Before
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I bought this Morgan Monroe
mandolin from a pawn shop in Florida. Once it was delivered to my
shop I un-crated it and although the strings looked pretty spent on
it, I tuned it up and played it for a short time. I soon decided it
would need a new set of strings. The sound volume did not change much.
I eventually removed the multi-layers of acrylic finish and found
that the top was still quite thick. So using a pneumatic sanding gun
and a Hacklinger Thickness Gauge,
I brought the thickness of the top down to a reasonable thickness
which really opened up the sound of this instrument. The new color
scheme came from an early 1900 Gibson A that had that pumpkin color
top and a sort of reddish-brown back and sides. I replaced the original
bridge with a Randy Woods bridge and replaced the tuners with a nice
set with ebony buttons.
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After
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Before
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This is a 1958 Guild "Granada"
X-50 that was brought into the shop to be re-furbished. Most of the
original binding was missing and what was still attached was curled
and brittle. All of the electronics were corroded and no longer usable.
The finish was peeling off the back and sides. So I removed the old
finish, installed new binding, sent it out to have the body sprayed,
replaced the P-90 pickup, the tone and volume pots, and the output
jack. I also found some "chickenhead knobs" to replace the ones either
lost or broken.
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After
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Before
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This Washburn MG-44 electric
guitar had spent some time in the corner of a machine shop out of
it's case. The first photo shows quite a bit of grime but the real
project was to get the Floyd Rose style bridge cleaned up and working
again. The after photo shows a more playable instrument.
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After
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Before
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During the winter with its
cold dry air, the wood stove keeps some of us toasty warm. But the
heat and lack of humidity in the air raises issues with wood instruments.
This is a 1922 Gibson Mandola that just "let loose" one day. The customer
was actually playing it when it happened. The largest portion of the
split on the top was 3/32 of an inch. I didn't even start the gluing
process until I let the mandola sit in a room with 58% humidity for
three weeks. That alone closed up the crack enough to make the rest
of the repair process come together. |
After
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Before
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The before photo tells it
all. It really doesn't take much of a blow to the headstock to have
this result. And I usually cringe when I see this because I can almost
bet it was an accident and the person who owns this was most likely
devastated. Some are repairable and some are not. Luckly this one
was. |
After
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Before
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This was a fun little project.
The owner of this Epiphone "Sheraton" really love playing it, but
he wanted a little different look. When he bought it, it had gold-plated
hardware and exposed Humbucker pick-ups and he was wanting a more
subtle look to it. So he bought all of the chrome-plated hardware
and pick-up covers and asked me to make the conversion. It turned
out just how he wanted it to look. Another happy customer. |
After
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Before
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A customer came in with an
eleven string lute and said that in the middle of the night he was
awoken by such a sound that he didn't really know how to describe
it. The next day he found the bridge to his lute as it appears in
the first photo. I removed the part that was still attached and repaired
the bridge as a whole. I cleaned up all the old glue and sanded the
bridge footprint on the top so that I had a clean and even surface
to work with and re-glued the bridge back on the instrument. |
After
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These are photos from different
angles that I took of a replacement bridge that I made for a Lyons
& Healy parlor guitar. The original bridge was fatigued and the saddle
was needing to sit at a slightly different angle to correct the intonation.
I would have liked to have filled and re-cut the saddle slot but there
just wasn't enough room to get the correct angle. So I replicated
the bridge and I also had to fill the original bridgepin holes on
the top and bridge plate so that I could re-drill the new bridgepin
holes in their new location. |
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