Guitar repair – A face-palming moment for me!

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

Guitar repair is much like that!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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