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A few months back I had worked on a CF Martin guitar.

https://lkoguitargarage.com/?s=martin&submit=Search

It came back to me sometime back with this

Around the same time (from a couple of weeks before to a couple of weeks after this one returned to me), I received umpteen number of calls from clients and those that knew of me, about strange buzzes that they had never experienced before. And they were all over the neck.

My mind immediately went to what the humidity was.

The top figure on this digital meter is the temperature and the smallest numbers give the time. The figure on the bottom right of the screen of this ‘clock’ is the humidity. At 30%, the humidity was way below what your acoustic guitar – any acoustic guitar – would be comfortable with.

At this level of humidity, cracks are bound to appear, seams will open, and buzzes will appear out of the blue. Left untreated, the cracks and open seams will destroy your guitar, though string buzzes will generally disappear, given time and once the humidity climbs towards normality.

In case of the instrument in front of me, a serious drink of water was needed. It was past the stage of humidifiers. I took off the strings and placed a small plastic container full of water inside the guitar. Then, I covered up the soundhole with a plastic such that no water would escape into the atmosphere, but whatever the water cup would lose, would be what the instrument sucked up.

It stayed like that for five days, before I lifted to check the water level. Some water had disappeared. I refilled the cup and closed up the soundhole for another five days. Meanwhile, the crack looked like this. To my eyes it seemed to have closed up some.

After a few more days, it looked even better, or so it seemed

Around the 12th day, I was thrilled to see the crack all but closed

Now was the time to attack. I poured out the glue along the seam and pumped it in till I could see a decent glueline on the underside of the top. In February, this year, I realised that I did not have really long clamps that would be needed should a guitar with an open centre seam turn up. I bought two 24″ clamps expecting a guitar to turn up and within a couple of months, it happened.

I pulled out the clamps and put them to work

For 48 hours they continued to apply pressure, holding the seam together. When I took them off, the seam looked good but the guitar was far from being completely healed. It would need to be cleated with small pieces of wood placed proportionately on the underside of the top, along the fault line, such that they would hold it together, not allowing the two halves to separate EVER again.

I wish I had taken an after picture but this photograph should work as a representative image of where exactly the cleats went on the underside of the guitar. And to hold them in place while the glue dried

24 hrs later, it was probably as good as new. But there was only one way of finding out: STRING ‘ER UP!!!!!!!!!!

The owner had provided these lovely (and expensive) strings to go on his guitar.

And, there she be…in all her radiant glory

It’s been more than a month since the guitar returned to its owner. I haven’t heard from him which could only be a good thing!!

Another one of those instruments that was stood up in a corner and forgotten about (I’m guessing)! It had a host of issues to be dealt with.

FREE ADVICE: Whenever you know that you will not be playing your instrument for the next three weeks or more, tune down your acoustic guitar half a step. Half a step? If you play your guitar at standard tuning (A440), tune it down to D#. A full step down (D) won’t harm either. Remember, you are tuning down and not letting the strings flop around on the fretboard!

When you tune down, the strings exert lesser force, thus, lesser stress all around: on the neck, the bridge, the heel of the guitar, etc, etc. Further, tuning down mitigates the propensity of the instrument to belly up behind the bridge.

Even if you remember that it has been one-and-a-half months and you haven’t played your guitar and you haven’t tuned it down either, not a problem; you can do it then and stop further damage from taking place.

So, all the problems that I listed above in my advice to you, were clearly visible on this some-pale wood-guitar.

The bridge was lifting right across its length,

it had even developed a crack,

the heel joint was coming apart,

the fretwires bore the usual signs of having been played, and there was some fret-sprout too (when the ends of the fretwires seemingly grow beyond the fretboard. Actually, fretwires never grow; the fretboard contracts after losing moisture and staying dry a day too long). But it was a surprise seeing fret-sprout on this fretboard, for it was made out of artificial material and not wood, which led me to conclude that it was a sloppy manufacturing job.

The hardware on the headstock, though functional, had rusted while a few of the nuts had had their threads all chewed up, rendering them incapable of tightening up properly.

There was serious bellying too in the area beyond the bridge: a natural consequence of the strings trying to pull the bridge off the top, due to which the bridge was lifting too.

Usually, when there is bellying, the bridgeplate – sitting under the top and right under the bridge – is to be blamed. Either its dimensions are inadequate or the material used to make it. In this guitar’s case, it was both.

So inadequate in size was the bridgeplate that even the string holes were barely touching it. Ideally, you would want the string holes to pass right through the middle of the plate so that the ball ends of the strings can rest on it, helping in sound transfer, while the bridgeplate counters their pull.

I started right here. The right way to correct the bridgeplate problem would have been to pull it out and replace it with a proper-sized, proper-wood plate. But that would have been a very expensive and laborious operation. I decided to add some wood behind the existing bridgeplate so that at least the string holes would no longer remain on the top.

I glued in a strip of wood and clamped it down with a block of wood over it and another block of wood on the top, to keep everything level.

While that job was left standing for a good 24 hrs, I worked on the headstock and put in shiny new nuts and washers that worked.

Next, I worked on the fretboard

After 24 hrs, the clamp was removed and I began work on glueing the bridge down properly, as it should be.

The second photograph is always a joy to see in any glue-up job: glue oozing out evenly, all across. It shows that you covered all corners properly. Again a wait of 24 hrs for the glue to cure.

And while I waited, I turned my attention to the heel of the instrument. I cleaned out the opening with some light sandpaper and shot glue into it. Then I clamped it down and left that too for 24 hrs.

While all that dried, I sized up the bone nut and saddle that would go in place of the plastic elements.

It was now time to take off all the clamps to see how things had turned out. Everything turned out satisfactorily. With that I turned to repairing the crack in the bridge.

Saw dust, wood glue and sandpaper!

Not my best repair, but it did the job. Usually, after I am done, you can’t make out if there was ever a crack in the bridge! Here you can see a hair of a crack. Strangely, it was very smooth to the feel.

Now that the bridge was glued, as was the crack in it, it was finally time to drill out the holes in the bridge. Remember, we had added wood on the underside?

A bit of oil to it and the fretboard just to dress it up a bit.

And yeah, those are the new bone nut and saddle!

Here’s a view of the bridge glued down

Before I strung up the guitar with these

I did take the time to shape the bridgepins.

With this shape, the ball ends of the strings never snag on the ends of the pins but slip up to sit snug against the bridgeplate.

And there she is, finished and ready to rock again!

I would like to leave you with a shot of this little decorative piece that the owner has put on: very pretty, wouldn’t you say?

CAUTION: This post is a rant. Those not wishing to suffer it, stay away!

Some time back, this Hertz came to me with a lot of small problems. To be fair, it was not a badly built instrument even though it was a laminate.

The nut slots were shot – much deeper than you would like them to be, while the saddle too had enough wear on it, calling for a change.

The fretboard was too dry while the fretwires showed all the signs of rigorous playing.

And there were telltale signs that the guitar had taken a bad knock on its headstock, somewhere down the line.

I began with taking the strings off and pulling out the saddle. But what did I see?

Then I knocked the nut out.

As you can see, it took a bit of the nut slot wood with it. Ah, well! That is what you get when manufacturers don’t wish to invest in proper wood glue and trust a five rupee super glue to do the job!

And because I had the strings off it, I gave the hardware on the headstock all the attention it needed.

I went about shaping and sanding the nut and saddle till I had them where I needed them.

The set on the right is the fresh, bone pair. The other set is what came off the guitar.

But there was something not quite right about the bridge. That patch of black (can you see it?) was disconcerting. What, I could not place my finger on it, but I knew there was something mighty wrong.

Whateva! I moved on to the fretboard, cleaned it, mummified the board and worked on the fretwires, making the divots disappear and making the wires shine like new. While at it, I also conditioned the fretboard.

That done, I was ready to install the nut and the saddle. I smoothed out the nut slot and glued in the nut. And just as I was about to slip the saddle in, I saw it. A-ha!!!

Not a very good photograph, but do you see the round dent in front of the two centre bridgepin holes?

I called the owner and asked him if his bridge had lifted at any point. He replied in the affirmative saying he had his instrument fixed at this huge showroom in the vicinity of Fun mall, because the owner was known to him.

I explained to him that his acquaintance had screwed him in his bridge and to hide the screw had used some kind of an epoxy. I looked further and there were all the telltale signs of a sloppy effort at a repair.

And here begins my rant!

After you buy a vehicle – two-wheeler or four-wheeler – do you go back to the agency for repairs? Not even to avail of the free vehicle services do you go back to the agency. So when you have a problem in your instrument, why do you go to the shop to get it addressed?

Shops know just one thing: how to sell the ware in their establishment. Ask them to show you a solid top guitar and I guarantee you that eight out of 10 salespersons/shopkeepers won’t know what you’re asking for – at least that is the case in our dear city.

All shopkeepers know is how to change strings (which you, as a guitar player, should, in any case, know) and how to work the truss rod (to lower/raise your action – for which the truss rod SHOULD NEVER be used). Read this:

https://lkoguitargarage.com/?s=run+if+you+see+your+guitar&submit=Search).

If they know any more than that it is to their credit. They pass on their limited knowledge to the salesman, who with his limited understanding, understands whatever he does understand. With that limited knowledge, you expect him to rectify the problem in your instrument – one for which you probably saved a couple of years?

In the three years that I have been back in the city, I have seen countless ‘repairs’ that made my job worse, making it cost more for you.

The hacks that abound in Aminabad/La Touche Road may have a cheap and a quick fix but if your guitar is a prized possession, or you are sentimentally attached to it, believe me, when it comes time to ‘really’ repair the instrument, it will be double, even triple the investment.

I recall a guitar that had come to me. It had a near perpendicular break at the headstock and despite my best efforts, I could not put it together (a la Humpty Dumpty!).

A few days later, the owner called me up to inform me that someone in Aminabad had fixed his guitar for him. I was happy for the young man but the more I think about it, the more I worry. If I could not set it right (not that I am the last word on guitar repair), how did this person join such a break?

I am guessing epoxy or super glue. Both of these set very fast, very firm; the flip side: both are more brittle than a dried twig in summer! The least stress and the break will come alive along the fault line. For the sake of the owner of that guitar I pray: a) that he was not sentimentally attached to that instrument, and b) that it was not epoxy or super glue that his guitar was fixed with.

Epoxy/super glue are great glues – for furniture. For musical instruments wood glue and hide glue is the way to go, for musical instruments vibrate, move. Wood and hide glue have a tendency to move along with the movement, the former two cannot.

PLEASE…you’re all educated young men and women, and your smartphone that you flaunt is not just for taking photographs and sending WhatsApp messages! You can even use it to browse the Net, read about things, watch videos of how things are done. You can even search for a trusted guitar tech/luthier. Find that person!

Your association with the shop from where you bought your guitar is over, unless you see a problem in your guitar within a week of you buying it.

I am breathing easier now, and so I return to what I was doing.

The bump on the headstock I repaired with a little wood putty. If it had been a larger break in the binding, I could have even put in a replacement piece of binding but for a little piece like that, it was too much work.

The saddle was set and the guitar strung up. It played well with a comfortable action. I just hope the owner was happy with how I returned his instrument.

The owner also said that there was a problem with the pick-up. I pulled out both units and checked the connections – all solid, and I could not find the problem.

I returned the guitar to him apologising that I could not find the issue.

 

 

Two in two weeks! Two Corts, different models, same problem, same owner! Fancy that!

So, this week I have for you this

The owner told me about the intonation problem and again I looked straight at the saddle. That seemed fine, as did the nut, though regular wear and tear had caused the strings to sit far deeper in their slots than I would have liked.

I decided to change the nut and saddle, use bone, in the hope that the intonation on the instrument would get sorted with new, harder stuff.

So, I cleaned out the nut slot, cleaned and oiled the fretboard, gave the fretwires a good rub.

Then I turned my attention to the nut and saddle. Some measurements and more shaving ensured that I got the saddle and nut to the dimensions I wanted them in. Both sat as snug as a bug in a rug.

However, when I strung up the instrument and checked the intonation, it was off by some distance. Again I pulled out my trusted file and went to work on the saddle. After much tweaking, the instrument intonated to within permissible limits.

Cleaned, polished and strung up, this too was a beautiful instrument.

The abalone binding along the top and around the soundhole, did really make it look special.

 

UPDATE: The owner has called to say that the action on the instrument has risen and he will be bringing it in for me to take a look at.
I am keeping my fingers crossed! 

 

 

I have seen enough Cort guitars to be convinced that the company employs interior designers rather than luthiers to build their instruments! The instruments are extremely high on aesthetics and visual appeal, and by comparison, very average, when it comes to performance.

Take a look at some of the appointments on this little body guitar that came to me recently.

• open-back butterbean ‘GROVER’ tuners with a ratio of 1:18. Though the tuning machines proudly proclaim ‘Grover’, I am not very sure if it is the same company. Why I doubt they were Grovers is because the real ones would never have their coating peel like these ones in just five or six years. 50 or 60 years, maybe!  

• lovely two-piece solid Mahogany back (and sides) with a rope-design binding in between

• celluloid tortoise shell-bound headstock and fretboard (it actually lit up each time it caught the light).  You want more?

It had a beautiful Venetian cutaway, a Fishman Presys – Sonicore pickup on board and a solid Red Cedar top.

This instrument was a L500F NAT, a model which the company has since discontinued (I tried searching for it on the Cort site but could not find it). Small of body, I guessed that it was more of a finger-stylist’s instrument of choice.

Wonder of wonders, it belonged to an accomplished performing/recording artist, capable of creating magic with it through his fingers.

His complaint was that the guitar had very poor intonation. As soon as he said that, my eyes went to the saddle.

Can you see the problem? Let me amplify the image a bit.

Do you see it now? That piece of paper stuck in front of the saddle meant that the saddle was falling over: too thin for the slot. Yeah! Sure enough!

 

I told the young man that I will change the saddle and nut, put in bone elements and everything would be fine. 

Later, as I went about working on the instrument, I pulled out the saddle, lifted the piezo element, and…

…I could have jumped as if I had seen a snake hiding under it. I tell you, the logic of it beats me completely. You use a piece of plastic for a saddle and that too you need to shim up with whatever you can lay your hands on???

As I gave the instrument a once over, I noticed that the first five fretwires were a bit munched.

I started from here. I ‘mummified’ the first six frets 

smoothed out the first five fretwires, threw in a new bone saddle and nut cleaned up the guitar and…I have no photographs to show!!!

Somehow, the memory card on my phone went on the blink and never captured any of the following photos!

With the new bone saddle in place, I checked the intonation, but strangely, it was more than a few cents off. I’ve never had that problem with a saddle that I replaced, and now that I was encountering it, it meant just one thing: the bridge was not in the right place.

What had to be done then, was to manually file the saddle and get the intonation within a couple of cents of acceptable limits.

 

This pretty Cort electric landed on my counter recently. It was a lovely flamed-maple top, painted aquamarine.

If that wasn’t enough, someone had painted an exquisitely detailed dragon on it in acrylic paint, raising the prettiness quotient many times over. That being said, it is also true that in the face of such efforts, deep-cleaning of the instrument becomes near impossible, or one risks erasing someone’s creativity.

Thus, we would have to make do with just brushing off the dust from recesses and corners.

Over the phone, the owner said that he wanted me to work on the fretwires as he had much difficulty in bending notes. No problemo!

Also, there was a chip of paint and lacquer missing along the lower bout extremity on the bass side. He asked me if I could fill that too. I made it clear to him that filling up the missing lacquer won’t be that difficult but he shouldn’t expect that it would be an invisible fill. Lacquer dries and shrinks at its own pace, bringing to nought the best colour-match efforts.

But first the fretwires.

The first picture is of fretwires 1 to 5, while the second photograph captures fretwires further up the neck (sorry for the crappy pix!). In the captures, you can see very minor divots on the fretwires. What else do you see?

I’ll tell you what I saw. The surface of the fretboard was as if a naughty dog had played fetch over not-so-dry cement. Electric or acoustic, I had never seen a fretboard that chewed up. What’s more, it was nothing like the marks usually caused by nails digging into the fretboard, but there were strange undulations in the wood. Try and picture a molten metal fretboard that was shaken in the process of cooling. The wood on this fretboard looked something like that.

I spent an hour scraping and scratching before I could somewhat level the fretboard. Even then, not all of the ‘craters’ could be completely removed. 

Levelling, crowning and polishing of the fretwires was carried out in that order. But first, the fretboard had to be ‘mummified’!

Seven grits of sandpaper, some chrome polish, a little help from my friend

and after the first few passes the fretwires looked like this

Another hour later, the board looked sharp and ready for some slides, some plunges and some bends.

When the owner came to pick up the guitar, I caught hold of his fretting hand and checked his nails (I actually did!!). Believe it or not, if the nails had been any shorter, he would be missing a digit on each of the four fingers of his left hand!

As far as the chip in the paint was concerned, the surge in Covid-19 cases has ensured that the owner stays holed up in his house, as I do in mine. But that is a job to be done: watch out for it.

 

Just a quick one this week to keep your mind off everything going on around us – for a little while at least!

I have often made my distaste apparent about locally made instruments selling in the range of Rs 3.5 – 5.5K. However, I have also said that there are exceptions to my generalisation. I see them often enough: laminate guitars, unheard names, but they look alright and play alright.

One such instrument came to me recently with the youngster who brought it complaining of how the action of the instrument was increasing steadily. Alarm bells go off in my head as soon as I hear that and sure enough, as I checked, I found that the bridge on the instrument was lifting.

That is just a little slip of paper and the mark on it tells you how much it goes under the bridge at that point. That was approximately the average right along the bridge.

Also, in the photograph above, I wonder if you will be able to make out, the saddle is trying to fall over: a sure sign that the saddle slot is much broader than the saddle itself.

So, the first job was to try and see if I could get glue under the bridge without having to take the bridge off completely. Of course, the proper way to do it would have been to take off the bridge, clean the two mating surfaces and then glue the bridge back on. But that is serious money.

So that it was easy on the youngster, I decided to try pushing glue underneath the bridge. But this method is a hit-and-miss thing: it could work, or it may come apart in a couple of months, at which point the original method would need to be employed (thus, causing double the damage to the pocket). Here is the baby, all glued and clamped.

And, of course, something needed to be done about the tilting saddle. Why not throw it and the nut out and replace them with bone elements? Sure!

But as I pulled out the saddle, I saw something.

Yeah that plastic strip was hiding under the saddle.

Measuring the saddle, I had this much to take off

The nut, however, seemed to sit in its slot just fine (longer by a hair though).

That done, I turned my attention to the tuning machines. I tightened them and then gave them a rub with some ‘love potion’!

They turned out like this

And before I strung this baby up, I shaved the bridgepins some (stops the ball-ends of strings for catching on the ends).

 

 

 

So, I had this young man come in, wanting me to take a look at his guitar, if everything was alright. It was a pretty looking (though dusty) Hertz with many aesthetic appointments.

For one, the back on the instrument had some very pretty, figured rosewood type wood on the outside.

The heel cap, too, was very pretty, different from what I had ever seen; spruce from the looks of it.

And that arm bevel…

Ah, well!!!

The owner brought it in because he was a little worried about this glue-up job and whether it would hold.

The glue-up job seemed to be holding and it was a  good fix. So, I told the owner to rest his head and not worry about it too much.

But as I turned the guitar over, I saw this

The first two photographs show dents possibly caused by fingernails in the process of percussive playing. The third photograph was cause for concern: pick or nail marks. Given enough time, the owner could easily slice through the soft, spruce. So, I told him that the instrument would need a pickguard, and he agreed with my suggestion.

In all the three photographs, do go back and admire the lovely soundhole rosette – another of those very aesthetic appointments.

Now, contrast all those lovely features that I pointed out, to this

Notice that the bridge is ‘painted’ a lovely dark brown. The real colour of the wood used is what you see on the walls of the bridgepin holes and the the empty saddle slot!

Also, the areas marked red looked as if someone had put plugs on the bridge. Plugs? Why? And then it struck me. As I went inside the guitar’s body, I saw it. I tried clicking a photo so that I could show you too, but, silly me, I did not clean the mirror.

Exactly where you can see dust on the mirror (the encircled area), is a length of screw hanging down from the top. There was its twin hanging just like it from the opposite end of the bridge.

No one, NO ONE…can convince me about the utility of these screws. On the other hand, I am sure I can persuade anyone on the disadvantages of having these on the bridges of acoustic instruments.

What was more, the bridge was beginning to show the initial cracks at the ‘G’ and ‘B’ bridgepin holes. I stuffed them with sawdust and wood glue and sanded everything smooth.

Needless to say that I also swapped the plastic/micarta/whatever nut and saddle with bone elements (not documenting it here; you’ve seen me do it a million times).

Thereafter, the fretboard and the fretwires were given some love and some love potion. See how it shines? And yes, that’s the new nut seated proudly in the slot.

However, the main job was fashioning a pickguard for the instrument. I showed the owner many designs and pickguard materials. He chose this one

And here begins the story of a strange happening. As you can probably make out from the photograph above, I had traced out the shape of the pickguard on the material and was about to cut it. Then, just like it happens in the films – eyes turning in their sockets and things happening on their own – I went blank, completely blank! I have no recollection of what transpired.

When I ‘awoke’, the pickguard was done, dusted and stuck to the guitar like this

My first reaction was to let out a shriek of horror. After that a lot of head-scratching followed to figure out how what had happened, happened (It was afternoon, and no, I hadn’t been drinking!). This was a month or so ago, and even as I write this, my brows are furrowed and I am still trying to figure things out.

‘Ah! What the hell,’ I had thought to myself…’if he doesn’t like it, I’ll have to rip it off and create another pickguard’.

But thankfully, the owner was very cool about it and, in fact, liked the ‘different’ design!

Whew!!!!!!!!!!!

Another opportunity for me to impress upon you the need for an initial set-up on a new acoustic guitar.

Of course, one can always get a set-up done a few years down the line too, but by then string tension would have changed a lot of the instrument’s geometry, and you may not get the same results as you would get with the guitar still new.

How I explain it to customers and people interested is with the example of getting a shirt or a dress stitched. The tailor takes measurements, cuts and rough sews the garment. Then you take a trial, point out things that you would like changed. Often, these changes are in millimetres, but they make all the difference to how the garment sits on you. 

Acoustic guitars are not very different, mass produced as they are. Each and every instrument requires a set-up for it to play the best that it can. With big-name Martins, Gibsons and Guilds the adjustments made may be very small but still those have to be dialled in for the instrument to give true pleasure. 

About Tanglewood, it is a relatively young guitar manufacturing, British firm making ukuleles, classical instruments, banjos and guitars. It is possible that you may not have heard about it but the brand does get exported to 60 countries, and in Britain, it has quite a following. Read up on it!

The one that came to me, was six-eight months old and it had been played. And when I say it had been played, I mean it had been PLAYED!!!!

I started with the nut and saddle, plastic nothings that did nothing for sound transfer and sustain and replaced them with bone elements.

And then I worked on the fretboard and bridge. After the fretboard had been cleaned, I even burnished the fretwires some and made the fretboard look that much pretty.

The owner’s choice of strings was this and so they went on the guitar and it was set-up for those strings.

Meanwhile, I must tell you that I have acquired a new friend to help me in my work. We’re still getting to know each other but I think it should be a good partnership.

When the owner came to pick up his guitar, he paid me the biggest compliment yet. As he took it in his hands and strummed it once, an involuntary ‘Ahh!’ escaped his mouth. After he had played it a bit, he just said, ‘Amazing’! 

I am not a great fan of scribbling or drawing on one’s instrument. Stickers? Totally sacrilegious! But that’s my opinion.

That said, every once in a while, incidents happen, or one comes across things that put one’s beliefs and theories in perspective. It happened to me when this guitar came to me recently.

Hand-painted, it was a stunning representation of Lord Shiva’s Tripundra (the three marks of anointment on his forehead). You may have seen this (in India) in sticker form on car rear windshields, but this acrylic paint, hand-painted version on the headstock of this guitar I found absolutely gripping.

And that was not all!

The body carried this beautifully detailed work of a falcon landing, its wing span spanning the breadth of the lower bout. And don’t miss the rangoli-like creation around the soundhole. Stunning, wouldn’t you say?

Indeed, it is creations like these that lend character to an instrument without taking away any of its tonal qualities.

Alright! So, it was a beautiful guitar. What was it in for?

The fretboard was separating from the neck. This was the owner’s – a creative and sensitive being – first guitar. Attached as he was to it, he did not get rid of it despite his family imploring him to do something about it. Instead, he continued to search for a place that would bring healing to this instrument. And that is how this instrument landed up on the counter of the Lucknow Guitar Garage.

It was actually a Pluto, with steel strings and a slotted headstock. You probably won’t be able to read the model number but it reads HW39-201N.

If the combination of steel strings and a slotted headstock is alien to you, let me tell you that many – from CF Martin & Co to boutique builders – have come out with such models over the years. The idea was to somehow marry the sustain of the classical guitar (thought to be partly due to the slotted headstock) with the volume of the flat-top guitar.

And while I was at it, I decided to do my favourite manoeuvre: swap the plastic nut and saddle with bone elements. To those who are still not sure whether it would make a difference, let me drop you  a statistic. In the three years that I have been repairing guitars in India, EVERY customer has reported back that the swap has worked wonders to the tone and sustain of the instrument.

But the most important work was to get the fretboard and the neck together again – and make them stay there. Nothing that good quality wood glue and a set of – or half-a-dozen – clamps won’t do.

And while it was clamped and I had nothing to do but wait, I decided to focus on the tuning machines. A drop of oil in each of them got them turning smooth again.

When I took the clamps off, the break had healed but not too cleanly. Thus, began the process of hiding the seam line – more to touch than to the eye.

Some painter’s tape, my concoction of sawdust and wood glue, some sanding and some matching black paint, and it was good. Not that the repair was invisible to the eye; it was. More importantly, you couldn’t feel a transition line. 

A little cleaning and oiling, and the fretboard and bridge looked like new

Pop in the missing pieces and

Voila!!!!

However, I could not give the customary rubdown to the top, thanks to the intricate art work on it. But, when the owner came to pick up the guitar, he was more than happy with the results. The guitar’s still singing and so is he!

 

I’d love to tell you that the way this guitar (a Fender CD-60) looks is because of me but I would be lying. These are the before pictures, for there are people who don’t just play the instrument but keep it squeaky clean too.

This is a return customer and even on his first visit I had complimented him on how clean he kept his guitar. He had murmured, ‘I try’.

This time around the instrument was in for new strings, a nut change, a new strap button and general maintenance.

Also, the owner complained of a buzz on the ‘B’ string in the 3rd or the 4th fret.

As soon as I heard that I felt like exclaiming, ‘Aa-ha!!!’ but that wouldn’t have been very correct. It would have been like you taking a sick relative to a doctor and he exclaiming ‘Aa-ha!!!’

April and May are the two driest months of the year – at least in these parts of Uttar Pradesh – and the season demands that acoustics be given love, attention, and a drink of water. Even as you are reading this, check the relative humidity. I bet it is between 20% and 35%.

However, for an acoustic guitar to stay in ship shape, the humidity inside the body of the guitar must read between 45% and 55%!

A few days after I worked on this instrument, I began getting calls from prior customers about odd string buzzes that they had not experienced before. I am afraid that soon there’s going to be a string of instruments that will need similar buzzes addressed!

Shall I let you in on a little secret? Even electric guitars get affected by the lack of humidity, but since they have solid bodies, that effect often tends to escape notice.

Anyway, I changed the nut on the guitar and the buzz disappeared, so, it wasn’t the humidity that was the devil in this guitar. And since it got a new nut, I decided to give it a quick set-up too, by adjusting the height of the saddle, so that the action was really comfortable.

The strap button was simple enough: mark, drill and screw on the new button.

However, the owner wished to retain the original strap button too. I asked him again whether I should remove the original one on the shoulder of the guitar but he did not want me to.

So, this instrument left the Garage wearing two strap buttons!

And that is just me, admiring the guitar before I threw on the strings. It got these

Checking with the owner about the health of the guitar a few days ago (as I generally do), I was happy to learn that the owner was very happy with the way it was playing. I think he replied to my message saying, “Probably the best action I’ve had on it so far”!

 

P.S.: It’s Sunday and I thought before I make this post public, it would be a good idea to check the humidity once. Here is what I saw, and it’s marked in red!

 

 

As I have described on the ‘Home’ page and ‘About’ page of this blog, the effort of the Lucknow Guitar Garage – the workshop and the blog – is to try and help out people (guitar owners) who are in the same position as I once was, and to spread awareness about the instrument and its upkeep.

I derive a lot of satisfaction helping out people who have a special, sentimental attachment to their instruments. This particular instrument – like many others – fell in that category.

The owner, a young and accomplished musician, said he played the instrument one night, stood it up, and in the morning, found it like this

Being attached to the instrument, he did not discard it, but continued to search for someone who could repair it. And that is how, after more than a couple of years of searching, it landed on my counter top.

Naturally, the neck was the major job here, and thankfully, when I brought the two planes together, they sat rather well, except for a few places where some slivers of wood had gone missing. There were minor issues too that needed attending to.

The fretboard and bridge were dried out

and that nut and saddle would have to go

I was confident that this glue-up would turn out alright, if only I could get glue into the deepest recesses of the dried out break. To get glue in there I decided to give it a shot in the neck!

A second issue was providing enough force to keep the break together for an extended period of time: at least 24 hours. Many years ago, I had built this simple jig that fits the profile of the neck, while one side is flat. With that in place, I managed to clamp up the break with one jaw of the clamp resting on the fretboard (under a piece of leather, of course), and its other jaw resting on the flat end of the jig.

With glue pumped in, and everything clamped tight, the squeeze-out only encouraged my belief that the break would, indeed, heal well.

The paper that you see has been deliberately placed in between the jig and the neck. With all that glue around, we wouldn’t want a piece of wood that huge getting stuck to the neck!

With everything as I wanted it and the curing left to Time, I now had time enough to concentrate on other things.

I cleaned up the fretboard and bridge and took out the roughness on the bridge with five grits of sandpaper.

Then it was the turn to work on the new bone saddle

Also, the dirty, crusty headstock and tuning machines were given a polish and a tightening.

Twenty-four hours later, the joint had cured and the clamp came off.

Now was the time to check how the break in the neck had affected the fretboard and the fretwires.

Checking three fretwires at a time revealed what I was apprehensive about. There were many fretwires that had either lifted or were raised in comparison to their neighbours. Notice the red markings on the wires? That particular fretwire and at that point was raised.

That called for a levelling, crowning and polishing. At the end of it, I cleaned and oiled the fretboard and the bridge too.

Then it was back to the neck and trying to camouflage the fault line as much to touch as to the eye. Again the many grits of sandpaper helped me out, and when I was satisfied that the fault line was no longer perceivable to touch, I began to work on trying to hide it to the eye as much as possible. Work began by marking the boundary.

I planned to use a wood-filler tinted to match the colour of the wood of the neck. The tape was an effort to protect the fretboard getting coloured too.

What followed, was fine sanding to merge the filler with the surrounding wood,

And as a last step: some lacquer to make everything look pretty.

Nice? Yeah! Even I liked it! Not perfect but nothing that would draw your eye to it, and more importantly, very functional.

Now, it was time to make everything else shine like the neck. Some soap and warm water and my kitchen towels were like this

but the guitar shone like this

In all that shifting and moving, something inside the guitar made it sound like a Maracas Shaker. Wondering what it could be, I peeped in through the soundhole and saw this

Seemingly, in the years that the instrument had been left standing, rats and mice had found the insides to be a safe haven. There were enough chewed up bits of paper to form a notebook out of, and if you fell short, there were rat droppings too. These were what had made a rattle out of the guitar (The liquid excrement that must have undoubtedly been there too, had long dried up!) 

In preparation for the stringing, I shaped the bridgepins

and put on these. I would have gone with 12s but there was no knowing whether the neck would be able to take their strain. 

I set the guitar up and in six hours everything had gone out of whack. I did it again, and again everything came to naught. I was fearing this for wood has a tremendous memory. You leave it in one position for too long and it will keep wanting to return to that position.

So, I asked the owner to take the guitar home and bring it back to me in a week, 10 days’ time. He did, and in that time, he played it with that high action to his heart’s content. 

After setting it up, the neck moved yet again, so much so that after having taken off almost half of the saddle, initially, I had to shim it with a piece of bone, and again set it up. Let’s hope that this time the neck behaves itself.

Here are a few photographs of the guitar before it finally left me

My parting advice to the owner: next string change, go for 12s and observe the action daily for at least 10-15 days. If he feels that the action has risen even a bit, he should loosen the strings and bring the guitar right back. 

From then on, it would have to be 11s for the guitar, otherwise, the instrument was good for 12s!

Of course, the owner was more than pleased, but much more than that, it was a job most satisfying for me.

Yeah! I finally took the plunge into electrics – in a manner of speaking!

This one came in with many divots on many fretwires – but most especially on every fretwire along where the ‘B’ string would hit them. The owner, a professional musician, all but cried relating his tales of woe, each time he would try and bend a note.

But like I’ve confessed many times before, I am not really ‘equipped’ to work on electrics. For starters, I don’t even have a neck rest for an electric. So, improvising became the name of the game. Hunting around the house for what I could use as a neck rest, I finally chose two washing sponges resting on a solid foam block – perfect height. 

As you notice from the picture above, the first step towards the fretwire job was to tape off the entire fretboard (I like to call it the Mummy-fication of the guitar) – we don’t want to damage beautiful rosewood by nicking it with files and rasps – as also the electronics on the body.

We also don’t want any of the filings and dust sticking to the electromagnets, or settling in places from where it would be hard to get out.

The process was very simple to put into words but very, very time-consuming. Go over each fret with a three-cornered file (to remove the divots); go over each fret with six grits of sandpaper. While the first grit removed whatever marks the three-cornered file had left behind, each finer grit removed marks left behind by the earlier grit of sandpaper.

And then, finally, to give the fretwires an almighty shine and to make them slicker than butter: a rub-down with ‘0000’ steel wool. But what a royal mess steel wool makes!

Here’s how this bad boy went out looking, and was the owner thrilled with the results?

 

It’s raining Cort guitars, here! This is the third one in as many weeks!

This MR500E OP from Cort made me smile while also making me raise an eyebrow.

The owner was a schoolkid, and like all ‘good’ boys, (seemingly) loves to tinker with things. His guitar was no exception. More on that story later, but let’s introduce you to the guitar.

The MR500E has a solid spruce top, mahogany back and sides, Ovangkol fingerboard and bridge. The dreadnought body has a cutaway and is equipped with Cort CE304T electronics.

The electronics must have developed problems and true to his nature, Babloo (let’s call him that) decided to get to the bottom of it, and, if possible, solve it too (I daresay). He took off the EQ unit, opened it up, traced the problem to the piezo element under the saddle, and broke a bridgepin trying to remove the strings.

He found out that to solve the problem, he needed to replace the entire piezo connecting wire and all, and then proceeded to buy it off an e-commerce site.

That was not the end of Babloo’s adventures. The piezo he ordered came with the mandatory double channel jack, only on his EQ, there was no provision for a jack input, the lead of the piezo being directly soldered into the EQ circuit.

So, Babloo, having come this far, took the next logical step and knocked off the jack, exposing the wire and its ground, which needed to be soldered exactly where the kaput piezo’s wire was sitting right now.

And it was at this point that Babloo got in touch with me. I don’t know whether to feel sad that the laddie couldn’t lay his hands on a soldering iron, or happy that he did, but the guitar is well now and Babloo is very happy. 

What’s more, he brought me all parts kept properly in a plastic box, screws and all! 

Did the story bring a smile to your face? Thank God for boys!

Anyway, the job was simple enough: remove the existing wire and  solder on the new one. I pulled out my USB soldering iron and the job was done before you could say ‘piezo’!

However, the piezo element proper was one of those which are housed in a rubber sheath for protection. Nothing wrong in that except it increases the girth of the piezo element, making it impossible to thread through the hole in the bridge.

So, I had to enlarge the hole in the bridge through which I could thread it. 

The EQ was assembled and screwed back into the body. Once everything was secure, I went about testing the connection. Immediately, the EQ sprang to life, the indicator light beeping life.

Besides, he wanted a bone nut and saddle, new strings. A pair of bone saddle and nut coming up.

And once you get the measurements right, there is little that can go wrong there. 

The only real problem Babloo pointed out was that often while changing strings, the ‘B’ and ‘e’ strings would break.

I filed edges of both machine head holes smooth and last heard, they are behaving themselves.

Then just because the strings were off, I cleaned up the fretboard and the fretwires, and gave the fretboard a much-needed drink of oil. Here are the before and after shots.

While I was admiring my handiwork, just on a whim I checked for neck straightness.

There was just a tad extra relief than I would like to see on an instrument. I dialled that out by tightening the truss rod and then proceeded to throw on the set of strings Babloo had chosen. He chose these silver-plated strings.

But before I put on new strings, there were new bridgepins needed. No point putting one new one with five old ones and have it stand out like a giraffe among zebras! So, I changed the entire set. But there was one little job to be done first before I put them into the guitar.

Here’s the job finished

When I checked on Babloo, everything was working just fine, but he was most happy with the new saddle and nut and acknowledged what a great change to the sound of the instrument they had brought. 

 

I had mentioned a few blogposts ago that guitar types or brands have a habit of coming in twos or threes. Remember?

Well, last week I worked on a Cort, and here’s another Cort – an AD810 – with a small problem.

Could you spot the problem?

Well, the broken headstock was just 40% of the problem, 60% of the problem was that the owner decided to play doctor with the instrument.

As a matter of principle, ONE MUST change strings on one’s guitar himself/herself, understand and be able to work the truss rod, be able to oil and keep tuning machines in good shape, be able to clean and condition the fretboard on one’s instrument. Headstock breaks, neck breaks? PLEASE, let people who know something about it, handle it.

Look at the first photograph again. This was the second break the instrument was suffering in the same region. The first break was U-shaped and closest to the 1st and 6th tuning machines. My guess is that since the owner managed to glue that up, he thought, he would be able to do this too.

Again conjecture, but follow the logic: Had that initial break been fixed professionally, maybe, just maybe, this break would never have happened!

To draw an example from medicine, you can always pop a Disprin for a headache, or a Hajmola if your tummy is acting up, but please don’t attempt open-heart surgery at home!

Looking at all that Fevicol caked and dried – on both mating surfaces – and I felt like holding my head in my hands. I did that, but when it did not join the break, I began thinking of the best route possible to mend the break.

It was difficult primarily because it was a perpendicular break. Any straighter and I would have sworn that it wasn’t a break but had been sawn through!

The first order of operations was to get the strings and tuning machines off the headstock.

Then the effort was to get (as much of the) the caked Fevicol off the two surfaces, as was possible.

Some of the dry stuff came out in chunks

But for the rest, I had to soften the glue first.

The pliers had to be put in to add weight to the headstock and to stop it from floating. Three hours later, it came out looking like this

Quickly, I set about picking the softened glue with

The little spots on paper is the softened glue.

Then it was the turn of the neck itself, to go under water.

And the process of glue-removal was painstakingly slow. After I had removed all that I could, I left both the headstock and the rest of the guitar to dry in the sun for a complete day.

Yeah! Literally, on the clothes hanger! Dried out, it may look as if it was completely clean. Clean, yes! Completely? No!

Then, when I went about dry fitting things, I saw that there was too much of a gap all around. There was material missing without which the two surfaces could never come together completely.

Despite the sinking feeling in my heart, I still decided to give it a try. I mixed up my magic potion – saw dust and wood glue – to a thicker-than-usual consistency

and applied rather liberally on the mating surfaces. I brought the two together and held them in place for as long as I could. When I left the joint, it held and the two pieces did not fall away.

It stood overnight and when I gingerly picked it up by the neck, the next morning, the headstock continued to remain glued on.

That ray of hope that shot through me got buried as soon as I applied a little bit of pressure. The headstock dropped away slowly, just like softened chocolate in a child’s hands. It was a heart-breaking moment for me.

The plan had been that had the joint held, I would have routed out channels in the neck to insert splines to hold the headstock and the neck together.

I repeated the cleaning process and got rid of all the mess that I had created, dried out the two parts again and handed them and the bag of tuning machines, screws, saddle and nut over to the owner.

What was truly heart-breaking was that this guitar, like the one last week, was excellently constructed.

Reading the specifications, I found that the top was spruce wood, while the back and sides were Okoume (mahogany). The fretboard and bridge, however, were Merbau. Though I know next to nothing about the wood, it looked quite like rosewood, and had good figuring on it.

For a guitar retailing under Rs 10,000, I thought this was a great guitar for the price, if only it had become whole again!

 

I had never been a great fan of Cort guitars, but unfortunately for me, I had never had the opportunity to study a high-end model. I got that opportunity recently when I worked on a natural finish MR710F, and I was actually impressed.  Solid spruce top, solid African mahogany (Okoume) back and sides, solid bone saddle and nut, and a Fishman Presys Preamp – all-in-all a great sounding guitar.

It was in for a general tune-up and set-up but unbeknown to the owner, there was a crack developing in the bridge

because there was this!

The owner, a singer, song-writer and a performing artist, was understandably visibly shocked at the discovery, but here’s the reason for it – at least a major reason for it.

Do you see that black strip stuffed in the saddle slot to keep the saddle from tilting? Well, the owner told me that this was exactly how he had bought his guitar and he had no part in introducing this alien piece. 

When I took the strings off and pulled out the saddle and the shim, the shim seemed to be a thick piece of Rexine or something like it.

which had left an unseemly mark on the saddle.

Also, the owner was a little concerned about what was happening to his fretboard.

I too had noticed the marks and they were a bit disconcerting. Disconcerting because it meant that the fretboard had been dyed, and the natural colour of the wood used for the fretboard was showing through where the fingernails of the player had dug into it. Why would anybody use a cheap piece of wood for a fretboard when solid spruce and solid okoume had been used for the top and the back and sides, respectively?

I told the owner what was happening and assured him that I would try and do whatever I could, but after he was gone, I did check up on Cort guitars the specifications of this particular model. Here is what I read:

https://www.cortguitars.com/product/item.php?ca_id=102030&it_id=152&lanOk=eng#tab_Specifications

The specifications for this model on the site of the manufacturer stated that the wood used for the fretboard and the bridge was Ovangkol.

Now, I do not claim to be a wood expert but what little I know about tonewoods, Ovangkol, it is much like rosewood in looks and properties. I scratched the surface a little more, and

this is what I got to see. This did not appear to be Ovangkol (right pix, courtesy wood-database.com) Does it to you? And when you are using beautiful, figured wood like Ovangkol, rosewood, flamed maple, bear-claw spruce, or cocobolo, why would you wish to hide it under some cheap dye? I would only try to hide it under a dye, if I knew I was using wood I should not be using. 

But like I said, I am no expert on wood, but then again, this is certainly not what you would expect to see in a guitar retailing for around Rs 28K!

As I was pouring over the guitar, there seemed to be something inside it. I took a look inside and saw these. Shook them out and out fell at least six or seven such sachets!

Shocked, I asked the owner about them and he innocently replied that he had been given to understand that these were good for the guitar. Speechless for some time, when I regained my voice, I explained to him that Silica gel is a desiccant; its job is to absorb any moisture in its surrounding. YOU DON’T LET THIS COME ANYWHERE NEAR YOUR GUITAR!!!!!!

Remember, earlier I said the shim in the saddle slot was a major contributing factor for the bridge splitting? These sachets were surely the other contributors. Dry, open-pore wood on acoustic guitars will always crack more easily.

With those out of the way, I turned my attention to the saddle. It would have to be replaced for it to sit upright in its slot. I measured the radius on the fretboard and the bridge, and for the second time in as many weeks, discovered that I did not have saddles of that radius!

After the labour last week, I was not quite ready to put in the same effort and time into the job. Besides, what saddle the guitar already had was bone . So, I decided to use the original saddle but only after shimming it up with real bone.

I found these pieces of bone in my bone box.

I used super-thin CA glue and glued these pieces behind the saddle. And then began a tedious process of little sanding, measuring and trial-fitting the saddle where it would sit snugly in its slot. I hope you realise that if I overshot that precise thickness where the saddle would seat snugly in its slot, I would actually have to re-make a new saddle. Slowly, ever so slowly, I crept up to the exact size.

Once I got there, I kept the saddle aside and turned my attention to the bridge. With my concoction of dyed saw dust and wood glue, I filled up the slot and sanded it flush to the level of the bridge.

Even the bridge, as I was sanding the filled up crack level, began to lose its  dark colour. And here, I must apologise, for I forgot to click a photograph of it.

With sanding marks and a discoloured bridge staring me in the face, I sanded smooth the area where I had worked on, with seven grits of sandpaper: #600, #800, #1000, #1200, #1500, #1800 and #2000.

Then, with vegetable dyes, I began dyeing the bridge area that I had worked on. Here’s the area of the crack: joined, sanded, dyed and oiled.

You will notice that I took precautions by taping off the top that neither the dye nor the conditioning oil touched any part of the top.

Next was the fretboard. A little crowning to remove the divots where the ‘B’ string hit the frets, also brought out a new shine in them.

Taping off the celluloid binding on the fretboard, I went about dyeing it. But it was not easy, demanding a lot of attention and repeated layers to hide areas where the colour had disappeared. But once I was through, I was happy how everything turned out.

Also, I talked to the owner and asked if he would like to have bone bridgepins to replace the stock, plastic ones. The advantage of having bone bridgepins would be a marked difference in sound transfer.

He gave the go-ahead and I set about making space for them. The bridgepin holes were reamed to a proper circumference so that the pins sat in snugly without having to be forced in. We don’t want another split in the bridge, now do we? And don’t you think the little abalone on top with a gold ring looks real pretty set off against the dark bridge?

But before I strung it up, I snugged up the hardware on the headstock, gave it some love potion, burnished it proper, and things could not have turned out better.

The owner was used to playing .011″ strings but I suggested that going by the construction of the guitar, and even though he was more a finger-style artist, that he should give .012″ strings a try. He agreed and chose to have these strings put on his guitar.

I leave you with a final look at this guitar. It was indeed very satisfying working on this one.

Remember how in the India of the 80s, the craze among musicians was owning a ‘Casio’? Music shops stocked them as many prospective customers came asking for a ‘Casio’. What those people actually wanted was a ‘keyboard’ but since the Japanese electronics giant, Casio, was among the first to come out with the instrument, somehow, the brand name became its name.

Another example of the phenomenon is Xerox. You don’t get a document xeroxed, you get it photo-copied. Xerox was the company that produced the machine.

Much in the same vein is the Resophonic or Resonator guitar. (As far as I understand it) Dobro is the name of the company and the name of a particular guitar model it produced.

Here are some facts about Resophonic/Resonator/Dobro guitars and an interesting bit of history.

A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar that produces sound by conducting string vibrations through the bridge to one or more spun/pressed metal cones (resonators), instead of to the guitar’s sounding board (top). Resonator guitars are particularly popular with bluegrass and blues musicians.

Resonator guitars are of two styles:

1. Square-neck guitars played in lap steel guitar style
2. Round-neck guitars played in conventional guitar style or steel guitar style

There are three main resonator designs:

• The tri-cone, with three metal cones connected by a metal brace in which the saddle stands, designed by the first National company
• The single-cone ‘biscuit’ (saddle) design of other National instruments
• The single inverted-cone design (also known as a spider bridge) of Dobro brand instruments and instruments that copy the Dobro design

The name Dobro was derived from its inventors, the Dopyera Brothers (DoBro), back in the 1920s, a play on words derived from the ‘Do’ in Dopyera and ‘bro’ from Brothers, and a word which means ‘good’ in Slovak.

In 1925, John Dopyera, a Slovak immigrant to California, US, and an instrument repairman/inventor, invented a guitar with three aluminum cones known as resonators (similar to diaphragms inside a speaker) mounted beneath the bridge. This resonator guitar turned out to be much louder than the regular acoustic guitar. The tone of the guitar was rich and metallic.
In 1928, Dopyera and his brothers Rudy and Emil, as well as other investors, founded the National String Instrument Corporation to manufacture the new type of ‘resophonic’ guitar, which was sold mainly to musicians working in cinemas and jazz clubs in the USA. After several years, the three brothers left the corporation and started a new company, Dobro (the name they also gave to the instrument). Their slogan was: ‘Dobro means good in any language!’

And this long-winded preamble just to let you know that I recently worked on my first resonator guitar!!

This Ashton was the single inverted-cone design type (also known as a spider bridge). The owner, an accomplished musician and a professional one at that, wanted to replace the plastic nut with a bone one.

Also, there was an ugly break along the seam where the top met the side, near the end block: a result of the instrument falling and hitting the ground.

And then, there was general maintenance to be done, an extra-large dose of love to be given!

The cover of the spider-bridge and the tail piece (through which the strings were fed), which must have been shiny chrome a few years ago, were tarnished and dull, as were the tuning machines.

So, off they came.

And as I suspected, underneath the hood, there was more dust than there is sand in the Thar.

The last photograph gives you an idea about the saddle. A split saddle with space in between to adjust the screw holding the spider-bridge to the inverted, spun-aluminium cone. By tightening or loosening the screw, one can dramatically change the sound of an instrument.

Returning to the saddle, you will notice that its top has grooves cut into it for the strings to hold it down, for better sound energy transfer. This is the only type of steel string acoustic guitar which has grooves cut into it. No other type of steel-string, acoustic guitar needs to have notches to hold strings in.

But I was a bit surprised to find simple rosewood pieces as the saddle. Generally, in ‘proper’ instruments, each saddle piece has actually a maple base and an ebony cap.

The idea is that both of these hard woods put together, will better aid sound transfer.

Anyway, I removed the saddle, being careful to make a mark behind each, at which end it would be put in. Check, you may be able to make out the ‘B’ (bass) and the ‘T’ (treble)

and then began the process of cleaning the dust-caked innards of the instrument. First, the spider-bridge itself was unscrewed, taken off, cleaned and kept aside.

But I had problems removing the cone from its cavity and I had to take this awl to prise it out.

It is the cone which vibrates once the strings are plucked and the vibrating diaphragm-like cone is what produces sound – much like the diaphragm in a speaker.

Ideally, you want the cone to just sit on the ledge meant for that. However, its sides should not touch anywhere.

The fact that the cone was not coming out on its own and needed to be prised from its spot meant that when played, the cone would not have been vibrating freely, and thus, not giving the volume and sustain as it should.

So, the first thing I did was to sand the rim of the cavity such that the cone just fell into it. Also, it could easily drop out if need be.

What followed was a thorough cleaning of the cone, for any dust on either surface would act as a damper.

Then, I turned my attention to the nut and try as hard as I might, it would not budge. Finally, when I managed to knock it out, I wondered what was holding it so good. It was super-glue, as I had suspected!

Just cleaning the slot with this specialised carbide chisel took 30-40 minutes. First use a plastic, hollow piece for a nut and then use super-glue to hold it in place. Why, Ashton, why?

And then began work on cutting to size and refining the bone piece that would go in its place. Of course, all measurements were taken and the nut sized to those dimensions.

With the nut in place, I turned my attention to the fretboard, caked with grime and DNA. The fretwires too, were tarnished and dull.

It’s always a good idea to get into the very corners of the fretwires and dislodge any dirt, grime, etc that may be lodged there. And a little re-crowning of the fretwires never harmed anybody.

Then, it was the turn of the headstock and the hardware there. The tuning machines were snugged-up and then given a healthy dose of the ‘love potion’.

And they came out looking like this

Later, I turned my attention to the damage in the body. The binding and the side had pushed in, pushing the top out and up, and no matter how much pressure I tried to apply, the top refused to go in. Afraid of making the damage more severe, I let it be and proceeded to fill the ugly break with a paste of sawdust and wood glue. 

Very pretty, right?

Yeah! I know, it must turn ugly before things start to look better. Here is the finished job, with varnish covering the sawdust-wood glue filling.

Certainly not an invisible repair but it is no longer in the state where it’s eye-catching and blot on the looks of the guitar.

The cover of the spider-bridge and the tail piece had been buffed to a mirror finish and re-installed with new, shiny little screws. As I looked, the strap buttons became eyesores and so, I swapped these

for these

The position on the heel was marked, drilled and the new strap button installed.

Everything was put back together and the guitar was strung up.

I was happy with the way things turned out, but more importantly, the customer was more than happy. It is that much more satisfying when you are able to satisfy someone who understands music and instruments, and about the work undertaken to achieve a certain result.

There was however, one sore spot. Right on the heel of the guitar, it seemed as if either the joint was opening up, or, worse still, the wood had cracked. I could not get the thinnest blade into it but I could certainly feel a lip when I ran my finger over it.

I have asked the owner to watch it carefully and bring it back to me the day he sees a larger crack, or, if he feels that the action on the instrument has increased.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently, I worked on my first Martin in India – one from the X Series. This was not the high dollar D-28 or D-35, but featured high-pressure laminate (HPL) back and sides and a Richlite fretboard and bridge.

Richlite is an incredibly durable, extremely versatile, and highly sustainable material made from resin-infused paper –  65% recycled paper content and 35% phenolic resin. Applications include furniture, cabinetry, cladding, skateparks, consumer products, signage, retail displays, restaurant tables, bar tops, and worktops, and is a choice material for a wide range of architects, designers, industrial manufacturers and product developers. 

I would be lying if I said that the guitar was not pretty to look at. Solid Sitka Spruce top, back and sides all in a matte/satin finish, the GPCX1RAE is a 20-fret Grand Performance model which sports a cutaway, rust Birch laminate neck, scalloped spruce bracing, a corian nut and a Tusq saddle (actually glorified plastic both), Fishman Sonitone electronics, chrome Martin closed tuning machines and the iconic Martin logo on the headstock in gold script ink.

It came to me because the intonation was shot on the ‘B’ string. And that meant only one thing: the saddle was not cut right. It was eyebrow-raising to see a Martin suffering from intonation issues, not that their guitars can’t have intonation issues, but because CF Martin & Co are usually very meticulous about everything.

As I pulled out the saddle from the bridge and measured it, to my horror, I found that the radius on it was 16 inches. I checked the radius on the fretboard: 16 inches!

Fretboards on steel string guitars (acoustic and electric) generally have a certain radius that is sanded into it by the  manufacturer and that radius is then mirrored in the tops of the fretwires, the saddle as well as the nut. When all of these elements carry the same radius, playing the instrument is that much easy and pleasurable. And acoustic instruments generally have a radius of 10, 12 or 16 inches. My problem was that I did not have nuts and saddles with a 16-inch radius! 

The way out was to take my 16-inch sanding block

glue on some #320 grit sandpaper

and with the top of the saddle facing the sandpaper and completely centred, go up and down the block (lengthwise) till I got a 16″ radius. By the time (some 45 mins later) I could dial in that radius, the new sandpaper looked like this

but the saddle looked like this

And this was the easy part. All that sanding on the top of the saddle meant that the grooves cut into the saddle for intonation were all but gone, and without those, this new saddle was useless. There was no way out but to re-cut the grooves on the saddle.

Then I turned my attention to the fretboard. Like I said, it was Richlite but it looked every bit ebony – though a very dirty ebony, for it carried enough DNA on it to map the entire family tree of the owner! Just out of curiosity, I checked the straightness of the neck and was a little surprised to see a little fall-away. 

Do you see the gap under the notches where the ruler ends? Compare that to the extreme left.

But there was nothing that could be done about it right away. This would require taking off the fretboard extension (the part stuck to the top of the guitar), making a shim to size and sticking it to the extension and then sticking the whole thing back to the top. Me not doing!

Instead, I decided to clean the fretboard. The thing about Richlite is that it is cleaned very easily. So, I took some warm water, some liquid soap and moistening an old t-shirt rubbed the fretboard and bridge clean.

That done, I turned my attention to the hardware on the headstock and snugged up everything as it should be. This exercise should be done by everybody, each time you change strings.

Everything in place, it was time to string this baby up. The owner prefers to use these strings and so they were put on.

But before I put the strings on, I did bevel the bridgepins so that string ball-ends would not catch on them.

The moment of truth had arrived. Now, to check the intonation on the ‘B’ string.

As I sat down to tune the guitar, I was very taken up by this little electronic tuner clipped to the edge of the soundhole. It was sensitive and very accurate.

You cannot even imagine how thrilled I was seeing this ‘dead-on-the-money’ reading of the open ‘B’ string and fretted at the 12th fret. All that effort had not gone to waste.

 

As I played the instrument, I was actually surprised at the instrument’s very warm, mellow, almost Martin-esque sound; beautiful sustain too. I had not expected this, for I had my doubts about how the HPL body would sound. 

I guess, we can owe the sound to the Martin expertise. Whatever the material, expect a Martin to sound like one. Maybe that is what you get when an enterprise as big as Martin, stays within the family for four (five?) generations.

 

SILLY ME!

Last time, I talked about how the bridge, the top get affected when you leave your instrument tuned to pitch, standing in a corner (or lying in its case) for months.

I was so taken up by Luc’s shattered bridge that it slipped me that besides the bridge and the top of the guitar, the neck of the guitar too is under a great deal of stress, and one of the many casualties of string tension.

As if to remind me, this guitar landed up on my counter, hours after last Sunday’s post went public.

And it was not just the joint near the heel of the neck opening up. As a result of that joint opening, even the fretboard joint to the neck was cracking open on every side.

The heel itself was showing the strain that it was under with the paint cracking at the joint. As a cumulative result of all that the action on the instrument – as you can see – was sky high!

This was actually a new instrument that had been bought and forgotten about.

This is another cheap clone of the Indian-ised Hofner. To know more, read this:

New strings and some TLC for this Hobner!

So, ‘The Green Hornet’ had a zero fret

and a very interesting bridge and saddle(s)

individual saddles for each string. The advantage: more accurate intonation. The disadvantage: God help you if you lose one of those plastic thingys!

And usually, such bridges are made of rosewood or ebony, and not stuck to the top but held down only by string tension, which also helps in the transfer of sound. However, this one was plastic with hollowed out ‘feet’.

How much sound was being transferred, you can well imagine.

In the last photograph, notice the tape? That was me trying to mark where the bridge would go, once I had managed to secure the instrument structurally.

Naturally, standing unloved in some corner, the fretwires were tarnished and depicted in what classic luthiery terms is referred to as ‘fret-sprout’. The fretboard wood on a dehydrated guitar shrinks, leaving the fretwires ‘sprouting’ out of it.

As can be imagined, it hurts the fingers playing an instrument with fret-sporut, and can, in fact, be a dangerous proposition.

Even the tuning machines were dry (without oil) and rough to turn.

With the bridge already off, I decided to take the pickguard off too, so that when I would lay the guitar upside down (to work on the neck), the instrument would lie straight.

Now, I was ready to operate upon the patient. A generous amount of good quality wood glue shot into the opening seemed to do the trick, for as I closed the opening, glue squeezed out of every crack.

And when I clamped it, there was more squeeze-out!

Once the guitar was clamped and the squeeze-out cleaned, there was little else to do except wait. But since I had the tuning machines exposed, I decided to put a drop of oil into them each and work it in.

I know you can’t see the oil but believe me it is there!

Still under clamps, I used painter’s tape to cover the repair area, except the seam line and a thin margin on either side. Then I proceeded to sand the exposed area with #1500 and #2000 sandpaper to remove any lip that may have developed during the glueing process.

And while the tape was still on, I did a touch-up job as well.

After the clamps came off, I was happy to note that the joint was near perfect and except if you saw it from very close, was nearly invisible. However, you must understand that this was a budget job and not meant to be invisible.

I opened up the truss rod cover

expecting the need to adjust the relief in the neck but I was pleasantly surprised to find that without the strings, the neck was very straight. That is what you wish to see.

Thereafter, I proceeded to work on the fret-sprout. This double-angled file was among the first few tools I made many years ago.

The 90 degree file cuts the fretwires very close to the fretboard, while the 45 degree file puts a nice little bevel on the ends. I erred and used just the edge to put the bevel on the fretwires: usually it works. However, this time, after going up and down the neck a couple of times, I could still feel the fret-ends.

And that forced me to bring out my little three-cornered file to (ad)dress just the fret-ends.

Instead of just polishing frets, I decided to give them a little crown

and that is the ‘star dust’ I collected

And then I wondered: if I had done so much, might as well clean up the fretboard before I proceeded to oil it.

Body buffed out, new strings, and the Green Hornet had been saved to sing another day!

Here are some ‘after’ photographs of the repair I undertook

Bottom line: DON’T LEAVE YOUR GUITAR TUNED UP IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO PLAY IT FOR 2-3 WEEKS!

 

Taking a break from reporting on repairs, I decided to dedicate this post to something that I have stressed off and on, but something the importance of which cannot be stressed enough.

I found the photograph above in one of the many guitar groups on Facebook. I wrote to the author, seeking his permission to use it as part of this blog and he kindly consented.

If you can’t read, Luc Barbeau wrote: ‘Shit happens! I had not played this guitar for a few months. I open up the case and this is what I found.’

This is not a frighteningly expensive Epiphone guitar, but then even the lowest Epiphone model isn’t exactly a cheapo. To Luc and all the readers of this blog, I say, “You should have de-tuned the guitar before keeping it away!”

What this means is that Luc now has to shell out money to have the old bridge removed, buy a new one and have it installed.

Let’s take another look at the photo that Luc posted and compare it to what the guitar may have looked like whole.

On the left is Luc’s guitar while on the right is another guitar which sports a bridge just like the one on Luc’s guitar (if you disregard the split saddle).

Personally speaking, I am not a great fan of string-through bridges, and feel more comfortable with bridges with holes and pins. My logic: under-tension strings (exerting a force of 60 to 80 kg) are always trying to pull away the bridge from the guitar top. The string-through design of the bridge only worsens the force of the strings by creating a fault line exactly where Luc’s bridge failed.

You could say that maybe the bridge had a faulty construction. Maybe! You could say that not all string-through bridges fail. True! But my point here is whatever the reason, why add to it by leaving the guitar fully tuned?

If you know that you are not going to be playing it even for two or three weeks, tune down your guitar half a step or one full step (for eg, E to D#, or D). But completely loosening the strings and having them flopping around on the fretboard, is a different recipe for disaster.

In Luc’s case, he was unfortunate that the strings ripped the bridge apart, but I have known cases (both string-through bridges and those with bridgeholes) where the strings not only pulled off the bridge but a portion of the guitar top as well!

And then there are degrees of damage that under-tension strings can do. If the bridge is not glued on properly to the guitar top, you will find the bridge lifting.

If the bridge is glued on properly, you will find the guitar bellying (guitar top lifting in the area behind the saddle). Admittedly, this is partly a fault of an inadequately constructed bridgeplate (size and/or material used), but then the string tension’s handiwork cannot be denied!

Generally, whenever bellying is seen in a guitar, you can be sure that there is some corresponding sinking in the area after the soundhole and before the bridge.

Do you see it? Again, while this could be the instrument counteracting the bellying, it could also be that one of the braces under the top have come loose/dropped off.

In any case, the fingerboard extension displays a phenomenon, what in luthiery is referred to as ‘dropping off’. (If it is) Stuck well to the guitar top, the fingerboard extension falls with the sinking top. You can see some of it in the picture above, and it is more evident below. Major operation correcting that too.

So, do not commit hara-kiri; in order to save yourself pain and money, de-tune your guitar before you stow it away for some time.

After religiously striving for excellence in 50 instruments, made pretty much from firewood, does one get to work on a Martin, Gibson or a Guild guitar.

The photograph above is the Guild logo, embroidered on the semi-hard case of the Guild guitar I worked on recently. But more on that later.

If you ask me, CF Martin and Co, Gibson Brands Inc (formerly Gibson Guitar Corporation) and Guild together form the Holy Trinity of Guitar Manufacturers. Owning a guitar of any of the three brands is like owning a Rolls Royce or a Bentley. And yes, instruments from any of the three brands don’t come cheap.

Compared to Martin (1833) and Gibson (1902), Guild is a youngster, founded as late as 1952-53, when Alfred Dronge, a Polish immigrant to America, set up shop along with George Mann, former Vice President of Epiphone Company. Epiphone had moved out of New York and had left stranded many, many craftsmen and workers.

The Guild Company was registered on October 24th, 1952 with the stranded Epiphone craftsmen forming the work force backbone. The name was drawn from the craft Guilds of the Middle Ages and implied tradition and quality. Six months later, the first guitars emerged.

The company has changed ownership thrice till date but the tradition of guitar-making has continued without compromising build quality.

This guitar which came to me

was indeed a beautiful instrument. The M-240E, a petite guitar, is ideal for finger-style playing and light strumming, and that is what the owner excelled at.

Solid spruce top in satin finish and open-pore mahogany back and sides also in satin finish, the guitar was a stunner. Wouldn’t you say so?

Additionally, it sported a bone nut and bone saddle, provided by the manufacturers.

Though, I could not try out the electronics on board, I am sure they do wonders to the sound.

These chrome butterbean tuning machines had a gear ratio of 1:16, which made tuning a breeze, and then there was the the company-provided gig bag.

I know in the photograph it looks like any other padded case, but believe me when I say that I have never felt thicker padding on a guitar case…and I have seen a few. This thing was built to stop a missile!

But if everything is so good, what did the guitar come in for (and here I might add that it was just five or six months old)? 

Well, the owner, an accomplished player himself, was unhappy with how fretting ‘F’ and ‘Am’ was near impossible, and how the strings seemed ‘stiff’ on the first fret.

Immediately, I looked at the nut and even though it seemed fine from above, I knew the nut was the problem. As I turned the guitar to take a look at the nut sideways…

That gap should not have been there, and considering it was a Guild, it was almost shocking. That would have to be changed.

Another culprit could be the strings themselves. Three months is ample time for a set to be changed and the set on the instrument had lived there double that time. So, a string change was also in order.

As I took off the strings, I noticed the play-wear on the fretwires

while the fretboard looked a bit dry to me. Now that I had the strings off, I decided to give the fretboard some love potion and a buffing to the fretwires.

That is how the fretboard and bridge came out after I was done with it. 

However, as I touched the saddle to pull it out of its slot, so that I could clean the bridge, it moved in its slot. Not a good sign. I touched it again and again it moved. For sound transfer to be perfect, saddles should sit as snug as a bug in a rug in its slot.

One should never have the need to force a saddle into its slot, or, for pliers to be used to unseat it. Yet, without strings, if you turn the guitar over, the saddle should stay in its slot, and not fall out.

I took my X-acto knife and tried to insert its blade in the slot with the saddle still in there. Sure enough, not only was the saddle thinner, it was a shade smaller than the saddle slot.

While the photographs above show the space around the saddle, they are proof to the owner too. I just called him and told him about the problem and that ideally, the saddle should be changed to get the best sound. He took my word for it and asked me to change the saddle too.

As I took the nut out, I noticed an odd shine in its slot. It seemed like someone had put some super glue, let it dry and then put the nut in, as if to raise it up in its slot.

The darker portions in the slot are not shadows but what appeared to be super glue. Frowning, I went to work on the slot with my special miniature chisels. As I scraped the slot clean, whatever was in the slot, flaked off just like super glue would.

A lot of measuring and some marking followed, and I got ready to sand the nut to my markings.

Likewise the saddle

Once done, everything was near perfect and the guitar was ready to be strung up. The owner chose these.

Tuned to pitch, the guitar sounded fine to me, its intonation was slightly off, which a little bit of tweaking brought near perfect. The relief in the neck and its action was also brought down very slightly.

And this is why I keep repeating that an initial set-up by someone who knows what he/she is doing, is imperative for the instrument to play well. After that it is advisable to bring in the instrument once a year to have it checked that everything is where everything should be.

Provided that the instrument is built properly, a set-up will ensure that it plays easy and gives the player as much joy as it should. 

For those of you who feel that their guitar plays well, wait till I have worked on it, and then you can decide when it played best: then or now!

As such, the set-up includes adjusting neck relief, giving the best action possible (given the instrument’s neck angle), working on the nut slots (if they are too shallow, or if they are not cut right), checking the hardware on the headstock (for any loose screws, etc), oiling the fretboard and the bridge, and burnishing the fretwires. 

For a small fee, you will be amazed at how good your guitar can play. Of course, you can get all of this done at any time of the instrument’s life but ideally, you should get it done as soon as you buy the instrument. Why? So that you don’t get put off by high action, fret buzz (which is not always strings hitting against the fretwires), or a badly cut saddle which does not sit very well in its slot.   

The owner was pleased with the results and conceded – rather grudgingly – that the guitar was playing “much better”. He promised to contact me after a few days with a complete report, when the guitar settled down a bit. 

This is how this baby looks now

Though archtops and floating bridges go back to the early 1890s, it wasn’t until Gibson came up with the ES-150 (the first electric archtop, in 1936) and its later variants, that they became popular. Whether swing and jazz movements, a rage during that time, were a result of this evolution, or whether the music craze of the times necessitated the arrival of the ES-150 – we’ll let the historians settle that one.

Two, maybe three decades later, the guitar design must have landed in India and from that time to date, cheap imitations masquerading as guitars, with zero frets and floating bridges, keep entering the market month after month. With each lot, the corners are cut some more, making them bigger nightmares for gullible (ill-informed?) customers and yet bigger nightmares for repair persons like Yours Humbly.

One landed on my counter recently, one which probably had been stood in a corner and was forgotten about. In the interim, it managed to lose half of its floating bridge – the top portion on which the strings ride.

The other half would have got lost in time too, had not the young owner, innocently, super-glued it!

With a sudden awakening of a passion for getting on with his guitar journey, he brought me the instrument…and a replacement bridge.

He also brought me other parts

And, of course, after all this time, the fretboard was very dry and the fretwires were badly tarnished.

But what needed attention the most was the nut on the instrument – plastic needless to say – but one which had fallen prey to the experiments of the young man. No matter how hard I tried to pry, prise and knock it out of its slot, it refused to budge. A phone call confirmed that indeed the reason for it being so unmoving, was super glue!

Out it had to come – dead or alive – and it did.

And even after coming out in pieces, it insisted on leaving its mark – a matchstick: probably used to raise it on the treble side.

Finally, after much filing, sanding and even more persuasion, I got the nut slot clean of all extra pieces of wood and glue. However, when I placed a new nut in the slot, there remained a gap between the top of the nut and the fretboard enough for you to sink the Titanic in. The bottom of the nut, however, sat flush in its slot.

Now what? I turned to my discarded plastic cards and shimmed it and filed in a slope that would make the nut sit perfectly in its slot throughout its height.

The last photograph in the sequence shows you just how much wood glue (no other glue!) is to be used to keep the nut from slipping and sliding in its slot.

Then it was the turn of the fretboard and fretwires to get the much-needed attention. Some ‘0000’ steel wool, some boiled linseed oil and lots of elbow grease and the result was 

And at that point, my friends, I knew my troubles were about to begin. Removing the (super-glued) bridge and then having to bring down the new one to the height required, it wasn’t going to be as easy as tic-tac-toe!

In a normal steel-string guitar, you adjust action by pulling out the plastic/bone/tusq saddle and sanding it. Here, I had to sand the entire bridge!

With weakening pulse, I sharpened the edge on my screwdriver and gently got it under a corner of the glued-on foot of the bridge. A little tap and the bridge popped off, and as I expected, took a bit of the paint with it. I wasn’t too worried about that for the new bridge would ideally sit exactly at that place.

However, I did not take off the old bridge before marking where exactly it sat (with some painter’s tape).

Looking at what I had just pulled off, I just shook my head.

The two portions of the bridge with the rectangular hollows are called the feet of the bridge, for the bridge ‘stands’ on the top of the guitar with these. The function of these is primarily to conduct the energy of the strings to the top of the guitar. But when you have hollows, how much conduction was happening, is anybody’s guess.

Now would begin the really painful stuff, sanding the new bridge to the correct height. For that, I would have to string the guitar, because without the strings how would one know how tall the bridge was and how much it needed to be brought down. And because the strings would have to be strung through the tail piece, I would have to leave them on and then work.

But why all that hassle? The top had an arch to it (and thus, the name ‘archtop’) and the feet of the bridge needed to conform to it for the bridge to function properly and for it to transmit sound properly. So, all the sanding that had to be done, would have to be done ON the top itself!

Taking measurements with the new bridge in place, I noticed that the treble side was much higher than the bass side (in normal guitars it is the other way around because the thicker strings need a bit more room to vibrate than their plain peers). So, what it translated to was that the treble side foot would need to be sanded much more than the bass side. One more problem!

I started off like this to get some curvature on the feet

and soon taped off the area of the sandpaper falling under the bass side foot of the bridge.

For six hours, over two days, I rubbed the treble side foot of the bridge on the sandpaper, going only as fast as the strings chaffing my knuckles would allow.

What made the job even more difficult was the fact that the bridge was made of ebony. Ebony is a beautiful wood but it is also the hardest wood around. Sanding ebony is like trying to chip steel with your spoon, and it is exactly for this quality of hardness that ebony is the preferred choice of high-end guitar makers: the hardness helps in a wonderful transmission of sound.

In between I would pull out the bridge and mark the treble foot like this

and then rub some more, pull it out and check if I was sanding correct, checking if inadvertently, I wasn’t sanding one side or one corner more than the other. If I would have been, the pencil marks would have remained on the portion coming least in contact with the sandpaper. Thankfully, each time I checked, the pencil marks had disappeared.

When I was satisfied with the bridge height, I finally strung up the guitar. The nut-end of the guitar looked like this

To clarify, a floating bridge is given that name because it is NEVER fixed to the top but only held down by string tension.

But it was all worth it because the young man was happy with the action, with the overall sound of the guitar and how it looked.

I think I heard him mumble ‘Very playable’!

 

 

Regular readers of this blog are familiar with how peeved I get with cheap (Rs 3K – 3.5K) toys that masquerade as guitars.

New readers may understand it this way: granted that you wish to learn how to play the guitar and you aren’t sure whether you will be able to sustain the drive to learn it, is it alright to buy a toy to experiment, or does it make sense to buy something in the Rs 10 – 12K range? PARENTS, PAY ATTENTION!!!!

Not all cheap instruments are bad, but generally speaking, a cheap guitar is always going to give problems because it’s constructed by cutting corners (literally) to cut down production costs. A (relatively) expensive guitar (pricey ones start above 25 -28K and there is no upper limit!) will cause fewer problems and serve you a lifetime and then some. What was that Hindi saying about a cheap buy making you cry every step of the way, and an expensive buy making you cry just once??!!

So, if you buy a (relatively) expensive guitar but are unable to sustain interest in it, has the investment gone down the drain? Not so. You can always pass it on to a younger sibling/nephew/ niece, or sell it online on exchange, buy/sell websites, or sell it to a music school. You should be able to recover most of your investment, if not all of it.

In contrast to all that I have said above (and now that my rant is over and I am breathing much easier), let me introduce you to Jolly JIMM, an exception to the cheap=bad rule. It was bought for Rs 3.5 K some half-a-decade ago and came in for action correction and attention to a crack along the bass-side seam of the lower bout, caused by the guitar being accidentally dropped.

As I inspected it, I noticed that while it was a long crack, only at some places did it move under pressure. I wicked in some thin CA glue to stabilise it, and then put on some spool clamps that I had made many years ago.

I also noticed that the instrument wasn’t the usual ply-board that it was constructed out of but what looked like basswood to me. Nice! Usually guitars in this range are built out of ply-board.

Also, the bridge was lifting. The front line on the chit of paper shows how much it went under on the treble side of the guitar, while the bottom line shows how much that end went under the bass side of the guitar. But since I felt it would be some time before the lifting bridge would cause any problems, I decided to leave it be.

Of course, it had the ‘mandatory’ plastic nut and saddle. Those would go and be replaced by bone elements. The guitar seemed built well enough to be able to sport them.

Also, the bridgeplate inspection revealed that it was woefully inadequate in its dimensions. Consequently, while some bridgepin holes were half on it and half on the top, others were completely on the top. But all through, the ball ends had eaten into wherever they came in contact with. These indentations were deep enough for the ball ends to get stuck in, and while one was trying to take off the strings, they refused to budge!

Can you make out? Anyway, that needed to be attended to.

But what caught my attention immediately was the strap tied to the neck of the guitar.

And here I will go off on another bender. The tying of the strap to the neck like this, IS NEVER TO BE DONE!

Why? Understand this! Often, guitar necks are made of three pieces of wood glued together, rather than from a single piece of wood. The idea is that the joints make the neck stronger than a single-piece neck.

Try and see if you can catch the joint line in between the two red lines. So, there is a joint right where the headstock meets the neck, and a second joint where the neck meets the heel. By tying the strap along the headstock, you will be forcing the entire weight of the guitar on that joint, and it is not uncommon in such instruments for the neck to break just at this joint.

So, included in the work on the instrument, was the addition of a strap button too. The plastic one went and a steel one replaced it at the base of the guitar, while a strap button was screwed on the side of the heel of the guitar.

Now for the serious bit: attending to the bridgeplate. Initially, I had thought of adding a thin, long piece of wood and stick it against the bridgeplate along the side, and to the top along the width of the piece.

But I had to drop the idea because I would never be able to make a piece of exact thickness and would have to plane it down to the thickness of the bridgeplate once the piece was stuck inside. The problem: I didn’t have a plane that small which would be able to go inside through the soundhole (my hand and arm included).

So, I thought up this: saw dust and wood glue mixed together and applied to the deep indentations.

And what would I apply it with? Ice-cream sticks! But I failed with various lengths of sticks because I could not straighten my arm enough inside the guitar.

And so, the trusty fingers it was with which I applied the mixture.

Once I was satisfied that I had applied enough, I let the instrument sit easy and breathe for a good five or six hours before even looking in its direction.

Then, the rest of the work was relatively simple. Clean the fretboard and bridge and oil it, and polish the frets. Amazing what a little bit of attention and love does.

A new bone nut and saddle were installed and the nut was lubricated with graphite to facilitate easy string movement.

And when you have invested so much time and effort into it, a little more wouldn’t harm. So, the front of the headstock was cleaned very properly.

Meanwhile, the open tuning machines were oiled and the oil was worked into them properly

and a brand new set of strings was put on.

That is how Jolly JIMM looks now and it “sure sounds good”. And that is not me saying it, but the owner!

 

GREETINGS GUITAR GEEKS! As promised, I’m back! 

I hope all of you had a great time putting 2020 to sleep and a wonderful time ushering in 2021. May it be a year of health, happiness and prosperity for all.

During this ‘break period’ I worked on a clutch of guitars, but allow me to begin on the note I signed off: 

With that being reiterated, let’s introduce you to the job at hand.

 

 

There’s one instrument on the bench and its mirror image stands in the corner. The one in the corner I can take apart – part by part – and have allowed it to take up premium space for the sole purpose of explaining to customers and people in general, guitar anatomy and pointing out problem areas in other instruments.

One look at it and it was clear that the owner was conscious about the evils of counterfeiting. This one was called ‘Fendar’ but the owner had taken the time and effort to cover up all branding. 

To the owner: Even though the style in which the name is printed is very similar to the famous American brand, you needn’t have worried about copyright infringement. The original is spelt ‘Fender’!

So, the young man who brought in this guitar sheepishly admitted to it having been a hurried purchase some years ago. Now, more informed and wiser, he understood his mistake but still wanted to see if this instrument could be salvaged. 

The problem, as he explained it, was two-fold. One: the truss rod didn’t work, and two, the neck had way too much relief (and thus very high action) for the instrument to be played comfortably. 

He also mentioned something about either the ‘B’ or the ‘G’ string not intonating properly or going out of tune (I forget).

One look at the bridge/saddle area and a very discriminatory ‘Humph!’ escaped my lips.

You see why? 

Those of you who have been regular readers of this blog, know about the angst caused to me by nuts and bolts in bridges and plastic nut and saddles . Here I was seeing both in the same frame! The area encircled in red is where I could see a hairline crack in the saddle. 

I had decided to throw out this saddle and put in a new plastic one in its place to keep the budget as low as possible. Using only fingers, I tried to remove the saddle from its seating, but it would not budge. Gripping it with pliers, this is how it came out.

I was convinced that there was something gripping the saddle in the seating and closer inspection revealed remnants of  what could have been some sort of glue. Measuring the saddle length and width, I was surprised that it was much, much smaller than what I had. In order to put in a new one, I would have to shave down a new saddle much in height and length and thickness. Too much work!

I just super-glued the two parts of the old saddle and polished it up, and it was as good as new. However, the seating did need attention which I gave with 80 grit sandpaper and some elbow grease.

All this was the easy part. Now, began the real work.

Trying to work the truss rod, indeed, it did not work. My guess is, it never did, even in the shop from where it was bought. If I tried fiddling with it too much, the nut capping the truss rod would come off. So, I left the truss rod alone almost as if it did not exist!

The process that I tried to straighten the neck, works (usually) when you take off the fretboard, and actually focus on the wood of the neck. But then, on this instrument, investing so much time and effort would have been a waste. I still tried it with the fretboard on because I wanted to see if it would work, and besides, there was nothing to lose.

It’s a process of applying clamp pressure under hot and moist conditions. Moisture was provided by a portion of a leg of a pair of jeans soaking in water, while the heat was radiated through heat guns.

As fate would have it, one heat gun got so hot that it caught fire, melted, burnt the guitar neck rest (the block of wood) it was resting on. The molten plastic burnt the mat that I lay instruments on, and while I was fighting the fire, some of the molten plastic landed on me too.

Suffice it to say that disaster was averted, and I ordered another (better, sturdier) device to carry on with the work. For four or five days, I kept feeding the guitar neck water and heat intermittently and then let it cool completely.

Thereafter, when I released the neck from bondage, it had a bit of a bow in the reverse direction, such that it would certainly make the strings buzz. Believe me, I was very happy to see that because I knew that once I strung up the guitar, string tension would pull the neck straight.

With just the stringing left to be done, I cleaned up the fretwires and the fretboard and oiled it, exposing the pretty wood grain of the fretboard.

Look carefully at the background and you can probably see the burnt neck rest and the portion of the matting that got burnt in the fire episode.

As I strung up the instrument, I noticed to my horror that the neck not just straightened but much of the bow returned in it. Ah, well, I tried!

But I was pleasantly surprised when the owner came to pick up the guitar and pronounced that it was much better and very playable.

So much for happy endings!

Just a short note this time to announce that I am taking a break from the blog to rejuvenate myself, to collect my thoughts, and to spend some time with my family. The next blog post will appear on January 10, 2021.

However, your favourite acoustic guitar repair shop – Lucknow Guitar Garage – will continue to remain in your service to the best of its resources and my abilities.

But I would like to leave you with a smile and a thought to ponder over:

 

Have a great year-end, enjoy yourselves but do take care of yourself and your loved ones!