I finished repairs on the Guild guitar earlier this week. First I added some internal bracing to the sides to help reinforce them. I used rare earth magnets for clamps.
I had to pull the binding off around to the heel to give enough length to reattach the binding. This left a small gap right by the heel, but I wasn’t really concerned about it. Just gives more character. You can see the laminated back that Guild uses for these. It is arched like a 335 top or back, with no bracing at all.
The frets needed some work. They had been leveled, but never recrowned. I did a light re-leveling just to make sure all was true. You can see how flat the fret on the left is compared to the one on the right that has been mostly recrowned.
Much better. Got the grime off the fingerboard, too.
Next up was getting the Sunrise soundhole pickup back in. The owner had the connectors all wrapped up in duct tape and electrical tape to pad it and keep it from knocking around. I chose to add some clips to hold things in place and allow the pickup to be easily removed.
All cleaned up, restrung and good to go. I played it a bit last night. A nice chunky, bluesy sound, with a back story. Hopefully the family puts this to good use.
Here’s a full gallery of all the repair shots:
