This is to keep the strings in place without allowing them to slide off the fretboard. The slots in the nut are as deep as the height of the zero fretwire.

Contrary to popular belief, the zero fretwire is exactly the same height as the other fretwires and generally made of the same material.

So what does a zero fretwire do?

Think of the zero fretwire as a very low nut. As the strings ride over it, they are much lower than what their height would be, had they been riding a traditional nut. What this does is ensure that all strings are relatively low all along the fretboard. And if you take care of the height of your saddle, you have comfortably low action all along the fretboard.

How this particularly helps is that you can barre your ‘F’ chord with an ease hitherto unknown.    

Of course, rhythm players love it but lead players love the arrangement the most. 

Disadvantages of the zero fretwire

Like I said earlier, the strings ride on the zero fretwire and that the zero fretwire is generally made of the same material as the rest of the fretwires on the instrument. Now, the preferred material for fretwire is cupro nickle though stainless steel is also available. Given the ease with which cupro nickle can be worked with (as opposed to stainless steel), it is used on most instruments. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, is also the undoing of the material. Because it is easily adaptable and tractable, the strings rubbing over it also damage it, demanding that it be replaced.

Why is the zero fretwire not used more often?

What I am about to say is entirely my observation of things. You are free to criticise it or agree with it. 

One: Guitar-building is comparatively a new art form, borrowing its learnings from violin makers and lute makers of Europe. Innovation does not play a part when it comes to changes in the basic structural format. Embellishments and minor deviations are followed at best.

Two: There seems to be an underlying fear that given the wear that the zero fretwire will face that it will have to be frequently replaced. To put things in perspective for you, how many times in your guitar’s life have you had to have its fretwires replaced? So, if it the same material used for the zero fretwire, how often would you have to replace it???   

Me? I have loved working on zero fretwire instruments and I have loved playing them equally!

P.S.: This post is a special post for the Lucknow Guitar Garage website had crashed and could be revived only after the intervention of the web-hosts. In the process, I lost the last post (of last Sunday) only.

Hopefully, now it will continue to run smoothly, without any hinderance. 

How many of you rhythm players, who play with a plectrum/pick, find the bone saddle and nuts are a little too responsive and the sound a little too loud? How many of you feel that it would be so much better if the response was mellower and even a little subdued?

I think I have the answer.

If you have been a regular visitor to this blog, you know how much I fancy bone for nuts and saddles over any other material. However, for a good part of a year, I have been messing around with the thought: what if buffalo horn was used in its place?

I studied some, listened to what respected luthiers had to say, and talked to some guitar-builder acquaintances here in India. Almost everyone had the same idea that buffalo horn was much softer than bone, and thus, much harder to carve. This further prompted me to think, and the result is the following.

In Western country music (as in other genres too), a technique called palm muting is used, where the palm of the playing hand partially rests on the strings near the bridge. This has a dampening effect on the sound that is produced. While using a horn nut and saddle, you can play freely without concentrating on palm muting but still get SOME of that effect.

Additionally, what you get is an accentuated bass response and a mellower treble response. Again, this set up helps those players who play with a pick or plectrum.

If you ask me, the arrangement is perfect for when you are accompanying yourself/somebody on stage and even when you are recording. Also, the music will be that much more uplifting if you’re playing for yourself, by yourself.

Needless to say that the arrangement is not so great for finger-style players.

If you wish to have a go at horn, Lucknow Guitar Garage will be happy to accommodate you by fashioning a nut and a saddle meant just for your guitar – to your playing style. What’s more there are bone bridgepins to indulge in too to complete the set!

Believe it or not, Yamaha can make a good acoustic instrument too!

That was a joke! Yamaha makes excellent stuff once you cross the Rs 22 – Rs 25K price threshold. I am the unfortunate one that I have encountered only their Rs 9 – 10K models, of which I have opened my heart out on more than one occasion (Search ‘Yamaha’ on the blogsite).

So, when the youngster was pulling out the guitar from the gig bag, unconsciously my eyes rolled up, as I spotted the ‘Yamaha’ logo on the headstock.

But this was a different guitar. Imagine my surprise, when I discovered on inspection that it had a solid spruce top!

It was basically in for a “buzz on the 3rd fret”. I surmised that like all other instruments, this too was suffering from low-humidity weather. A little turn of the truss rod and the instrument was well, thrilling the young owner.

But actually, the first thing that I noticed in the guitar was the plastic nut and saddle in it and the eye-poker that the extra length of the ‘e’ string was. The owner was chided for it.

It also needed a string change (the youngster had not changed them in a year!).

But, the thing that actually jumped at me was the “noose around its neck”. I explained to the young man the dangers of the move, and he agreed to get a strap button installed.

It’s a simple enough procedure but not if you do it for the first time.

I also noticed that the fretboard hadn’t been cleaned in a long while

With the strings off, the divots beginning to form in the first few fretwires also sprang into direct sight.

The fretboard was cleaned and the fretwires were burnished, removing almost all of the pitting. A very small dimple remained but I purposefully let it be.

After the fretboard was squeaky clean, it was given a rub of the love potion, as was the bridge, and then it was ready for new strings. The owner had chosen these

I had tried to explain the wonders of bone elements to the owner, but I had also told him that it could be done at a later stage too. I think he chose to do it at a later stage.

I leave you with the customary last views of the instrument

Remember how I say trouble comes to me in twos and threes?

Well, soon after the visit of the Fender CD140,

Guitar repair – The pain of fretwire-levelling!

as I sat down to wipe the sweat of my brow, came in this Yamaha FX 280. The complaint: terrible fret buzz all along the thinnest two strings.

The guitar seemed to be a seemingly new buy with the staple plastic nut and uncompensated plastic saddle in place. It was a very pretty guitar but full of smudges. The thing with sunburst finishes is that though they look stunning, they are fingerprint magnets, requiring constant cleaning.

I explained the wonders of bone and compensated elements to the owner and he agreed to have them replaced.

On the first run with the fret rocker, I found these (look for the fretwires marked in red)

I won’t bore you with the details, but if you wish to know the rigorous back and forth dance that fretwire-levelling can lead, the link is above.

However, before I even marked the high fretwires, I checked for neck-straightness. It had a little more relief – not too much – than what I would have preferred to see. I dialled that out.

And so, when you level, crown and polish the first few ‘upstanders’, others seem to magically appear. When you level, crown and polish those, some among the first set that you seemed to have dealt with, have gone out of sync.

Treating the entire fretboard at one go, on a new guitar, is a bit harsh (in my opinion). If in the initial set-up one has to shave down all the fretwires, what will happen 10 years down the line?!

By the time I was through with the fretwire-levelling I had pulled out much of my remaining hair and I was breathing ragged!

After a break, I began work on the bone nut and saddle. Now those of you who own/have owned a Yamaha acoustic, you may have noticed that the company uses a very slim piece of plastic for a nut. Measuring how much I had to shave off it, I discovered that half the nut would have to go to dust.

The second photograph of the nut (though not very clear) shows how much the height needed to be reduced. These dimensions I got measuring the old nut.

Likewise, the saddle was measured and marked.

Looking at the mark, it should have occurred to me that the saddle slot was canted towards the treble side. It didn’t.

After everything had been sanded and shaved and put in place, the time was right to clean up the body of the guitar before strings got in the way. A good warm water scrub and the body was shinning again.

The owner had provided his strings of choice

which were thrown on after a slight twist in the tail.

Once, I tuned them to pitch and went about setting it up, I noticed that the action on the bass side was considerably higher than the treble side – which was just right.  The strings were loosened, the saddle pulled out, shaved and returned to its slot.

Then when I tuned up the strings, the action was just right – both on the bass and the treble sides.

It was a happy owner who picked up his guitar, and nothing makes one happier than a happy customer!

Here’s a final look at the guitar

There come moments in everyone’s life which test a man’s patience and abilities. I think this instrument brought along with it one of those moments for me.

This guitar –  a Fender CD140 – was good-looking, well-kept and clean,

and came in with the complaint of a buzz on the B string on the 13th fret. By experience I have learned that once it gets that specific, there’s bound to be a raised fretwire somewhere.

Still, following due process, I first checked neck straightness. It was straight enough with the right amount of relief, and true enough, there was a God Almighty buzz on the 13th fret.

The owner had informed me that the guitar had been standing for a few years, and I guessed that by standing uselessly, there would be more frets than just one creating problems. As I went about checking higher fretwires, I counted six – one which got tapped in and five that required the ‘full treatment’.

Now, fret-levelling, as you might know is probably the most painstakingly-repetitive and tedious work in guitar repair. Level the fretwires and then individually crown them and then individually polish them.

It began with levelling them with this, concentrating on the higher frets.

Underneath the beam is sandpaper stuck which does all the hard labour. I just put in the elbow grease. However, one has to be very careful about how hard and how long one is going on the fretboard. A little extra effort and the fretwires have gone much lower than where you need them to be.

After the beam has done its work, this is what the ground looks like – silver dust all around.

And then follows the crowning process, which again one has to execute very carefully so as not to overshoot the mark. More often than not, it is experience which tells you when to stop crowning a fretwire. More silver dust.

Then came the polishing of the fretwires that were worked upon. The polishing removes file marks from the levelling and crowning, making the fretwires nice and slick. This step in the entire process is the most tedious because you work through five or six grits of sandpaper on every fretwire that you have levelled and crowned. If there are more than five or six fretwires that you need to work on, the digits on your fingers start complaining (at least mine do)!

That done, it was time to clean the fretboard for the last time, give it a drink of the elixir, and while you’re at it, show some love to the bridge as well.

Strings came next and the owner chose these ones

As I tuned up the instrument and played it – horror of horrors – the buzz was still there, and if anything, more robust than before. This meant that there were other raised fretwires that I had missed, or those that ‘got raised’ due to the work done on their neighbours.

The strings were loosened enough and out came the Fretrocker

and carefully, all the fretwires 11th fret onwards were tested. Three more truant ones were found. Carefully (now with the strings on), the entire process described up till now was repeated and the strings were again tuned to pitch.

I tried loosening the truss rod and the action went up dramatically. I tried tightening the truss rod and the buzz screamed at me.

Again when I tried to check for the buzz, it seemed to have moved from the original string to a different string, different fret, but still in the same zone! Again, the strings were loosened, again spot-levelling, crowning and polishing of the fretwires took place.

And this process went on for a few times more, but it took its toll on the strings and just as I apprehended, first the ‘B’ string broke and then the ‘A’ string. Meanwhile, the ‘G’ string was looking so frayed that I was afraid to breathe over it! But it could not be helped and so, I replaced the entire set of strings.

Finally, when the guitar was done, I was exhausted both physically and mentally, but happy that I had exorcised the buzz.

When the owner came to collect the instrument I related my effort to him. Along with the effort, the time taken to complete the job had also to be taken into consideration. I also told him about me putting on a fresh set of strings and gave him the option to pay for the second set of strings, or not. After all, the strings had broken while I was working on the instrument!

A thorough gentleman, he suggested that we split the cost of the second set. Fair enough, I said, and we shook hands on that.

He was happy with the work done on his guitar, and when I called him a week later to check how the instrument was doing, the ‘all is well’ reply was most comforting.