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I have an old Classical, that I bought at a garage sale over 35 years ago. It seemed to have a book matched spruce top, and even a decent looking rosette. The fretboard, frets, nut, saddle were all worn. But it didn't sound too bad. It played horribly; better after I I got the saddle as low as it could go. After years sitting in the closet, the bridge was coming loose. I started making guitars, and hung it in the corner to maybe fix up some time.

Yesterday I have a few hours, and the corner was getting cleaned out. I checked the height of the bridge. It was even with the frets, but it was 12mm high. It had a bit of dome on it, gut ahead of the bridge it was flatter.

The bridge came off easy. It had a LOT of glue under it. It was some sort of VERY cheap plywood. The dome disappeared. The radius sanded into the bridge gave it the dome! I felt inside, and it did have some rather monstrous fan braces.

The 3 on a plate roller tuners, are like low grade Grover style tuners. They work, but you certainly wouldn't put them on anything that you built.

I pulled the fretboard off. That took more than half an hour. Water, a heat gun, and a separating knife. Surprise! Even the book matched spruce top IS solid wood; on a cheap darker tropical bias base. It was plywood.

It seems like SO MUCH more work to make fake book matched spruce, than to just use A grade, book matched spruce.

The fretboard was actually lined with some stained wood, like the core was. Or so I thought.

The core was some cheap wood. The top, and sides were the stained cheap wood. FOUR pieces! Wouldn't a cheap stained maple fretboard be FAR EASIER to do? All that bother to save what? They DID make violin necks that way for a while in the early baroque, when wound strings started wearing away the fingerboards. But at least they used really ebony.

After taking a couple pictures downstairs, I see that the fretboard IS 1/2 decent wood, on top of the same Luan, or whatever. The side lining seems like plastic.

I knew the sides and back were veneer. The neck is some kind of mahogany looking wood. It had parallel slots, 3/16" wide? on either side of center, going very deep, ALL THE WAY THROUGH the neck inside the body under the fingerboard. Extra tone support? The slots were only partially filled with strips of wood that was not any more remarkable than the neck was made from.

The weirdest part of the whole thing.

It just boggles the mind that this was the way they came up with to make a cheap guitar. I guess there is cheap, and then there is really cheap.

Well, now the corner will be more open. I won't waste any more time with this. It's trash time.

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Why be normal?

In the late 90s, my daughter bought me this gift in a Jakarta street market for less than $10. The label is clearly a forgery. The rosette appears to be glued on paper. The bridge is attached from the inside with two screws. The frets aren’t exactly randomly placed, but they don’t match the musical scale to which we are accustomed. The back, sides, and neck are painted brown. The bindings are just paint. If it were tuned to pitch, it would come apart. She said that the street performers were using instruments just like this (and that they didn’t sound very good). It is a true guitar-like object. At least yours approximates a musical instrument. The folks who made mine had some skill. It wouldn’t have taken too much more to make a playable guitar.

Amazing what a builder (of anything) will do when labor is cheap, innit?

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formerly known around here as burbank
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