Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello everyone,
I'm new to working on guitars as well as playing them. I have been interested in figuring out how these instruments are built and how they work.

I have developed an interest in older Japanese off brand electric guitars. Most of these are cheap and for the most part have a good reason to be. They are not fancy or super well built by any means most of the time but they have a certain character to me. I guess it's just the fact they are so different.

As a result of my interest and purchases (Only two so far) I have had to do some work to get them to play at all. Over the last week I have been learning how to work on them.

My first one is an old late 60's early 70's global SG. This guitar has a zero fret and had really high action despite bridge adjustments and truss rod adjustments. With this guitar I learned how to level frets with a credit card and sand paper (I don't have any files yet). I also spaced the bolt on neck with two pennies to angle the neck back a bit. I replaced the nut because at the time I didn't understand zero frets. Over all the guitar is now playable and I learned a thing or two.


Which brings me to my current "project".

I recently bought an old hollow body arch top that had about an inch worth of action and a broken truss rod.





I don't have a picture of the action before but it had to be an inch. On top of that it looks like some one had try to set it up by them selves. They had grooved the nut with a pocket knife all the way down to the fret board and apparently broke the truss rod.

I replaced the nut and spaced the neck and brought it much closer to the strings but because of the broken truss rod the neck bowed way to much.

I could have used the stew mac rescue kit but I don't have an extra 234 dollars. So after much debate and thought I decided I was going to replace the truss rod. So I went to work getting the fret board off.











Almost done:



Removing the truss rod plug thing:





It all apart:




I have ordered a new truss rod and have sanded everything to get rid of the glue and smooth everything out.

Once the truss rod comes in I can re-glue everything and hopefully have a playable instrument again.

I am by no means a luthier but would like to build a guitar one day. I figure gotta take small steps first, start with repairs and work my way up. Who knows, time will tell.

Usually people who repair stringed instruments are also known as luthiers.
Good luck with the repair.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thanks! Well we will see how this repair goes. I'm learning as I go as I'm sure everyone does. I have a guy with a lot of broken/worn out guitars that said he will let me practice on. I haven't told him yes yet because I'm not 100% confident but depending on how this repair goes I may give it a neck reset on one of his cheaper acoustics a shot and seeing how that goes before I actually try to work on one of his nicer guitars.

But that is later. I tend to dive head first into projects and getting way over my head, but that is when I learn the most. It's how I learned how to work on cars and it's what I'm doing with guitars.

I was able to find a picture of the action before I got the guitar:



Just from spacing the neck a bit I was able to take that down to a playable level but ran into issues with neck bow, hence the truss rod replacement.

The Truss rod shipped today so hopefully in the next few days I'll get it and have a playable guitar that probably wasn't worth the effort as far as value is concerned but I will enjoy it.

Ah Yoshi welcome to the OLF

Working clunkers is a great way to develop knowledge and skills that will carry over to higher end guitars 'and' it can also reveal some real gems along the way. It is true that a lot of the 70's-80's Asian built guitars were put together with little regard for longevity, but some like the early Aria Pro2, Westone, and most Gibson Epiphone from early 70's thru mid 80's which came out of the old Matsumoko factory before it burnt to the ground had quite a high build quality and are certainly worth the effort to keep them playing.

Cheers

Kim

Thank you Mister all that is Man and Honcho Kim!

I enjoy them that is for sure. I have one un marked matsumoku SG and I love it.

I'm looking forward to my adventure into luthierism. I enjoy learning how things work and working with my hands. Wood is a new frontier for me. I have only done any work with metal like welding, machining, fabricating and so on. So I'm looking forward to learning the tricks of the trade and woodworking.

Your welcome Yoshi, but you should know that since the course of shots and the operation is been "Mr" Kim.

Cheers

*Inserts foot into mouth and sits in corner*

I apologize

I fixed it

So in an effort to distract from my recent ...

Look what came in today just in time for me to get ready for work!



It's a little long



Nothing a little thread re-cutting and a hack saw won't fix.



Sadly all my tools are in a different city so looks like I'm going to walmart to get some cheap ones...

Okay, I'm back on day shift and am able to go to stores when they are open.

So I was able to get a tap and die set and a little hack saw and some clamps so I could thread and shorten the truss rod.









And here we are waiting for the truss rod arch thing to dry (Excuse the technical talk)

And the fret board is glued and drying...

Well the neck is glued and the guitar is put back together. I can't believe what a difference it made!





Plays much better, I need to do some fret leveling to get it to play well all the way down but it is a HUGE difference!

And here is the whole crew

i was gonna say, after all that heat, bending, flexing, twisting, regluing/clamping of the fingerboard, i am amazed that it is playable at all without a fret level/crown.
also how did that binding fare under the iron? any melting?

No melting of the binding it did come off on one side so I had to reglue it. Other than that it was okay.

Yoshi, I looks to me like you did a methodical, sensible, practical repair. Very nice! Keep coming back to this forum. You will find many friends who are generous with their wisdom and advice here. Keep up the good work.
Patrick

I look forward to learning more. Eventually I want to work my way into building one. All things in time.

good work! I think you will find that with a good set up any guitar can be fun to play.

also I have to comment, I have very similar tastes... love the vintage off brand stuff. then of course there is the first act VW ... my favorite - I plan on owning mine till it is vintage.

I know I have been MIA for a long time but life is pretty crazy. I had done this repair and the guitar played pretty well for what it is but when I had clamped it, the fret board shifted a hair. Been driving me crazy so I decided to redo it.

I learned that this glue:



made the fret board a lot harder to remove than the hide glue that was used to begin with. This caused some roughing on the edges but nothing that can't be sanded.

I tend to do things like this on a whim and usually am not too prepared when I do. This is nothing different. I have no sand paper to clean it up and will be ordering some hide glue once I sell off a few engines and a trans.

As far as hide glue is concerned do you guys recommend the titebond liquid?

Absolutely we recommend Titebond.
Many a guitar has been built with it.
Good repair, by the way.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thank you! I looks like I'll be getting a bottle here soon.

If you mean original Tightbond, lots of people use it and a plenty happy. If you're asking about Tightbond Liquid Hideglue, I think most people are wait-and-see. For hide glue, I buy dry flakes and mix up smaller portions at a time as hot hide glue.

For gluing on a fretboard, I can't get things aligned and clamped fast enough to use HHG. I'd use Tightbond, fish glue, or epoxy. Maybe that's a place I could try the liquid hide...

Mike

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Mike Lindstrom

I was thinking of trying the titebond liquid hide glue on stewmacs website. If its not recommended ill go with the regular titebond, but if people are curious I can give it a shot.