Acoustic Guitar Bares its Teath

Taffy Evans · Post by **Taffy Evans** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 8:26 pm

Never did like heavy gauge strings!

Interesting repair, but I don't think the customer would like the bill for the job.

Lillian · Post by **Lillian** » Thu Sep 11, 2008 9:45 pm

Dang Taffy, that looks nasty, especially first thing in the morning. What are you going to do with it?

kiwigeo · Post by **kiwigeo** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 12:54 am

A sunburst bridge failure to go with a sunburst finish.

Arnt · Post by **Arnt** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 5:08 am

Ouch! Doesn't look like much of the bridge was actually glued to that poor plywood top...

jjh · Post by **jjh** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 5:57 am

Done quite a few bridge repairs I'd just glue bridge back down with cascamite type glue smooth inside bridge plate and add a thick modellers ply backing for bridge patch ok working through soundhole isn't easy, but whole job an hour should cover it so Â£50 should cover it?

kiwigeo · Post by **kiwigeo** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 9:07 am

The guitar is probably worth less than 50 pounds. Quote the owner for a new top and then let him/her decide how much he/she loves the instrument.

Paul B · Post by **Paul B** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 9:14 am

Wow, that's just nasty.

Am I alone in thinking that seeing failures like these can greatly help the Amatuer Luthier? Seeing how these things colapse has gotta give us all a heads-up in what's important, yeah?

When I was heavily into R&D of a new technology in my last job, in my estimation we learned far more by doing post mortems on failures than we did from just building our devices.

Thanks for showing that!

gratay · Post by **gratay** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 9:58 am

yeah I'm with Arnt. Certainly looks like a fair amount of surface area of that bridge wasn't glued down.

Taffy Evans · Post by **Taffy Evans** » Fri Sep 12, 2008 9:59 am

Done a few of these type repairs, in the end its up the customer......

JJH...That sort of repair would work, but its not my style. The customer may show the guitar to somebody else and say "hey Taffy did this" could be bad for business.
Kiwigeo.......Your right there, I would do the repair but its not worth it on this guitar. I did the same job on a spanish made nylon recently, not a good guitar but the customer loved it so he paid the price quoted.

Paul B.......Your right Paul, the only reason I got sucked into the repair business was to learn about how guitars were constructed and how and why they failed. Doing that for three years before building was invaluable.
But now theres the forum....

kiwigeo · Post by **kiwigeo** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 9:18 am

Well things could be worse. A person who obviously thinks Im a guitar repair guru sent me this beauty.

Check out the neck joint...held together by glue and a couple of wooden dowels.

I plan to actually build a faithful copy and send that back to the owner telling him it was a really tough repair job but I managed to pull it off.

Kim · Post by **Kim** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 11:14 am

kiwigeo wrote: I plan to actually build a faithful copy and send that back to the owner telling him it was a really tough repair job but I managed to pull it off.

That would be the short cut option then Martin, far less work me thinks

Allen · Post by **Allen** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 5:05 pm

Looks like a casualty in a bar fight to me. Good luck with that one Martin.

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Acoustic Guitar Bares its Teath

Acoustic Guitar Bares its Teath

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