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Every once in a while a repair comes along that not just challenges you but makes you doubt your abilities and all that you know.

This Tanglewood was every bit that and more!

And it was such a pretty guitar! Just look at that soundhole rosette, and that back!

Earlier, I have made my fondness for Tanglewood instruments apparent. That and the fact that the break was an angular one, where the two faces slid cleanly into each other, made me take up the repair. Add to those the fact that the owner was attached to the instrument, and no other convincing was needed for me to take up the job.

Preparation for the operation began with collecting all that I thought I would be needing for the repair.

I started by taking off the two nearest-to-the-nut tuning machines (for strings E and e). That was where my clamps would go and with the tuning machines in the way, clamping would be impossible.

Once I had everything I needed, the two surfaces to be joined were cleaned and prepared for glue-up. With enough glue, cauls to provide support and padding to protect the headstock, the two halves were glued together, clamped and left to cure for 24 hours.

24 hours later, when the clamps were pulled off, the glue had cured and the break had been healed, with just a little seam apparent.

To take care of that slight lip, I taped off the area and wet-sanded the exposed area.

With the lip gone, I re-installed the tuning machines, strung it up with a fresh, new set of strings, and left it overnight with the tension. In the morning, I was happy to see that it was still in one piece. I called up the owner to come and get his instrument.

When he arrived, and as I picked up the instrument to give it to him, I felt a little wiggle in the headstock. I turned the guitar over and there…staring at me was a sight most horrifying. The break had opened up after staying together for over eight hours!

It was hard to tell at that time who was more disappointed: the owner or me. I asked him to let me have a go at it another time and he left asking me to call him when it was done.

Again, I took off the strings, uninstalled the E and e string tuning machines, but before I did anything, I sat down to figure out what went wrong, where. After a lot of head-scratching and chin-stroking, I came to the conclusion that maybe, the clamping pressure hadn’t been enough.

I cleaned up the old glue from the two faces, and this time, when I was glueing up, I used a strong central clamp, with two smaller ones on the sides to help it and left it clamped for 48 hours. The pieces of wood that you see were used in the hope that they would help distribute the clamp pressure evenly throughout the fault area.

Another 24 hours, but the story was the same. It got stuck but could not take the string tension. This time, I really got worried. I had done repairs like these before, and save the occasion when the break was a perpendicular break, all had joined and held. What was it that I was doing wrong?

Whatever…this had to be repaired, come what may. All the steps were repeated, except, this time I did not remove the strings or any of the tuning machines (I was just plain lazy!). I glued and clamped it shut, again using different clamps this time.

I gave it 48 hours and then after I took the clamps off, and before the joint had time to breathe, I decided to install wooden dowels, 2/3 the thickness of the headstock.

But before I did that I realised that I would have to take off the tuning machines. So, off came the machines, and of course, the strings with them.

With the help of some geometry, three stress points were found (you can probably see the pencil lines). Here I drilled and installed the dowels and then sawed them flush with the headstock.

I finally re-strung the guitar, and 24 hours later, the joint was still holding as I wiped the sweat off my brow. I just did a very temporary paint job to try and mask the three dowels, asking the owner to return after a couple of months so that I could do a proper finish job.

  Here’s a look at how she looked before she left the Garage.

After the action on your (acoustic) guitar rises above comfort levels, there are two things that can be done: a) get it rectified by someone you trust, or, b) wait till you find someone you trust.

This Ibanez belongs to the latter category and came to me after standing (somewhere) for almost a decade.

As I looked it over, there wasn’t much wrong with the guitar except that it had a micarta/corian nut and saddle and the strap button had been placed right on the heel of the instrument.  If you disregarded the dust accumulation, it was a well-kept instrument.

I pointed this out

but the owner was quite happy to leave the strap button where it was, and I was quite happy to leave incorrectly placed strap buttons lie!

Oh, it was an electro-acostic instrument

and there was this too, to take into consideration

I adjusted the truss rod some, measured the nut and saddle

went about cleaning the instrument,

snugging up the hardware on the headstock

and, when all was done, I gave the the entire body a good polish.

Of course, the treble side shoulder shone like new, but the bass side showed up distress marks (strap marks, nail marks, I don’t know!).

As I looked at the entire guitar, I was happy, but the bass side shoulder rankled me. Unable to rest easy, I pulled out my magic paste and squirted out a little on the offending area. A thick cloth (jeans material) and lots of elbow grease and the scratches were almost gone

A fresh set of strings later, as I stood back and studied my handiwork, I knew that the owner was going to be happy.

He was, and if I remember correctly, his words were, ‘Man, I don’t remember when this thing sounded as good!’

Ah, well, happy if you are!

Here’s one last look at this beauty

 

Tanglewood is a UK guitar company and some of their models (I have seen some in my hometown) are available here in India. The more I see of Tanglewood guitars, the more solid that belief becomes: I think I like Tanglewood guitars!

This one came to me for just a set-up, some months ago.

And though you probably can’t read the label, it reads Roadster II and in smaller capital letters, ‘HANDCRAFTED’. Of course, the label also says that it was designed in the UK and ‘Made in China’. Now, I’m willing to believe that it was designed in the UK and made in China, but what I won’t believe is that it was made in China but is ‘HANDCRAFTED’!!! There, I said it!

But whatever it was, it was a pretty instrument. Its simplicity is what was most appealing. No frills, nothing fancy, a simple, well-built instrument, and a 3/4th one at that (if I remember correctly).

And that rosette…simply different!

And it came with its own EQ

That is as far as the good points went.

I noticed that the fretboard and bridge were sadly dry, the fretwires were certainly sullied and the saddle and bridge material were suspect.

But as I went about pulling out the bridgepins, this happened

Ah, well!

But a bigger shock awaited me when I pulled out the nut and saddle.

Pure Mother of Toilet Seat!

After all that ‘HANDCRAFTED’ s@#*t, hollow plastic for a nut! The saddle was a few shades better and may have been Corian or something. I chucked them both!

Now that I had the strings off, I cleaned up the fretboard, the bridge, and oiled them up. The fretwires I gave a good rub-down.

With the new bone saddle and nut, a fresh set of strings on a clean fretboard, and nice low action dialled in, this baby sounded like a whole new instrument.

And like most times, I got so happy playing the instrument that I forgot to take a final photograph!

This slotted-headstock Pluto came in some time back for its action to be reduced. One look at the saddle and I went, “oh, crap!” in my mind.

With the tilted saddle, the action was like this

This is how the owner had been playing the instrument for four or five years (I guess). If the tilted saddle had been spotted in time, I doubt if the owner would have been its owner!

And yet, even if you are unable to spot such issues, but make it a point to get your guitar set up soon after buying it, such issues can be tackled and you will be able to enjoy effortless playing, and more importantly, the guitar will be playing with near perfect intonation.

The saddle of the guitar must stand at absolute 90 degrees to the top, in its slot. I doubt if this Pluto ever played in tune (was truly intonated). By the way the saddle is leaning forward, my guess is all six strings would have been playing at least 20 – 25 cents flat.

Why do saddles lean?

Guitars (all string instruments, in fact) have a ‘scale length’, which governs the placement of the bridge on the top of the guitar, and the placement of the saddle in its slot in the bridge. If the saddle tilts or leans, it’s bye-bye scale length, and thus the intonation gets shot.

So, why do saddles lean? Short and simple, it’s a manufacturing boo-boo. What I am going to explain stands true for mass-produced instruments and not boutique instruments (produced few in number and by hand) or boutique builders.

In detail, saddles (plastic, micarta, tusq, etc) are factory made/moulded. The length may change of a particular lot of saddles being made (depending upon what model of guitar the saddles are being made for) but the other dimensions – thickness, height, its radius – seldom vary.

Similarly, bridges are CNC-ed or cut by machines and except for the saddle slot length, other dimensions of the slot seldom vary. Due to human error, the wrong saddle may be seated in the bridge, or, wrong measurements may have been fed while cutting the saddle or the saddle slot.

When the saddle is thinner than the saddle slot and you tune up that instrument, the saddle is bound to lean forward, thanks to the string tension. Consequently, the saddle will always lean forward, and never backwards, making it play flat.

What you want to see in your acoustic guitar is that the saddle sits perfectly straight (at 90 degrees to the top), and you don’t use strength to seat it. Ideally, you should be able to push in the saddle in its slot with the minimum finger pressure, BUT, once you turn the guitar over, the saddle should not fall out of its slot.

Awrite, the class is over!

To correct the issue with the Pluto, I chucked the plastic saddle, and with it the plastic nut too. Little point in changing just the saddle. If you wish to truly appreciate the difference bone makes in an acoustic guitar, both the nut and saddle must be of bone.

And it’s a good thing that the nut was replaced, because the nut slots were cut too deep in it.

A healthy, bone saddle and nut of the correct dimensions was put in, but only after some other stuff had been taken care of.

The fretboard and the bridge, were as dry as a twig, almost pale to the eye and to the touch, and in serious need of nourishment.

Once I had nourished them, they looked much healthier

Then, as I proceeded to replace the saddle, I saw this

Not one, not two but four shims of some suspect wood. Now, with these four shims taking up all that saddle slot depth, if the saddle doesn’t tip forward, what else is it expected to do? I removed these and said a little ‘thank you’ to the Man Upstairs that though I had marked the saddle for sanding, I had not sanded it yet.

I put in the saddle and it was such a joy to see that just a small amount needed to be sanded off it. The nut, though, was a breeze with a touch of the sandpaper making it fit the slot snugly.

Perfect action, near perfect intonation and the fresh set of strings really made the guitar hum.

Some body buffing and here’s what she looked like when she left me.

Just a quick, mid-week post to remind you all that I work on electric guitars too but only if they are catastrophe-struck: a headstock break, a neck break, etc.

Don’t expect me to set your axe up. You probably know more than me!

Fretwires/fretboards? Now, those are fun jobs as long as you don’t keep talons for nails. Just a couple of photographs to let you see the before and after.

Of course, this one was a bass!

Gratifying, indeed!

 

 

I’ve raved and ranted about bone nuts and saddles but in all those mentions, I don’t think I’ve ever said this so unequivocally: using just a bone saddle or just a bone nut, with the other element being some other material, is just half the fun! You want to see what your acoustic guitar can really do, use both the saddle and nut made of bone.

The best of guitars in the Indian market do not carry a bone nut and saddle set from the manufacturer – or at least that has been the case in the guitars that I have had the occasion to study. The reason for that, partly, is that there is not much awareness about (and consequently a demand for) the use of bone as nut and saddle material, in these parts of the world. And then there is the cost-to-the-manufacturer factor.

At best you will have a bone saddle, as if that is supposed to take care of all your tone issues. Just as it was in this Epiphone Hummingbird Pro. It had a bone saddle but a plastic (or some synthetic material) nut.

Plus, the fretboard had a fairly healthy amount of DNA, dust and grime deposition on it which would not go with just a hot-water bath. A fresh set of strings was also desperately needed, and then there were those general things that had to be looked into and rectified, if needed.

I started with the fretboard because that was a ‘big’ eyesore staring at me. I had to use a scraper and, naturally, care had to be taken not to scrape out more than was necessary.

That done, I took a look at the done fretboard and though I was pleased with the results, I thought I could see a bit more relief in it than was required. As it is, the owner had complained about a higher-than-comfortable action. I measured it and, indeed, it was a little more than was needed. So, I dialled the right amount of relief in.

And yes, that is the new bone nut installed. I got lucky as far as the nut-sizing was concerned. The bone nut sat near perfect in its slot and just a touch of the sandpaper took care of the excess material.

Then it was the turn of the hardware on the headstock. It was loose and just my trustee right-sized spanner did the trick.

When I did put the fresh set of .012″ – .052″ strings, I was happy to see that I did not need to untune the guitar, pull out the saddle, shave it some to get the action right. Just taking out that extra relief from the neck was enough to get the action where the owner wanted it.

The last photograph was taken in my bedroom: proof that I played it some. I enjoyed playing the instrument. The action was good, the response of the guitar was good, the sustain was good. It was all good!

And the owner thought so too!

 

If you didn’t know, I do that too: fashion pickguards. You choose a design or bring your own, choose the pickguard colour and I will do the rest.

This Guild landed up on the counter for two reasons: a) the owner had set his heart on the (Gibson) Hummingbird style pickguard and wanted that on his guitar; b) this was an electro-acoustic instrument and for some reason, the piezo element was not picking up the vibrations of the thin ‘e’ string.

I first checked the piezo element and I was sure that it was one of those individual string piezo elements

To my disappointment it was one of those soft cable piezo elements that I had hoped I would replace with. Then, I thought, maybe, the portion of the piezo under the contact of the area of the saddle where the ‘e’ string rides is damaged. Nothing to remedy that except replace the entire piezo assembly, which generally comes with a small jack, which plugs into the EQ unit. I had these in stock.

To complicate things, there was no jack but the wire was soldered onto the EQ circuit board.

I let out an expletive and informed the owner what the problem was. I asked him to buy the specific piezo element online and then I would take care of the pick-up.

In the meantime, I began work on the pickguard. For a template, I drew and cut out on paper the shape that the owner wanted. 

Once I had peeled off the old pickguard (with a great deal of trepadition. It was a Guild, after all), I set about removing the glue residue that the pickguard had left behind. Believe me, it is not easy getting that off. No liquid helped and in the end I had to use my fingers and thumb to literally rub it off. 55 minutes by the watch!

With fingertips red, sore and smarting, I proceeded to place the cut-out against the guitar, took a photograph and sent it to the owner to OK it.

Once he had okayed it, all that was left to do was to cut it out of the sheet. 

Before sticking it on, there was still some bevelling to be done so that a player’s pick/fingers would not catch on the edges. That done, it was time to see how it looked on the guitar.

Cool, eh?

Seven days ago, the guitar came back to me with the replacement piezo. I pulled out its innards, replaced the piezo element, drilled a hole at the treble end of the saddle slot to receive the tip of the piezo element, set everything up back as it was and made the call to come and get the instrument.

It’s been five days now and I am still waiting for the guitar to be picked up, even as the instrument gathers dust! 

After a glut of the mundane, along comes something that forces you to burn the midnight oil, go that extra mile to provide healing – both to the instrument as well as to the owner.

Not too long ago, I got this phone call from Gorakhpur (a city some 300 km and a six-and-a-half-hour train journey away). The man tried to explain to me what was wrong with his guitar and from all the words, all I could gather was that the guitar did not make for a pretty picture, far less, music.

There was a problem right away. Trains from Gorakhpur to Lucknow (the city in which I live) were in the early evening, reaching Lucknow at night. I agreed to meet him at night considering he was an outstation customer.

He came around midnight because his train got delayed. When he showed me his guitar, I almost groaned audibly. It was a Yamaha F310 or 310 P.

But the guitar really was a mess. It seemed the owner had left it standing in some corner.

To my eyes, it seemed as if a hit right at the seam, where the side meets the top, had caused the top to crack. More upsettingly, the force of the impact had been such that the top had separated from the region around the region of the end block on the treble side to the waist of the guitar (almost) on that side.

The red marker in the second photograph shows the area where the top was separated from the side. The break was at least a foot long, or the better part of it. And as you can probably make out from the ‘marker photograph’ the top and the side were not willing to match up willingly.

Here’s a closer look

Such repairs can be really tricky jobs because if you try to push the side in at one place, it will come out at another. So, I told the customer to leave the instrument with me and as and when I would make progress with it, I would get back to him.

He agreed and left in a hurry: his train home would leave in 40 minutes.

The only thing I did that night was to take the strings off the guitar. Yep! Still tuned with the strings pulling away at the top! Then I went to bed, and for the next two days I just stared at the mess in front of me. Finally, I willed myself to touch it.

Sure enough, as I coaxed the side in from one place, it bulged out at another. This seemed like the perfect job for some spool clamps that I had made almost a decade back. I knew I would need them one day.

There was one particular area of the side that refused to be coaxed out. And again I pulled on my thinking cap. As I went into the kitchen to get water, my eyes fell on a few wooden ladles that were rarely used. With a devlish gleam in my eyes, I whacked them and before anybody could miss them, sawed off their heads.

What I was left with were quarter-inch thick wood dowels about 8 – 10 inches long. I put these into the guitar and forced out the obstinate portion of the side. It came out but went right back when I released the pressure. I tried wedging one end against a brace running along the back of the instrument but fell short of the brace by an inch or something.

I placed another rectangular piece of wood, more tall than broad, right in front of the brace and then tried my wedge. It worked!

Now that I was sure that that would work, I pulled out my clamps and for the dry run, I placed one clamp right in the centre of the break. And then as the sides bulged out at places, I pushed them in with a clamp placed strategically at that point. Finally, I had managed to make the top and the side meet almost flawlessly.

Thrilled as I was, I controlled my glee for I knew that when I put the glue in, it would be a different game altogether.

And then there was glue, but thankfully, the instrument behaved itself and the clamps did the rest. One thing that I did mindfully was to put two clamps very close together where the crack in the top was. Also, I brushed in a generous amount of glue in it.

I reasoned that the clamp pressure would push the crack closed and the glue, once it dried, would never allow it to open again.

With everything seemingly in place, and nothing else to do except to wait for the glue to dry, I turned my attention to other areas.

Of course, I threw out the plastic saddle and nut!

And put in bone. The nut was almost there but I had to cut away half the saddle to get the action right according to the old plastic saddle. Once new strings would be put on, some tweaking would be required.

And here’s a ‘before’ and ‘after’ of the fretboard

When I checked, the neck had just a wee bit of extra relief. I dialled that out.

And it was time to take off the spool clamps. I did, and everything was as it should be. Even the crack in the top had healed and there were no jagged edges standing out.

Now, that the guitar was structurally sound, it was time to make it aesthetically presentable too.  Two thin painting tape strips and some black brush-on lacquer: who’s to say there was ever a crack there?

And here’s what the top crack looked like. Healed but certainly not invisible to the eye. And that was never the intention.

New strings, a phone call, a second midnight rendezvous, and all’s well with the world.

This job was very satisfying, and even more satisfying was the joy of the owner.

I have said this many times before and I will say it again: a set-up of your instrument is imperative as soon as you have bought it. That initial set-up tunes up the instrument for its journey ahead.

In an expert technician’s hands, while things (minor adjustments) that will make it a joy to play are dealt with, issues that may crop up in the future are spotted and tackled then and there.

One such guitar came to the Lucknow Guitar Garage recently (within the first week of it being buoght) and I was very happy to see the owner had invested time and thought (not to talk of money) into his instrument. The instrument itself was a Fender CD-140SCE sun burst, which lived in a hard-shell case (which was bought separately). 

Just the hard-shell case told one enough about the sensibilities of the owner; sensibilities that are not awakened until one is three or four guitars old. In the time that elapses between those three or four guitars, realisation dawns that it is best to protect a precious (and not necessarily in terms of money alone) purchase in a hard-shell case.  

Alright! Enough on sensibilities and onto the job on the counter. As I have seen in umpteen instruments, this one too seemed as if it had been standing in the shop too long. At first glance, the fretboard was dryer than tinder and would need a fair bit of the ‘love potion’.

Also, I decided to swap the plastic/micarta nut and saddle for real bone elements. Why I harp on bone saddles and nuts is because the kind of resonance and sustain you get out of bone, no man-made material can give.

Some measurements, some marking and some sanding and the nut and saddle were ready.

The hardware on the headstock was tended to – both how they were fixed on to the headstock and how smooth each operated.

Next, the nut and saddle was put in . With everything ready, all that was needed was to seat them in their slots. Often, when you get a really snug fit with the nut, glue is not required. This was one of those guitars.

I oiled the fretboard, burnished the fretwires and threw on a fresh set of strings (12s, if I remember correctly). And as I admired the instrument, I told myself, ‘What a pretty guitar’!

With the wise investment (of time, effort and money) made in it, the guitar should serve the owner well for a long, long time to come.

I did advise the owner to remove that sticker on the pickguard (announcing free online lessons).

 

 

 

Tilting saddles, while they are the perfect recipe for a bridge split, are also cause for much heartburn among (acoustic) guitarists.

Why? Because once the saddle tilts (almost always forward), the scale length changes and you can say bye-bye to intonation.

Case in point is this Hertz (HZA4900BK) that landed up on my counter some time back.

And yes, it had been strung exactly how you see it in the photograph. While I couldn’t help but smile, I gently pointed out to the owner that strings should travel FROM THE INSIDE of the tuning posts to their respective posts and NOT OUTSIDE them.  

There was unfortunately a lot that was wrong with the guitar. The saddle was tilting dangerously and if that wasn’t enough, it had been chewed up some.

And if you couldn’t make out in the photo above, check this out.

Leaning saddle, chewed up and plastic crap to boot. What more do you need as argument to show it the wastepaper basket? And while you’re at it, chuck the nut as well!

The nut. Now that was another story. Usually, a gentle tap dislodges a nut from its slot. Not this one. The harder I tapped, the more stubborn it became, refusing to be dislodged from its seat. Finally, when I managed to shake it loose, I saw it had taken a fair bit of the wood with it. And why? Because super glue had been used to seat it!!

See that white deposit? That only happens when you use super glue. And because it was black plastic, it was apparent; any other colour and it would have gone unnoticed. Now, I could be wrong about the super glue, but I wonder what that white deposit was and how it was caused.

So, the nut slot was pared some to keep the surface level, and in preparation to receive the new bone nut.

A new, polished, bone saddle was measured up to replace its cheap plastic cousin.

I was just beginning to shave down the saddle to the requisite height when I noticed something lurking in the saddle slot. I slapped my forehead and uttered a profanity. A saddle shim! 

It has now become almost customary to have shims seated underneath saddles. And just anything will do: card, plastic, any sliver of any wood…! And what was more, there were two of them in this one! No wonder the saddle was tilting.

If half the saddle slot is taken up by shims, how do you expect the saddle to stand erect in its slot?

When I tried on the new bone saddle, there was just a whisker that needed to be shaved off for the guitar to have a good, healthy action – even as it stood erect in its slot.

If you go back and take a look at the guitar when it came in, you will notice that the saddle, nut and the bridge pins were all black. Now that I was putting in polished bone, I felt the bridge pins should also be the same off-white/cream colour. I consulted the owner and he agreed.

And so I replaced the black bridge pins with cream ones.

Meanwhile, the nut end looked something like this

Yes! That is a fresh set of strings, and yes, I did give the fretwires a healthy rub, to make them gleam again.

But to be fair to the instrument, not everything was bad about it. It had an artifitial wood fretboard which was very pretty to look at. I have never played one for a long period of time to be able to comment on its playability/durability, but I suppose it does the job it is supposed to do.

Me? I am more of a purist. Given half a chance, I would prefer rosewood or ebony for a fretboard (Walnut will also do).

And the end product?

 

 

This Squier came to me in a fair bit of trouble. It’s bridge, besides being cracked, was lifting from the bass side.

It was off-putting to see Fender put in some cheap wood, dyed dark, for the fretboard and bridge. One could see the white wood through the crack on the bridge, while wear due to playing had made the colour disappear at least at one spot on the fretboard.

And while it was in with a plastic saddle and nut, I convinced the owner to swap them for bone elements so that he could enjoy the instrument to its fullest.

Also, I took off the rusting bucket-type strap buttons and instead put in swanky mushroom-style buttons, matching the rest of the chrome hardware on the guitar.

But the big problem at hand was the bridge.

The question in my mind was, should I work on the crack first, or should I glue the bridge back to the top first? After much thought and reasoning, I decided to glue the bridge to the top first.

I was happy with the squeeze-out I got and it seemed that the bond would be solid.

Clamping the bridge down, I left it for 48 hours, and while that rested, I replaced the strap buttons with felt washers so that the buttons wouldn’t mar the instrument’s finish.

Once it was time to take off the clamps, I decided to first mark the new bone nut and saddle to the correct dimensions.

But before I got to sanding them, I decided to fix the crack in the bridge. Much dyed saw dust and wood glue and lots of sanding and the result was this – expectedly so.

This was an electro-acoustic guitar and usually for glueing bridge cracks I do not meddle with the piezo element and let it lie quietly in the saddle slot. This time, I don’t know why, I pulled out the piezo element completely, and lo and behold, what should be hiding there?

A thick plastic shim! Boy, was I glad I had not cut down the saddle to less than half?!

Again I measured up the saddle to its correct height and length

and then got to sanding both the nut and saddle. They were installed as were these strings

And here’s a look at the new nut and saddle

Of course, I had touched up the bridge and the spot on the fretboard where the colour had disappeared.

And the customary long shot of the finished product

 

 

.

The other day, in a conversation with a prospective customer, it became apparent to me that I had failed to correctly convey, to the readers of this blog, all that transpires between the stages of a bridge developing a split and me making it disappear.

“Oh, you’ll fill it up with a mixture of saw dust and wood glue and sand it smooth,” said my man.

Well, yes and no! Just the sanding process goes through six grits of sandpaper, for four of which I have to go hunting from shop to shop.

I could always order them online but then you never know what I will get in hand. In our dear country, all that can possibly go wrong – by accident or design – will go wrong. So, with that foremost in mind, I walk the lanes and by-lanes of La Touche Road, touch, feel, inspect and then buy the sandpaper I exactly need for the job.

So, why do bridges split?

It’s a long winding argument but let me go out on a limb and say it is a phenomenon seen more here – in the Indian Sub-Continent – than in the West. In the West, even the odd Martin, Gibson, Maton, etc and what have you, can develop a split in the bridge, but that – I daresay – is more due to a lack of care or maintenance by the owner.

In India, the cheap, sub-standard stuff imported from far eastern chop shops, contracted to maximise the number of instruments produced than the quality with which they are made, are to be blamed. Having said that, it is also true that we – the customers – must shoulder much of that blame. Why? We want the cheapest ‘guitar’, yet want it to sound like a Martin!

Should I say it? Alright I will! Either you can get quality or you can pay less for what you call an acoustic guitar. In the West, people understand workmanship and quality and are, thus, willing to pay for it. Here, in India there’s still some distance to go before we develop that awareness.

In India too, boutique builders are growing (thankfully), who build just eight to 10 instruments a year. But then, these instruments are hand-built and with quality materials and stringent quality checks.

So, your cheap ‘guitar’ has a bridge. But unfortunately, it is a cheap piece of wood dyed dark brown or black. You don’t expect it to withstand the 80kg tension that the strings are going to be pulling on it with?

Another scenario. The bridge has bridgepin holes drilled into them. However, the bridgepins are a tad tight in them. Instead of reaming the holes out a bit, strings are thrown on and bridgepins stuffed in. Who’s got the itme? Where the bridgepin hole was hardly accommodating a bridgepin, now it has to accommodate the pin as well as the string. There’s a crack coming: if not in a month’s time, certainly within the year!

Another scenario. You want to try a thicker set of strings. Excellent! But can your bridgepin holes withstand them?

Recently, this came in to be repaired.

This was the first glance. But as I looked at it, I noticed that the crack was, in fact, much larger.

If it hadn’t landed on my counter when it did, I would have given it another three-four months to survive. It was a Cort, a brand that has more minuses than pluses going for it in the lower range of its instruments.

So, out came the dyed saw dust-wood glue paste which filled up the crack. Once it was dry came the six grits of sandpaper that did the magic.

I surmised that the split in this bridge had been caused due to the bridgepins fitting a little too tightly in the holes. So, I took a reamer to it

And then I turned my attention to the fretboard and fretwires.

While removing the bridgepins, one came out like this

This couldn’t be used and since I had changed the saddle and the nut too (yeah, bone), which were now white, I swapped the old black pins for white ones.

With everything done and the guitar waiting to be picked up, I clicked this photo.

There are primarily two ways in which a log of wood is cut – flat sawn and quarter sawn – to be used for construction purposes or to build musical instruments.

In flat-sawing, the log is passed through the blade cutting off plank after plank without changing the orientation of the blade or log. The resulting planks have different annual ring orientations when viewed from the end. The relative angle of the rings to the surface goes from almost zero degrees in the external planks to almost ninety degrees at the core of the log.

 

Quarter-sawing gets its name from the fact that the log is first quartered lengthwise, resulting in wedges with a right angle ending at approximately the center of the original log. Each quarter is then cut separately by tipping it up on its point and sawing boards successively along the axis. That results in boards with the annual rings mostly perpendicular to the faces. Quarter-sawing yields boards with straight, striped grain lines, greater stability than flat sawn wood, and a distinctive ray and fleck figure. It also yields narrower boards, because the log is first quartered, which is more wasteful.

Because there is greater wastage when quarter-sawing, timber merchants – supplying to both builders and instrument makers – avoid quarter-sawing, or charge a higher rate for quarter-sawn timber. And when even instrument makers are targeting only the profit margin and not instrument quality, who cares about what wood is used and how it was sawn?

But then, when you are building a musical instrument, you want all wood on it to be quarter sawn and not just the main surface: for reasons of stability.

I  worked on my first ukulele, here in India, recently. It was a pretty, all-mahogany, satin-finish instrument.

But the reason why it was in was because not only was the bridge lifting, it was also cracked along the line linking the holes through which the strings were fed.

Unfortunately, some cheap wood dyed a dark colour had been used for both the fretboard and the bridge, and I am pretty sure it was a flat-sawn piece.

Now that the inevitable had taken place, it was my job to figure out how to make ‘The Li’l Guy’ whole again.

Before, each glue-up job, it is a good idea to do a dry-run of the clamping process. It throws up the problems that you are likely to face when you do the actual thing. Because it was a ukulele, the soundhole was too tiny to get regular guitar soundhole clamps to fit. The only option left was to clamp it from outside.

But in doing so, it was apparent that ‘The Li’l Guy’ would be unable to withstand the pressure of the clamps and would require support from within. There exist something called brace clamps, which can move up and down and support the back and top (from inside the instrument). However, they are a huge investment for a small fry like me.

After wracking my brains some, I came up with the idea of pieces of wood that would work as brace clamps.

Now, the problem arose of how to get it inside the instrument! Some more head-scratching and I drilled a hole in the centre of each piece of wood, put in a screw, and holding its head with a needle-nose pair of pliers, stood them up on either end (approximately) of where the bridge was.

With my handy-dandy brace clamps in place, I pushed glue under the bridge, where it was lifting, and where it had cracked, and clamped the entire bridge.

And while it was clamped I decided to pay some attention to the fretboard and fretwires. The fretboard looked like this when I started.

Midway, it looked like this

Can you see the colour disappearing? And by the time I finished, it looked like this

Clean, oiled, though lighter in colour, and fretwires burnished.

48 hours later, the clamps came off and ‘The Li’l Guy’ was healed. Since it was a satin finish, I decided to rub some oil on the instrument to make it look better. The effects were very encouraging.

Stringing it up was another pain, but eventually, I got it done.

ADDENDUM: The latest news from the owner is that string tension broke the bridge again from the same spot, like earlier. I have requested the owner to bring it in and I will have a look at it afresh.

 

 

 

Gentlemen, when you get a suit stitched (yes, it is always advisable to get one stitched than to get a readymade one; ladies, think of a Western pant suit), the tailor will make a rough stitch and call you for a trial. At the trial, he will tuck in the garment at places, open the rough seam a bit at places, all this despite having taken measurements before.

And yet, what might look good on you, you may not be comfortable in! And so, the tailor tries to hit a mark where not only do you look good in the suit but are also comfortable in it. And that is exactly why you should get a suit stitched instead of picking one up off the rack.

What that ‘trial’ does, is give the tailor, and you, the perfect picture of how the garment is going to end up once it is finished. Then, when you don the finished suit, it is very, very rare that you don’t like how you look and feel in it.

Acoustic guitar nuts and saddles are pretty much the same story. Every nut and saddle slot on every guitar is slightly different. Nine out of 10 times, readymade nuts and saddles do not fit them properly, and need to be worked on for them to fit a slot.

It takes a lot of time and effort, and that is why most acoustic guitar repairpersons prefer to work with blank bone pieces to fashion nuts and saddles out of. If one has to put in almost the same effort and time, one might as well make a nut or a saddle from a blank piece and get the perfect fit, rather than fashioning one from a pre-cut nut or saddle and getting a passably good one. I, too, am slowly veering round to that view.

This post is an effort to make you understand that when I write in my posts that ‘I threw out the plastic nut and saddle and replaced them with bone elements’, the process is seldom as simple. It takes a lot of measurement, some cutting, much sanding and filing before a bone nut and saddle sit in their slot to my satisfaction.

Often, I have had to throw the bone piece that I had spent a couple of hours working on because I overcut, overfiled or oversanded. Time, effort, money, material, all wasted!  Result: Start again from scratch!

So, there was this Fender that came in recently with the plastic nut and saddle in bad shape.

I threw them out and the process of fitting in bone replacements is documented in the following photographs

In between the second and the third photographs came all the painstakingly slow process of sanding and filing. When I tried fitting in the the finished nut, it was short by about a millimetre. I made up for it by dipping the ends of it in superglue and dipping the wet nut-ends into bone dust. 

Another round of sanding and filing followed before the nut was finally seated to my satisfaction.

Here is the finished piece, with work in progress on the fretboard and the fretwires.

With the strings on, it was a whole new guitar. Meanwhile, take a look at the saddle end of it

And, of course, the compulsory long shot

Going back to the start, I was pleasantly surprised to see how the strings had been wound on the string posts: Exactly how it should be done, though I would suggest a turn less on each of the wound strings.

As for me making nuts out of bone blanks, I start the learning process today. First nut out on a guitar which I fashion from a bone blank will be in the New Year!
So, I have some time on my hands.

So, what do you do when you get an instrument in this condition: The owner doesn’t wish to spend too much, is quite alright with however it looks, but wishes for it to play correct?

For the record, it was a well-loved Fender (FA)100, one that had managed to gather some dust as well.

Besides the ‘big problem’,

it had other issues as well.

The nut and the saddle had seen better days and were in dire need of replacement

The bridge was lifting everywhere along the far extremity

as a result of which, the action on the instrument was a mile high.

I worked first on the bridge, glueing and clamping the bridge tight to the top. Why I chose to do it first out of all the problems, don’t ask. It just seemed the right thing to do!

And while I had to leave the instrument clamped for a few days, separately, I worked on the nut and saddle. Needless to say they were both plastic and the bone I replaced them with would serve the owner much better.

I then looked at how best to close the big mouth the instrument had opened up. While much of it fell into place under force, there was the battered section of the top that refused to sit in place. Different methods employed to straighten the battered area, to make it sit in line with the top failed.

I stuck what was willing to be stuck and filled the rest with thick viscosity cyanoacrylate glue. Any glue which is thick will take that much longer to cure and this was no different.

After it had cured completely, it was as hard as a rock and the instrument was structurally sound again.

I admit that this is not a very flattering image but I swear, in person, the guitar looked better. In the meantime, the glue under the bridge had cured too and the clamps were pulled off.

All that remained to be done was to pop in the nut and saddle, throw on a fresh set of strings, and…LET THE PARTY BEGIN!

P.S.: And I hope I don’t have to write each time that I cleaned the fretboard, nourished it and the bridge with oil, burnished the fretwires, etc? Take it for granted that I did!

We all know what fret buzz is but many times it is caused by a raised fretwire. It isn’t as if the fretwire is ready to pop out of its slot but just that its end (usually, either) leaves the slot and rises – just a hair, and that is enough to give rise to a pesky fret buzz.

It usually happens at times of the year when it is extremely dry or terribly humid. In our (Lucknow) district and surrounding areas, these times are March to May (dry) and June to September-October (humid).

How does it happen? When there is too much humidity in the atmosphere, your acoustic guitar soaks it in. The wood on the fretboard swells and as it does so, the fretwire becomes loose at one end (sometimes both) and rises, giving rise to fret buzz.

At times of the year when it is very dry, the fretboard wood loses its moisture, shrinks and pushes one end (sometimes both) of the fretwire out of its slot, thus, giving rise to fret buzz.

While many times ‘tapping’ a fretwire into its slot helps, many times it doesn’t. Then, one just has to level, crown and polish that one offending fretwire (and possibly its immediate neighbours). 

One such guitar came to me recently. When the owner called and told me that he had a ‘PRS’, I was mentally prepared to work on an electric. When the instrument was brought to me, it was an acoustic!

Yeah! I had never heard of a PRS acoustic!

After I had got over my surprise, I loosened the strings and tried tapping the offendig fretwire (12th or 13th) in. When it refused to get back in its slot, I had to file, crown and polish it.

And that was the job done. Apologies. In my surprise, I forgot to take photographs of the instrument body – both before and after, but it was a nice sounding guitar.

This Washburn was in recently for a set-up and the owner wanted to get the action reduced a bit (and the headstock photograph is the ‘after’ shot. Forgot to take a ‘before’ shot!!!)

The action was high. At the first fret, on the bass side, it was more than 0.035″! How do you measure with a feeler gauge? Keep using incrementally thicker ‘feelers’ and stop when one pushes a string up. The ‘feeler’ just before the last one gives you the action of the string at the fret.

And there was this problem. The plastic saddle had taken as much tension as it could take and had buckled under pressure. And if you think these were heavy strings, you’re wrong.

So, naturally, I had to pull the saddle and nut and put in a solid bone nut and saddle.

If I remember correctly, this instrument was just a couple of years old, which the owner had been playing constantly. It was strange, then, that he had not noticed this

This beautifully figured piece of wood is actually not a piece of wood, it is Richlite. Look it up!

 https://lkoguitargarage.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1692&action=edit

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not blaming the crack on Richlite; it happens to the best of rosewoods and ebonies. In this particular case, either the bridgepins were a little too thick, or, the bridgepin holes were a little too small.

Even the fretboard was Richlite.

But, thankfully, the neck was very straight.

I began work by attending to the crack on the bridge, filling, sanding and finishing. When I was done, even I was surprised with the results

Almost no trace of there ever having been a crack! To its credit, Richlite sands even better than wood!

With the new nut and saddle in place and with a fresh set of strings thrown on, here’s how this boomer turned out

And here’s another look at the repaired bridge. Boy, I’m still surprised!

 

Stylistic elements are great brand identifiers. Take the Gibson headstock. You can recognise a Gibson headstock from miles off, but there’s something about it that makes it snap exactly at the point where the headstock meets the neck. Yet, Gibson refuses to modify the design or incorporate something in the area that would prevent its headstocks from breaking.

Another example is where Fender places the strap button on its acoustic instruments.

Fender owners and particularly those that play the instrument standing up, will concur that while playing, their instrument has a tendancy to fall forward. That is due to the placement of the strap button – right on the shoulder of the guitar closest to the player.

I am sure that the fact has been brought to the attention of Fender but since it has become a stylistic thing, the company is sticking on with it.

Not on the shoulder, not even on the heel but the ideal placement for the strap button is on the opposite face of the heel, ie, the face of the heel farthest from you when you hold the guitar in playing position. Placing the strap button here ensures that the strap, passing over the heel as it rises to lie on your shoulder, locks the instrument against your belly.

This instrument came to me recently for a set-up and I explained my strap button theory to the owner. He confessed that indeed, his guitar had a tendancy to fall forward, and agreed when I suggested that the strap button be moved to its rightful place.

But that would come later.

First, I decided to focus on something that was marring the overall look of the guitar.

Some wood plaster, some paint and some colourless lacquer and

it looked much better. At least the chip would no longer draw your eye to it!

Next, it was the turn of the spot on the shoulder of the guitar, from where I removed the strap button. More wood plaster, paint and a drop of super glue.

Certainly not an invisible repair but structurally sound and something that would prevent moisture from getting into the open wood.

Next came the strap buttons (yes, plural). The one placed at the end block was not of a very good quality and had certainly seen better days. It made little sense to have a shiny, new strap button on the neck heel and an old one at the end block (unless one was sentimentally attached to the strap button).

So, I changed that

while at the shoulder, I placed this

It was now the turn to swap out the plastic/micarta/nubone saddle and nut with pure bone elements. The sound that you get out of cattle bone, no man-made substance can provide. Buffalo horn, too, falls in the same category of great, naturally occurring nut and saddle material.

Action was measured, noted, measurements of both the old and new elements were jotted down, some substraction, and once the magic numbers were in hand, the bone elements were dialled down to near perfect dimensions.

With the strings off, I had access to the fretboard and because it looked as dry as a twig, I nourished it with some love potion and shone up the fretwires. Also, I rubbed some of the potion on the bridge to make it a little prettier.

And those are the bone nut and saddle in place you see in the photographs.

A fresh set of strings and the beauty was ready to go home with a lovely, low action!

 

 

When you buy a readymade shirt, it is quite possible that the sleeves are slightly short, or slightly long, the collar is tight or loose, or overall shirt length is a little too much, or a little less. However, when a tailor stitches your shirt, such problems can almost never occur because the tailor stitches the shirt to YOUR dimensions.

Acoustic guitars – of any brand – are made much in the same manner and unless they are ‘tailor-made’ to suit you and your playing style, they can never give the output that they are capable of, and you can never enjoy them completely.

Once an acoustic guitar is set up, it can dramatically improve its volume, sustain and ease of playing. Here, I might add that my experience has been that, after a set-up, generally, a big-name instrument improves by leaps and bounds in comparison to a not-so-known instrument. That said, it does not mean that only high-end instruments need a set-up.

The bottom line is that a set-up does always help an instrument play better.

As an example, here is an Epiphone Hummingbird (a lesser creature than its famed sibling, the Gibson Hummingbird), which I had the pleasure of working on recently.

It was a well-kept instrument: not too old, but it was clean and had a hard case to live in.

The instrument was in for a set-up but I also managed to convince the owner to swap the plastic(-like) material nut and saddle with bone elements.

But as I pulled out the saddle and lifted the piezo element, there was something hiding there that should not have been there in the first place. It was removed and its thickness was added to the bone saddle.

As I went about cleaning the instrument, I heard the odd but familiar rattle inside it. I turned it over and shook the ‘rattle’ out of it.

   

I cleaned up the fretboard some, oiled it and polished up the fretwires

Strung up with strings chosen by the owner, I gave them a stretch with the ‘String Strecha’!

So, in this particular case, what a set-up did was enhance the existing sound quality of the guitar while maintaining a good, low but clean action. In the process, it also got its fretboard cleaned and nourished, and got its fretwires polished to a pretty sheen.

And that was a wrap on this beauty!

 

If you wish to use/enjoy something for long, then regular maintenance becomes a must. And if that statement is true, why should (acoustic) guitars be any different? With regular maintenance you will realise that an average guitar can perform well for longer, and a high-end instrument will last you a lifetime and more.

Sadly, in all the years that I have been working on acoustic guitars, I can actually count on my fingers, the number of instruments that I found ‘maintained’. All it takes is everyday tools, a few clean rags of an old t-shirt and some warm water.

This guitar – a well-made laminate – came to me for ‘servicing’ with many minor issues.

It was evident that this was the first set-up that the instrument was going to get of its life. I noticed that care had not been taken while winding strings

Care had also not been taken to ensure that the bridgepins go into the same hole from which they came out of. This often damages bridgepins and most times you will find that they sit deeper in their holes, which can be very troublesome while changing strings – as was the case with this instrument.

The white specs that you see on the bridge is evidence of my efforts to extricate the pins from the holes! They did come out after much persuasion. These would have to go and new bridgepins that fit the holes properly would need to be put in their place.

The tuning keys were loose as were the nuts holding the tuning posts

The plastic nut and saddle would have to be replaced with bone elements.

Also, the instrument required deep cleaning and a fresh set of strings.

I got started with the new set of bridgepins, shaping them so that string ball-ends didn’t catch on them.

Next, I cleaned up the entire guitar with a bit of warm water, wiping and rubbing as I went. But while I moved the guitar, it gave off strange noises of something moving inside it. I shook the guitar upside down, hoping to bring out of it whatever was living inside. I was half expecting a living creature but thankfully, it was only these.

For the umpteenth time, a dessicant (silica gel), ladies and gentlemen, is only meant for all-wood instruments and that too ONLY in months when the humidity goes above 70%. If you own a solid-wood instrument and live in a high-humidity area, you may require a dessicant to live inside your guitar; everybody else, go easy on the dessicants and keep them as far away from your instruments as possible.

Funny though, the owner never missed his picks! 

The fretboard was up next. I deep-cleaned it, burnished the fretwires and oiled the fretboard. But it was the neck which was a pleasant surprise. With the strings off it, it was as straight as an arrow – just like how I like it. Once you string it and tune up the strings, the strings will pull a bit of relief into the neck, and that is all the relief required to play without a buzz.

Up next were the nut and saddle. I measured the old nut and saddle and replicated the dimensions in the bone ones. It worked like a charm and the guitar played beautifully.

The owner was happy with the results, though I missed taking the customary final shot of the finished work! 

So, what all does maintenance (at string change) include? Here’s a checklist:

• cleaning all such guitar areas where you can’t reach when the strings are on
• cleaning the fretboard and fretwires
• cleaning the inside of the guitar
• giving the entire guitar body a good rub and polish (if it has a gloss finish)
• checking the hardware on the headstock and snugging it up (tightening it just beyond finger-tight)   
•  stringing the guitar ensuring that wound strings (E, A, D & G) get just 2.5 – 3 turns on the post and unwound strings (B & e) get 4 -5 turns.
• in electro-acoustic instruments, check battery periodically for leakage, etc. Snug up jack input sockets.

Do this and you will certainly feel the difference in the way your guitar responds to your touch.

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

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

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

There were a few problems that the instrument had.

The bridge was lifting (can you see it?)

The binding was coming loose around the waist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And those are the new nut and saddle in place.

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

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

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

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

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

This guitar came to me

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

and it had a rather neat fretboard.

 

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

 

and the nut and saddle had seen better days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Take for example this guitar,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, he agreed to my proposition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

And after the various grits of sandpaper had worked their magic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Sometimes, the most innocuous of tasks can be a real pain in the butt, making you really sweat and hyperventilate. Take this 12-string guitar for example. It came to me for a bone nut and saddle, new strings and a set-up. Nothing more than a couple of hours’ job. But…

Though a laminate, it wasn’t all too badly constructed and the little touches  – the tuning machines used, the bound fretboard, the soundhole rosette, the contrast, triple-laminate centre seam on the back – showed that care had been taken to make the instrument look and perform good.

For a company, formed as recent as in 1997, which designs its instruments in Alexandria, NSW, Australia and gets them made in China, it’s not doing too badly. However, it has to collar its Chinese manufacturer(s) and tell him/her/them that cutting corners in production and using incorrect material(s) will not do.

On this instrument, there were a couple of minor irritants. If I would have otherwise given it 8.5/10, these ensured that the instrument went home with just an above-average 6/10.

One of these irritants was the placement of the tail block strap button.

While reputed brands will take the care to ensure that the hole for the strap button is drilled ‘EXACTLY’ in the centre (along the top-to-bottom axis) of the end plate (where the two sides come together at the tail block of the guitar), it was more than evident that in this case, that hole had been drilled carelessly.

Here are a few examples from Google images:

I might clarify that it is not a structural issue, and neither does it affect the functionality of the strap button, but don’t aesthetics count for anything? And these, small little things, differentiate great guitars from good guitars.

Even the placement of the neck strap button was incorrect.

But this I am willing to let pass because it is the ‘done thing’ among many manufacturers. Second-hand knowledge about ‘how it is usually done’ and not bothering to read, understand and change ‘traditional’ methods is to be blamed for almost all ‘wrong’ practices in almost every sphere of life.

But, it was nothing short of a wonder that the instrument had two strap buttons instead of just the one at the bottom end of the guitar!

However, the biggest irritant was the nut! That it was plastic is not even worth commenting but that it had been super-glued in place, raised my hackles.

Changing nuts and saddles is my bread and butter, and all it takes is a firm hammer tap to knock a nut out of its slot. After usual methods failed, I knew that super glue had been used to hold the nut in place, drawing from me a string of abuses!

There is actually nothing wrong in using super glue to hold a nut in place, till the time comes to replace it. How do you get it out then? I had to chisel this one out!

And even after I managed to dislodge its firm grip, some part of it refused to leave the slot.

Welcome chisel! My predicament was to take off all the plastic without touching any of the wood. You take away even a bit of wood and the slot will never be a clean, smooth surface on which the nut can sit, affecting sound transfer. For the best sound transfer, you need a perfectly straight and smooth base of the nut and a perfectly straight and smooth slot floor on which it would sit. With the two surfaces completely in contact, there is no loss of sound anywhere. And the same logic applies to saddles and saddle slots.

So, why do manufacturers use super glue for nuts? Because it is cheaper, quicker and easier! Who cares about the guitar tech who has to deal with it down the line? And thus, what would have been a 5-minute job, ended up taking a couple of hours!

Thankfully, the saddle had not been glued in!

A few mandatory measurements, some sanding, some test-fitting, some more sanding, and the new bone nut and saddle were ready to be installed.

Here is the new bone nut and saddle with the old strings.

 

You may notice something odd about the bridgepins. These are (chrome-coloured) brass bridgepins, installed after the owner okayed them. While they raise the aesthetic quotient of the instrument (considering all the chrome hardware on it), they also magnify its treble response.

Before I put on a fresh set of strings on it, all the small but important stuff had to be taken care of.

The headstock was cleaned and the hardware on it was tightened and polished

The fretboard was cleaned, the fretwires burnished and the fretboard and bridge oiled.

Then it was the turn of the neck-heel strap button to be shifted to its ‘rightful’ place. While I was doing that, it seemed like a good idea to me to put in swanky new mushroom-head strap buttons instead of the cheap thingys that the manufacturer had saddled the owner with – both on the heel and at the tail end of the guitar. The hole that remained on the heel cap was filled and I tried my best to camouflage it too (forgot to take a pic of that).

Putting on fresh strings was all that remained to be done, and with a 12-string, its double the time and effort. But it was all well worth it for the owner was more than satisfied!