Guitar repairs

Broken headstocks

Unfortunately headstock breaks are fairly common particularly when there is a combination of mahogany necks with angled back headstocks.

After glueing up the break we often need to rout in some reinforcing tongues made from rock maple which is straight grained, dense and very strong. This isn't always necessary when the break has a large overlap giving a good glueing surface area.

The first row of photos show a Gibson SG which we glued up and added reinforcing tongues followed by spot refinishing over the repaired area with a gradated tint.

The next 4 photos show a Manouche Moreno gypsy jazz guitar with a less severe head break, so once cleaned and glued, it too was refinished with a gradated tint over the repaired area.

Body breaks and cracks

Generally speaking acoustic instruments are more prone to major body damage due to their more delicate construction, but now and again some solid body instruments arrive looking pretty terminal too.

These two guitars had suffered some severe body damage. In both cases, fortunately the necks had survived and were virtually unmarked. Both owners were pleasantly surprised to learn that the instruments were repairable.

Cordoba GK-PRO classical. This had a nasty smash on the bottom, displacing the tail block, causing splits to the sides, back and front of the body along with damage to the bindings and to some internal bracing which was partly detached. The first task was to secure the bracing, realign and secure the tail block to the sides, then align and glue the front and back splits and add some internal reinforcing cleats, followed by securing the sides to the back and front, then repairing the bindings. Some minor lacquer touch up completed the repairs.

Ibanez S770PB. Severe body breaks with the heel pocket area torn away leaving it attached to the neck. The hardware and electrics were still as new apart from damaged pickup surrounds and control knobs. After disassembly, we glued up the body sections. Luckily the glue lines were near invisible on the body front due to the 'busy' poplar burl grain pattern. We felt that the back, being plain straight grained mahogany should be treated to an opaque paint finish. The customer chose cream which blended in nicely with the overall look. After applying clear coats to the whole body, we reassembled the guitar, adding new pickup surrounds and knobs, then carried out the usual set up adjustments. It played and sounded great!

Bridges and bridge plates

Some common acoustic bridge faults include broken bridges, worn bridge plates causing the ball end of the strings to pull up through the soundboard, incorrectly positioned saddles resulting in poor intonation. Electric guitar bridges often suffer from seized saddle screws, worn or incorrectly spaced notches on ABR/Nashville type bridges, broken tremolo arm threads in strat trem blocks.

The first row of photos shows a new bridge we made for a 1981 Gibson Hummingbird and a bridge plate repair on a 1961 Martin 000 18.

The second row shows a '70's Martin dreadnought which needed the saddle moving back by 3mm to correct the intonation. We wood filled the existing slot with matching ebony then routed a new saddle slot in the correct position.

The last 2 photos show dressing the saddle tops on a Rickenbacker 4001 bass bridge. The slots were untidy, and off centre. We corrected this for perfect string alignment and spacing.

Electrical repairs

We cover everything from a simple clean up of crackly pots, jacks and switches, through to major rewiring with diagnosis and repairs to, or replacement of, faulty components.

The pickups in the first row of photos are from a 1966 Strat. They had been removed from the instrument many years ago which had involved cutting the wires right back to the base. We fitted them with new cloth hook-up wires which was a bit of a delicate operation!

The next 2 photos show an '80's Washburn EA30CS which had electrical problems. The battery wire had a broken connection on the circuit board and the battery connecting clip was also damaged. We replaced the clip and its wires which we re-soldered to the circuit board which involved dismantling the pre-amp unit.

The 1964 Fender Telecaster in the 2nd row of photos came in for a refinish and some refurbishment work which included removing the household electrical joining terminals, re-soldering the original wires back together and adding heat-shrink over the joins.

The last 2 photos show a Fender Jaguar which had electrical problems.