Epiphone Blackstone restoration

Upon arrival

As you can see, the guitar was in need of substantial refurbishment, so we started the disassembly process, completely removing the back, neck and hardware.

Body repairs.

The body top was repaired with spruce infill pieces and the longitudinal braces on the underside were secured along with the cracks. The finish on the back and sides was in pretty good condition so they just needed a good clean and polish, whilst the finish on the front was stripped. The back was then refitted and binding added.

Neck and headstock

Once we'd removed the frets we were able to true up the fingerboard, add new binding and refret it. The headstock was cleaned, rubbed down and treated to some light coats of nitrocellulose lacquer. The neck to body angle was calculated and the neck refitted.

The final stages.

The customer had decided at the beginning that the front was to be black.....however, we showed him some early examples of some burst finishes and it was decided that this would be more approriate. Once the paintwork was complete we added the hardware and set it up.