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Dave Staudte (rhymms with "Howdy") NB Guitar Repair (New Braunfels, TX) VideoRepair and Restoration

Holter Custom Pickguards, with Taylor Mullins

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Private member DiscussionFinish Repair

My guitar got smashed.

It was attacked by a Martin Dreadaught on a small mountain stage resulting in a faceplant. The top is Redwood. I was able to get it to glue up fairly well and have done some splice and drop fill on the vertical cracks. I'm curious about suggestions for the deep cross grain areas. I am hoping to not re-shoot any lacquer and just rub out the finish with some Kovax dry sanding. It was never high gloss buff to begin with and it's a personal…

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Private member
@member Thanks Ian, I also have some ultra thin fill&finish on the way. I will do some experimenting with it and see if it can help me out any.
Private member DiscussionAcoustic Repair

Martin D-35 with cracks everywhere!

Hello looths! Long time lurker, first time poster here all the way from New Zealand. I have recently acquired this 2008 Martin D-35 for a very cheap price ($1000 NZD - around 600 US!) it's dried out in a very cold environment and has two substantial cracks running all the way across the top, one large side crack, and a previous side crack repair that's been done quite poorly. I'm only about 3 years in to this repair journey and this is d…

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Ian Davlin
I thought I might add an outlier of an opinion here. I understand the temptation to close the cracks with higher humidity, but you're asking a lot of adhesives, reinforcements and human attention span…
Private member DiscussionAcoustic Repair

1930s Martin 00: Best practice

Long story short, customer want to add carbon fiber in the neck for strength. Without string tension, the neck is dead straight; with strings, it's about double the relief he'd like. Is it insane to add carbon to this guitar? Or is it fine?

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Private member
Hey Keith! That's a bit of a tough question to answer without having more details, but I'll take a swing at it. If, as you said, the neck is dead straight without strings and has double the relief he…
Private member DiscussionShare Your Repair Content

DIY silicone blanket heater

Thought fellow looths might enjoy this geekery. I've often wished for custom size heating blankets, but didn't even try uploading the file to get a quote from some of the major manufacturers. I was looking to spend countless hours of my life on something and save a hundred bucks. So I did some research, a little bit of head scratching, a slight bit of math reckoning, and made this '70s Martin bridge plate remover. Pretty slick, nice…

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Ian Davlin
DUDE !