An old friend dropped off an old Norman guitar that he'd bought for his wife 42 years ago. He said a couple of strings wouldn't stay in tune, and could I get it to a reasonable playing condition.
I've only done work on my own guitars, but figured I couple do some basic set up on it.
When I took a closer look, it turned out to be a basket case!
When I took the strings off, I inspected the braces, and found that the upper X brace was tapered to nothing, and fell short of the linings by 1", and the lower X didn't reach the linings either.
These guitars were built without a heel, and a neck attachment much like an electric guitar.
The neck is completely let into the top and a neck block that tapers down to about an inch deep at the back of the guitar.
It looked like the neck design and bracing weren't going to allow for any simple fix for the high action and top issues.
I thought that maybe I could put to practice what I learned at Hesh and David Collin's fretting class, and make the fret board more playable. That wasn't going to happen, either. The factory fret levelling hadn't been re crowned, and had taken the frets so low that I couldn't re level and crown them.
Polishing the frets and fret board, new strings, lowering the nut slots, and tightening several loose tuner posts was the extent of what I could do.
I saw these guitars at a local music shop in the mid 70's, and the owner told me that the two owners of Norman guitars had a falling out over the heel design. One left, and started Lys Guitars ( I have a Lys 12 string, with a heel ). For obvious reasons, Norman guitars soon adopted a more traditional design!
Alex
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