The Hub

Hello to the Council of Elders! My name is Joe Byron, and I am president of the Stringed Instrument Makers of Southern California (SIMSCal). We have been around for over 30 years and have a large number of members and followers. Our membership includes both professional and non-professional luthiers. SIMSCal meets 4-8 times per year (both live and virtually), and we share tips, processes, stories, and show off our work. We frequently inclu…

Hey, I'm working on a 2017-ish Taylor GS Mini which has a delaminating headstock...see photos... I was surprised to see that the laminate was plastic... I reckon quite a few of the community will have done this job many times, so I'm after group wisdom :). Just a small request I know... Just Fyi...I haven't quoted the customer yet, but I reckon (with some other work I'm doing on the instrument)...our budget will be limited.…

I have a Taylor Acoustic in for a setup and I had a couple of questions: 1. My main one is how you would go about gluing the label back on? I'm probably overthinking it but I'm curious if there's a universally recognized way of doing this? 2. I have some very minor finish damage which I'm not planning on touching, but I am curious how one would go about repairing it. Would this be a case of drop filling lacquer? What would be the…

This repair came into the shop on Thursday. The crack appears to go most of the way through the neck but hasn't opened up at all. What is the current best practice to address cracks like this? Shout out to @member as the resident Taylor expert. Thanks in advance for your help.

So this 310 came into the shop and had a pretty gnarly crack that splinters some toward the lower left bout. Going to do a crack repair with the TJ Thompson crack corrector and some hide glue. The issue I'm inquiring about is the finish is delaminating around the area. I'm curious as to what type of finish it is. Seems a bit flexible and spongy to be a nitro alone. There's shards of finish missing, and dirt has found its way underneath…

when setting up acoustic guitars, from time to time I have a lot of trouble with getting the G string to ring true when fretted. Starting from lower frets and at its worst at about the 5/6th fret, the G string buzzes when plucked "heavily" (when no other string does so)...most recently a Taylor 724 which had a neck adjustment to reduce action (to 5/64-4/64), relief about 0.003 or 0.004. Increasing relief to about 8-9 helps somewhat.…

Hello! First time poster, long time lurker... I thought you guys might get a kick out of this. I got fed up of having to re-mount my workbench lid after pulling it off a particularly bumpy/cold/hot/anything truck ride and began searching for a mounting system that would hold everything up when the lid was open, but also crucially not fall off when it was closed after the show. I happened upon multiboard, which looked like it could do the…

I've had a mini come in for setup...I know that the minis in particular are designed with top (lower bout) and back "bulge"...I'm wondering if anyone knows the "acceptable" (Taylor factory) range for this? cheers, Steve

This is just a rant against the Stew-mac touchup pens. Ive just never had them functionally work, without creating more of an issue than there was in the first place. Through an "act of god" I chipped a small bit of freshly buffed and polished laquer off the headstock of a Taylor that I refinished. The guitar had that nasty bubbling around the tuners and CA glue didn't fix the issue, so I stripped the front of the headstock and airbrush…