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A friend of a friend called me, "got an old Gibson with a broken neck, was told that if anyone could fix it you could". Ah, well, OK. Thinking it was just a normal broken Gibbie head I said "sure, bring it over"

Well, it turned out to be a 1978 (he says) Custom that was badly broken thru the heel, the neck was popped out of the cavity. Binding was broken off both sides. That would have been pretty straight forward but the owner decided to fix it, my guess is that he used water activated polyurethane, which happens to expand as it cures. I also doubt that he clamped the neck back into the pocket. It looked like this







The good thing about gorilla glue is that it wasn't ever going to come apart. The bad thing about gorilla glue is that it wasn't going to come apart.

In addition, the neck geometry was now completely fubar



And someone had removed the wiring with a pair of diagonal cutters



To add insult to injury, the original Nashville ToM bridge had been lost so they jury rigged a cheap made in Korea ABR-1 style bridge to work by wrapping paper around the M4 threaded studs to make them fit in the M5 bushings

The geometry was bad, but close enough that I figured it was worth a try. Some bondo (yes, Virginia, bondo) in the heel



And some binding spliced into the old



A few coats of black lacquer with some vintage amber on the binding







The electronics were toast - the switch was intermitent, the pots were scratchy, when I tried to pull the knobs the shaft came out of one so I rewired with all new components



I just happened to have the correct Nashville stud but I didn't have a vintage gold bridge so I put the POS one back in while we look for an old one



Did a bunch of work on the truss rod and frets (they are the original kind with the plastic nibs) and got the action pretty reasonable. Took it inside, plugged it in and played it for the first time in a lot of years

Nicely done. The guitar restoration looks good.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

Of course, with all the damage - there was plenty of potential. Well done, sir!!!!

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

Great job Freeman - almost as good as new

Ed

Are the frets original fretless-wonder style?
If so, thanks for not replscing them with jumbo’s.
Very well done!

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Yes, still have the nibs. I massaged them a little but kept them original.

Nice! I love a good save!

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/