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Hi all, I am a newer guitar tech and after dozens of repairs this particular Simon & Patrick Luthier Cedar top SP6 acoustic dreadnought from the 90-ies with a bolt-on maple neck has been an incredible challenge. It came with a maxed out and stuck truss rod with a considerable up bow in the neck, extremely low saddle with barely any string break angle, so it needed a neck reset. Later on I figured out that it also has a pretty dras…

I recently picked up a used custom guitar that the seller said he bought in Vietnam Nam many years ago. I bought it as a wall hanger due to the wonderful Mother of Pearl work, especially on the back. It was very apparent that the top on this instrument was sunken at least 3/8 of an inch, as the weird bridge setup was heightened to the max and there was barely any action height. Once I took it apart and removed the foam inside, I was…

Before I hack into the Yamaha, I would like to get the opinion of the experts on a method of steaming the upper end of the guitar and ‘pressing’ the neck down to adjust the angle back to factory. There are several you-tubers that have tried and recommend it. My novice intuition is that even though it may work, wont the steaming of other areas of the body such as upper braces, etc, end up weakening the construction (glue stability) to…

A friend of mine gave me his locally built mandolin for a neck reset. The glue in the dovetail has started to fail, and left a large gap at the bottom and a separation from the fingerboard and body. I've taken my brownstone and tried to heat the joint up enough to soften things up, but to no avail. I have no idea what type or where the joint is exactly. There are some indicators that this instrument was built with several flaws in the c…

Model is "The '80". Daion built some nice guitars in the 70's and 80's out of a small shop in Japan. Nice old all mahogany 12 string. It's my instrument so doing a bolt on conversion. Forget about trying to get the neck off one of these (apart from Kung Fu) - neck construction seems to be based on multiple dowels (a bit like some Japanese furniture I suppose)

Breedlove Roots D/SRH (basically an HD28V) on the bench with a non functional trussrod. Wrench will engage, but the nut just spins and no change in relief in either direction. Pretty sure the nut is stripped at the rod end, but due to the neck block design, there's no way to access it without pulling the neck. Anybody ever replace a trussrod in one of these? The neck is a bolt on, and the fingerboard extension is glued down, so only…

Hallo, I have an old archtop (plywood) that needed a refret. There is no trussrod. I talked to the owner, he knows that my work will maybe/eventually more expensive than the value of the guitar. But it was only after leveling the fretboard that I realized that the fret slots are completely off. I talked to the customer again, and we agreed, that I should put a new fretboard on the guitar. I have one, that I took of an old guitar, and reuse…