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What would you suggest. Will have a pickguard fitted, albeit a bit late

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Why, the owner isn't even trying - is he? Seriously, I can't offer any solutions because I think any attempt to repair would affect the tone and make it look worse. Willie Nelson's old Martin nylon string looks way worse, and still sounds decent. Same with Tommy Emmanuel's Maton. Just leave it...

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

I saw one like this where a previous repairer had filled the divots with a clear epoxy resin. Wear continued until everywhere that WASNT epoxy had worn away and there was just islands of epoxy sticking up from a soundboard worn down to almost paper thinness …

Saw another that had been left as-is on the exterior, but stabilised with an internal .040” spruce lamination. This was solid but really it just delays the inevitable, presuming the player won’t adjust their technique.

Your plan of a pickguard covering these areas is likely the most cost-effective protection. Everything else I can think of would be a major, expensive restoration project which would include refinishing.

IN THEORY you could find matching spruce, scoop these a little more uniform in shape and chalk-fit a matching spruce scoop, glue, level and do whatever finish work is necessary. In practice no one will ever see this amazing work since you’d still stick a pickguard over it anyhow

And I completely agree with Chris anything you attempt to do will look like **** and cost you both a lot of time and money.

I've been known to say "great, now you can learn to play the thing... " Hey, it makes it go away.

Hesh's rule number one of being a repair Luthier: Never, never, never attempt to be all things to all folks. Just because they broke it does not mean it's living here and I have to fix it.



Like it or not independent Luthiers fail all over the place frequently because they let their shops get filled with this kind of thing that should not even be repaired the vast majority of the time. They get buried and then can't stand to go to work and it snowballs. We have three shops in our area that went tits up for this reason, buried in crap work.

Now sure I can fix it and you can fix it too and like Raisin Bran two scoops will do ya of matching spruce, working it in, refinishing the top, because of the investment in the repair what ever else it may need and $1,000 later it's fixed....

So the economics are not here and this is the kind of thing that music stores will take in when you are not there and then it becomes your problem. Throw it back at them and tell them to never, never, never take anything questionable in again without qualifying it to the owner that they will receive a call and our luthier may not agree to work on it.

But again why not just leave it as it is? It makes the player look better than they likely are (at playing now carving). I got a client pissed at me, he has won an Emmy Award by the way and is famous, he got pissed at me because I cleaned his pre-war Martin the day before he had a photo shoot for a new album cover. He wanted his ax to look all dirty and nasty and Felix Ungar here can't have that so I cleaned the thing.

We got past it but his cover looks differently than he wanted

Heck want me to call the client, I do this very well and they never come back either

Exactly. I'm leaning towards 2 part wood filler and GluBoost for the smaller dents to give an even surface to stick a the requested pickguard onto.
That's after I fix this bit, just made up fresh HHG.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

On a serious note

Frank (Ford) has on Frets a tutorial of how he did the scoop thing I believe it was under a bridge but same kind of top repair and it looked great but it has a lot of potential for scope creep and it's a major, pricey repair.

We shy away from cosmetic repairs and this is 50% that too so not our bag, we would pass and we don't have the bandwidth either.

Like I said, it’s just in theory

In practice not that many axes that I see justify the time and expense for things like this and so mechanical protection (ie pickguard and some internal reinforcement) is what gets it back out the door at a reasonable cost.

Now the scoop repair and refinish may well be attempted on a more expensive guitar but in general weird cosmetic surgery on high-end guitars is something my blood pressure could do without! There are luthiers who specialise in stuff like this though and with appropriate skill and experience the results can be good.

Says me: Offer to install a pickguard. Nothing more.

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Peter Havriluk

Just thought it would be good to have something to stick the pick-guard to, even outside the divots the top looks really rough.
I'll be like gluing a board to a gravel path...

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

What kind of guitar is this anyway, can't tell from here and just the bridge?

It's a Brook, Taw model, 010 trim - now about $3200 new, Spruce over Cherry (from a fallen tree at Kew Gardens apparently)

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I think that more important than a pickguard would be a taller saddle with very deep slots! Those strings are all over the place!

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Why be normal?

Fill it with Bondo, slap a guard on it and call it done.

Might have something to do with the strings being slacked off due to the broken headstock.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Glu-Boost will definitely work to fill if you want the PG to stick to it. But you could probably just stick a PG right over it too.

Ahh Colin, I wasn't signed in, and didn't see the second photo! That instrument is having a life.

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Why be normal?

Looks like it might be a nice guitar, Check out the video, fascinating on a lot of levels.

https://youtu.be/1y3zqmt5fFU

Tried a few of them, some average, some excellent.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Gluing headstock up. Fresh 193 HHG, stabilized at 57 deg C, with syringe and brushes heated in the pots. Heat gun used to warm up inside the break (set to 55 deg at 2"), clamps and cauls from dry run to hand. Syringe and needle used to get 1ml each side into the bottom of the opening, brushes used for the rest, clamped up. Rubber band is holding a Teflon block on top of a small chip of wood. Cleaned up as much as I could get to and I'll leave the clamps on for 2 days,

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_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Looks good Colin.


Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Stick a Clear pic guard over it and let the age show ....

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GluBoost fill to level and a clear pickguard is a possibility.

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Fixed, filled gouges with layers of gluboost, levelled and polished, fitted pickguard.

Sent from my moto g(50) using Tapatalk

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.