I have had more than an number of the ladder braced LG's in my shop, they can sound good. Emphasis on the word "can". So here's my thoughts pertinent to your question.
Conor_Searl wrote:
First, the guitar had been converted to a lefty. The person who did this filled the original slot with light colored wood. My inclination is to fill the lefty slot with a piece of rosewood and then re-cut the slot to revert it to a right handed guitar. The new (old) slot should get rid of most of that blond wood, however the bridge looks like its Brazillian rosewood and is really grainy, so even if I use Rosewood to fill the slot I think it will still stand out. Taking into consideration the work of filling, re-cutting, the cosmetic difference, and how much will have been done to this bridge does it make the most sense to just replace the bridge altogether?
I would highly recommend filling and recutting. But I would not follow the original slot, almost every one of these that I've had in my shop had very poor intonation. This is one from a few months ago. The original bridge is on the right, my replacement on the left.
The intonation was extremely out from the factory. So bear in mind that the original saddle slot might not be ideal. I'd take the time to really check the intonation and cut a saddle slot that is truly in tune as possible. And if you had some slivers of leftover wood I would highly recommend using a sharpie to darken them. I've done it on more than one occasion, and with the saddle and strings installed you will likely not be able to see it very well at all. There's other ways to hide the wood but that's honestly the simplest one.
Conor_Searl wrote:
Next, there's a crack that runs from the bridge along the pickguard and treble side of the fret board all the way to the neck block. It's caused a weird table for lack of a better term to the radius of the top between the bridge and the sound hole and the repair seems a little overkill. There are two dark wood blocks between the braces acting as cleats/reinforcements and one smaller spruce one. It seems like maybe the original repairman couldn't get the cracks closed. Maybe? I don't know. I feel like getting those blocks out and the cracks cleated properly can only be a good thing, but then again with the way the top is maybe its too late now?
You could definitely try removing those blocks. But that's a pretty dead area of the top. I'd check to see if they're actually glued well to the top. If they're not glued in well just remove them and replace with something more appropriate. Check that the top braces haven't come loose and are causing some of the issues with the deformity. Once the braces are good to go then I'd definitely want to cleat/reinforce those open cracks I see in the pictures.
Conor_Searl wrote:
Then we have a broken headstock. This seems pretty textbook, however there is a lot of glue gooped all over it. The guy that sold the guitar to my friend said its water soluble glue and that it started to come off with some thinner. Also there is a big void where the pieces don't touch anymore in the middle of the break on the front of the headstock. It seems like if I can get the glue off there is a lot of surface area to ensure a good glue joint, but I'm not sure what to do with that void.
So this is tough because of the missing material. I would honestly want some serious reinforcement on that headstock. Either a backstrap overlay, or a face overlay, or both. Actually I'd probably want both for this case. I would not want to use splines, definitely go for a full flat overlay. I know that a member here a while back put up some excellent pictures of his method for doing this on a 12 string headstock. Maybe they can chime in?
Conor_Searl wrote:
Finally there is a crack in the back that appears to have been repaired and seems to be stable, however its not flush. And even though it doesn't move at all its caused a gap under the brace inside. Are there any tricks for getting old glue out of a crack like that so I can close it up properly?
Depending on the glue, I've used a soldering iron and wet cloth as a "spot steamer" to help soften glue in cases like this. Steam the crack a bit and perhaps run an 8 gauge string through there to break the glue bond. Sometimes it'll just "pop" apart with the steam. The string trick I've used a few times on repairs where I needed to realign the cracked portions of wood, it'll "cut" the glue out and help open the crack a bit.
Your biggest thing is going to be that headstock. I'll see if I can find the pictures I referenced of the overlay work.
