Like a fine wine, some musical instruments get better with age. Sometimes, due to age, neglect and abuse, older guitars needs some work and TLC to be returned to playable condition. This blog documents some of the work I have performed on musical instruments for myself and others over the years.
He hit the ground running,
At the speed of light.
The star was brightly shining,
Like a neon light.
While I was out of town a few weeks ago, my favorite (and only) son and I had a wonderful phone conversation. After telling me about his day at school and the new "mother" jokes he and his sixth-grade friends exchanged, he mentioned that his Epi was broken. Naturally, fear struck my heart like a bomb being dropped in an old Green Day video. After discussion, I was relieved to find out that the output jack had simply become loose as a result of many hours of play. After getting caught up with most everything else around the house, I finally got around to taking care of my son's guitar. But, since he is not in the position to pay my customary bench time fees, I took the opportunity to teach the youngin' a thing or two about taking care of his own guitar.
Looking inside the jack plate, we could just barely see the silver jack
inside the body cavity.
Graham grabbed a small Phillips driver and
removed three of the four screws.
After fishing out the jack with a metal pointer, we checked and made sure the wiring was intact.
Once we were sure that everything was in working order, we started putting things back together.
After placing the plate and washer over the jack, I used a socket driver to reinstall the nut...
...and let Graham screw the assembly pack into place.
It was nice having an extra pair of hands to work on things for a change. We'll see if this turns into a regular thing when I work on This Old Guitar.
You know you can't hold me forever
I didn't sign up with you
The time had come, I needed to make room for another guitar. Since my kids are still too young to move out of the house, and I was not about to add on a room, it was time to say goodbye to one of These Old Guitars. After thinking it through for a few weeks, I decided I would list my Holiday Archtop for sale.
This was the first project guitar I had worked on in recent years, between October of 2008 through when I made some home digital recordings with her in September of 2010.
Before listing her on eBay, there were a few things that I had not yet gotten back to fixing and upgrading, as well as some other things that needed some attention. It was also time for a good cleaning and polishing. I suppose someone would be willing to buy her as-is. Instead of offering her in her present condition, I wanted to offer her as a finished project, and something more representative of my current guitar repair and renovation capabilities.
Over the years, I had swapped out her tuners twice. First, I had replaced the original 3+3 on a strip open-backed tuners with the individual Grover button tuners I had borrowed from another guitar. When it came time to give those Grovers back, I had put a set of imitation Grover Imperial tuners on the Holiday. Although they looked good, the rectilinear styling did not go well at all with her curvy tailpiece, and her relatively small headstock made tuning her with these relatively wide peg buttons a challenge.
I set out to simply replace the Imperial tuners with another set of button tuners. But, with all of the tuners removed, I realized I was about to add a third set of screw holes into the rear of her worn headstock.
So, I filled in the extra screw holes by gluing in some oak. I left just enough excess wood to be able to trim the repairs flat with a sharp blade and some light sanding.
Her end block area was in similar condition. I had replaced her very utilitarian stock tailpiece and friction-type celluloid end pin with very decorative pieces of gold plated hardware. This was the right time to fill in the extra holes in this area as well.
With a little sanding, a 5/16-inch oak dowel filled the original tapered end pin hole.
While waiting for all the glue to dry, I moved over to upgrading the output jack. The tasks here were to swap out the chrome hardware for a gold jack, and add a matching Les Paul style mounting plate.
To attach the grounding shield to the plate, I removed the gold plating in a small area and roughened up the exposed metal with some #60 grit sandpaper.
Next came tinning the stripped wires and soldering the three connections to the assembly.
After checking the fit and electrical continuity with a patch cord, and enlarging the hole in her side, I predrilled the screw holes. Getting back to the neck and end block area, I trimmed and sanded down the repairs...
...and installed all of the gold hardware...
I also had to reattach the nut before putting on some strings, so I took this opportunity to remove some excess glue still on the neck from last time.
When the glue had dried, I put on a coat of polish and lined up the floating bridge. Some tape came in handy for holding the bridge in place while putting on a fresh set of strings.
Not too shabby looking for a playable 50 year old jazz box. I brought her back into the house to let her acclimate for a few days, before setting her bridge height and intonation one more time.
