Modifications and structural damage

 

If your guitar has suffered  serious structural damage such as a broken neck, loose bracing or has simply been trashed in some manner, please use t he contact form to explain the extent of the problem. In some cases it may not be financially viable to repair the unfortunate instrument. The same applies to major alterations to otherwise healthy instruments. Please be aware that you might decrease the value of older instruments by ‘tastefully’ changing the original design.

As all cases are different, the instrument will need viewing before I can estimate the cost of any work to be carried out.

 

 

                                          New neck for old guitar

 

This guitar  is about 30 years old and has obviously seen some ‘action’. The neck has been broken at the headstock on two separate occasions and the soundboard had two large cracks in the area between the bridge and the tailpiece, which is a fairly common problem with older Selmer style guitars.  Considering the above problems and the fact that the fingerboard was  also in pretty poor shape, it was decided to replace the entire neck.

 

After removing the neck ( note that the customer did not wish to be present for this particular operation) I incorporated some suggested changes regarding neck dimensions, installed a zero fret and repaired the cracks on the soundboard.

The pickup was also suffering from intermittent dropouts and was replaced by another under saddle model and incorporated into the bridge in the ‘Bigtone’ style which is a pretty standard system for these type of guitars.

 

 

 

 

The guitar sounded great when strung with new strings although the current pickup seemed to have slightly less output than

the original. This is not considered a problem as an LR Baggs system is to be fitted at a later date.

A new tortoiseshell style scratchplate finished off the look.